ABSTRACT
This chapter reports on the quest for a 'more professional identity' of a group of untrained teachers from Further Education (FE). It presents the material that is based on ethnographic research into a part-time in-service Certificate of Education (FE) Course situated at a University Department of Education. The chapter shows how a group of 'late entrants' into teaching, with diverse occupational biographies perceive the teaching credential. It looks briefly at the accounts that trainees provided to each other about their first days as FE teachers. The chapter discusses teachers' main concerns at the outset of their 'new' teaching careers and the ways in which they gained credibility from their earlier occupational identities. It examines the varying reasons given by the trainees for pursuing an unnecessary but desirable qualification. The chapter describes the various motives, reasons and in some cases, optimistic beliefs that trainees gave for their participation on the in-service course.
