Pedagogy in Further Education and Vocational Teacher Education

Definitions and key pedagogic themes from research

Further Education and Vocational Teacher Education (FEVTE) is defined as all the teacher education activity and provision included in the UK Further Education and Skills sector, and other vocational teacher education elsewhere.

The UK Further Education and Skills (FES) sector is the current name for the sector which has replaced the previous Lifelong Learning sector (LLS).

A Teacher Educator (TEd) in this research is defined as “a professional teacher who works with new and experienced (LLS) teachers to help them support their own students’ learning and build their knowledge, expertise and practice as a teaching professional.” Crawley, 2014.

Although this is a Teacher Education Study based in the FES, much of the pedagogy resonates with research across all teacher education pedagogy, and studies from outside of FEVTE have been used for the evidence base.

The key pedagogical themes identified are:

1. General pedagogical principles
2. The moral role of teacher educators
3. Modelling practice and ‘golden moments’
4. The place of learning theory
5. Developing learning communities of reflective practitioners
6. Connecting theory, practice and workplaces