This is the second of two linked papers on the development of codes of professional conduct for teachers. In 2009, the General Teaching Council (GTC) for England introduced a revised Code of Conduct and Practice (2009) for registered teachers which sets out the expected standards and norms of practice for 540,000 registered schoolteachers in England. Interestingly, the code also applies to all trainee teachers who are provisionally registered with the GTC and who could be liable to a charge of misconduct during their periods of teaching practice. Such a possibility provides an interesting paradox as trainee teachers are judged against a professional code of practice when they themselves are new and ‘provisional’ member of the teaching profession. Whilst the GTC code of conduct seeks to underpin the professional identity of teachers, it overtly characterises this through the high profile ‘naming and shaming’ of miscreants through the media. For many teachers this is their main point of contact with the COCP and as such, this explicit outplaying of misdemeanours and identification of those found guilty or awaiting hearing serves to reduce the COCP to a disciplinary tool. This paper presents the results of a small scale piece of research that attempts to ascertain trainee teach alignment with the General Teaching Council of England’s Code of Conduct and Practice. Our interest in bringing this paper to a European audience stems from the pressure for education systems in Europe to engage in some form of re-structuring and realignment (Karlsen, 2002) in response to The Maastrict Treaty which placed education under the authority of the European Union (EU) in 1991. Although this global discourse of education arises in response to common social, economic and political pressures, it has been recognized that the effects of these changes are likely to be played out in culturally specific ways within particular education systems (Osborn, 2006). Such changes have had a profound effect on the way in which teachers’ work and role are defined by government policy directives within the European context and this paper intends to explore one culturally specific example of teacher role definition in order to enable pan-European debate about teacher professional identity.

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