Description: This paper draws on research carried out with and by lecturers in the School of Continuing Professional Development (CPD), Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth, England. The research aimed to investigate the perceptions of these Higher Education lecturers about their approach to teaching when teaching CPD students who are working at different accreditation levels (for example, school teaching assistants and further education staff on undergraduate programmes; and teachers and other professionals on postgraduate programmes). The idea for the study grew from the researchers' personal pedagogic concerns when beginning to teach on different programmes where the accredited outcome was at a different level.Research from a range of countries has explored lecturers' approaches to teaching in relation to their conceptions of teaching and learning (for example, Kember and Kwan, 2000; Murray and Macdonald, 1997; Trigwell and Prosser, 1996). This research examines the perceptions of lecturers in the context of their own beliefs about teaching students who are working at different accreditation levels. This paper explores one of the themes arising from initial analysis of the data - that of a tension in teaching between what you do and what you believe you should do. The data seem to present two opposing premises, expressed simply as: 'I think I should be doing something different but I'm not'; and 'I m doing something different, but I shouldn't be'. Methodology: Over the course of the 2004/2005 academic year semi-structured interviews were carried out with individual lecturers; and group discussions were held with the three different teams within the CPD School. These were recorded, transcribed and coded. Through these interviews and discussions, involving in total 30 lecturers, we explicitly sought lecturers' understandings, perceptions and experiences about teaching at different accreditation levels. Do you teach differently when you teach groups with different outcome levels? What do you do when teaching a mixed group where students within the group are registered for different accreditation levels?Underpinning this study is the belief that, methodologically, the study of the 'stories' that people tell about aspects of their lives can generate productive insights not only connected to the topics being investigated, but also about the wider context in which those lives and topics are lived out (Goodson and Sikes, 2001). We have been exploring this in other contexts too (for example, Lawson et al, 2006). Thus, in this research, the personal views and stories told about teaching specific student groups in relation to notions of academic level have wider resonance in relation to the cultures within, and the current context and organisation of, higher education. Conclusions: A defining feature of students in the School of CPD is they are all practising professionals and 'mature' students and this appears to affect lecturers' perceptions of their approach to teaching these students. The tension apparent, though, between what you do and what you believe you should do seems to relate to beliefs about pedagogy, for example, learning/student-centredness, and the wider contexts of, on the one hand, university and School-level culture, and, on the other, an accountability culture. The division of university education by accreditation outcome levels may contribute further to a fracturing of higher education (Rowland, 2002).