ABSTRACT
Tutors play an important part in constructing emotional and academic support for Access to HE students. Chapter 7 discusses their constructions of professional identity and their views of the students they teach in order to better understand the learning environments they create. Access to HE tutors not only matter in terms of students’ achievement, but also in terms of their personal and social well-being. They have a major influence on the quality of students’ learning. The chapter also discusses Access to HE tutors’ commitment to ‘second-chance learning’ and how it arose, in part, from their own biographies and recognition of the disempowerment experienced by Access to HE students who were often economically disadvantaged and had negative experiences of schooling and/or a period of work before joining the course. It concludes by examining how the tutors’ sense of agency and identity and the cultures on Access to HE courses were negotiated through getting to know the students, meeting their extensive demands for personal and academic support, and contesting the institutional contexts of the courses.
