Sarah Bates Evoy (sarah.bates-evoy@setu.ie, website)
South East Technological University, Ireland, 2024
Abstract
The thesis is a largely empirical study of the professional identities of education and training practitioners whose activities were brought into a new sector of further education and training in Ireland. Following legislation in 2013, a diverse range of providers and services concerned with adult, basic, community, professional, vocational, further and work-based education and training were assembled in one sector. The impact of this reform on the working lives, identities and perspectives of education and training practitioners was explored using a three-stage research design which included an initial exploratory consultation event, an online survey and face-to-face narrative interviews. Data, mostly qualitative in nature, were collected and analysed at each stage using content analysis techniques. Core themes were identified following a synthesis and reworking of the findings. Informed by a social realist approach, a conceptual framework drawn from the work of Margaret Archer, and a review of literatures and debates relating to teacher identity formation, the research is an examination of structure, culture and agency in the context of national-level structural reform and local-level engagement. Key factors in the formation and re-formation of professional identities were, on the one side, the previous occupational experiences of practitioners and, on the other, their current employment conditions and contexts. For part-time practitioners in particular, high levels of commitment and motivation were accompanied by, and often served to offset, a lack of security and stability in their work roles. While some reform measures were slow to register an influence, the increased emphasis on formal accredited learning for learners and the perceived need for professional registration of practitioners were direct and immediate in their impact. The thesis explores situations and contexts in which conceptions of professionalism were being challenged and changed, but not without examples of creativity and innovation in the way that policies were interpreted, managed and mediated on the ground.
Methods
Mixed: 1) Exploratory consultation event – face-to-face consultation with research participants using Open Space Technology techniques (Qualitative) 2) Online survey (Mainly quantitative questions, with some qualitative questions) 3) Face-to-face narrative interviews (Qualitative)