ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book uses 'further education' as an umbrella term to signify educational courses and experiences that take place in a variety of settings involving young people who have finished attending school, as well as adult returnees. Further education includes vocational education and work-based learning. The book focuses on the further education that takes place in colleges across England and the UK. It explores some of the pressures militating against any consolidation of a unifying or stable sense of identity amongst further education teachers that intensified in the period after the financial crisis. The book argues collection by creating a brief history of its conception and development, by making explicit its central propositions and intentions and, then, by providing an overview of the ways in which each chapter contributes to the critical whole.
