Background In recent years, career guidance has become central to European and global policies for lifelong learning and employment (OECD, 2004; Sultana, 2004; Watts & Sultana, 2004). In particular, European studies have contributed to greater understanding of the professional competencies and training needs of career guidance practitioners (McCarthy, 2004; Repetto, 2008). Yet there is almost no research which investigates in-depth the professional careers of careers advisers, explores the dynamics of their workplace learning, or considers how that learning might be shaped by policies, infrastructural arrangements, and institutional cultures. Research questions This paper reports research, funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council, into the impact of 14-19 reforms in England on the career guidance profession in that sector. This profession has undergone repeated radical changes to its infrastructure, from privatisation and fragmentation of the national careers service in 1994, to integration into a generic youth support service (‘Connexions’) in 2001, and devolution to local authorities in 2008. Key research questions therefore focus on continuity and change in the roles, identities and practices of careers advisers, in the social and policy contexts of their lives and work. What considerations influence careers adviser’s decisions about remaining in or leaving Connexions? What forms of professional development and infrastructural support might maximise the effectiveness of the career guidance profession in the context of ongoing 14-19 reforms? How can we theorise the impact of policy reform on the dynamics of participation in professional communities of practice? Objectives and theoretical framework The broader social scientific aim of the project is to develop theoretical understandings of the effects of policy reform on professional communities of practice and their situated learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991). This paper specifically addresses the dynamics of participation in communities of practice, all too often viewed in a unidimensional way from legitimate peripheral to full participation through the formation of professional identity and ‘becoming’ (Colley et al, 2007). Drawing on the sociologies of Pierre Bourdieu (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992) and Dorothy Smith (2005), it analyses the impact on professionals’ learning of severe disruption to the infrastructure of their community of practice.

The project draws on an important tradition of educational enquiry, research into the social and policy contexts of teachers’ lives (Goodson & Sikes, 2001). It therefore adopts a narrative, interpretive methodology (Moustakas, 1990) recommended for the study of continuity and change in professional lives and careers (Collin & Young, 2000). Within this overall approach, Smith’s (1987, 1999) feminist standpoint epistemology will be drawn on to go beyond individual accounts to map and critically analyse the regulatory apparatus of the field and its relationship with practice. Accordingly, most of the data has been generated through in-depth ‘career history’ interviews with 27 practitioners who trained as careers advisers before 1994, between 1994-2001, and post-2001. 18 are from 3 local Connexions services (who also completed time-use diaries), and 9 have chosen to leave Connexions services. These are supplemented by interviews with local and national stakeholders, and by a national survey.

The data reveal processes of becoming a careers adviser, but also of ‘unbecoming’ (de-skilling and de-professionalisation), and ‘not-becoming’ or ‘becoming other’ (where more recently trained entrants to Connexions develop alternative professional roles, identities and practices). The formation of professional habitus in these ways appears to be strongly related to the institutional habitus (Reay et al, 2001) of a particular service, as well as to the discourses of 14-19 policy which impact upon the field (cf. Grenfell & James, 2004), and the cross-field effects (Rawolle, 2005) of other political discourses around the modernisation of public services and the dangers of feral youth. These findings should not only inform policy and practice across Europe about infrastructural support and professional development needs to maximise the effectiveness of career guidance in the 14-19 sector. They should also deepen our understanding of learning in the professions.