Vocational education routes, and institutions that specialise in vocational education, play an increasingly important role in globalised ‘knowledge’ economies where large numbers of the population are expected to gain high levels of education and qualification outcomes. In England there is currently a particular spotlight on vocational routes. They are being promoted as a preferred alternative to higher education, at a time when university fees are to double from 2012, with questions asked about the value of participation in traditional forms of higher education. Yet vocational education in England, as in many other countries, is not simply an alternative to academic education, but is associated with second chance opportunities for students who have not succeeded within high status academic routes. This raises questions about the roles and identities of vocational education teachers.

This paper takes England as a case in point to raise questions about the opportunities afforded those moving into teaching in vocational education, and the significance of different career trajectories for practice in vocational education contexts. The paper reports on the development of teachers’ careers and identities over eight years following completion of an initial teaching qualification. The paper uses the concept of communities of practice (Lave and Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998) to explore different trajectories followed by teachers during their early careers and addresses the following questions:

What subject positions are afforded to a person in the present time?

How do local communities of practice shape and influence the development of teachers’ careers?

What is the significance of the different career trajectories followed by teachers for vocational education practice?

To explore the construction of identities we draw on the work of Lave and Wenger (1991) and Wenger (1998), whose work emphasises the significance of participation in communities of practice for the construction of identities. Lave and Wenger use the term legitimate peripheral participation, to describe how novices learn alongside experienced colleagues and gradually become full members of a community of practice. Their interest is in what helps and hinders fuller participation, or movement from the periphery to the centre. These ideas are helpful in considering the process of becoming a teacher through integration into a community of practice (or not).

However, there are also limitations to these tools. Although Wenger refers to inbound, outbound, and peripheral trajectories, these do not tend to be discussed in relation to the power relations involved in these differing trajectories. Lave and Wenger’s work does not address how certain identities may be deemed illegitimate in a particular community of practice, nor do they consider decisions that participants may make to resist becoming part of a community of practice. We therefore draw on other literature, which uses cultural theories of learning, to consider questions of ‘social contestation and struggle over participation’ (Hodkinson, 2005; Colley and James, 2005), which help to understand the career routes followed by the participants in this study.

Colley, H. and James, D. (2005) Unbecoming tutors: towards a more dynamic notion of professional participation. Paper presented at the ESRC seminar series Changing Teacher Roles, Identities and Professionalism, at Kings College London, 16 May 2005. Hodkinson, H. (2005) Learning as becoming, in changing experiences of work throughout life. Paper presented at the 4th International Conference on Researching Work and Learning, University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Australia, 12-14 December 2005. Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991) Situated Learning. Legitimate Peripheral Participation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wenger, E. (1998) Communities of Practice. Learning, Meaning and Identity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.