ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the shift in further education (FE) colleges towards a strong caring and nurturing ethos that has become a goal in its own right. It examines how the management of transitions for school leavers inserts images of risk and emotional vulnerability into post-16 education and leads to particular forms of assessment. The chapter explains how diminished images of students affect ideas about suitable college experiences and shows that their roots in a therapeutic pedagogy. It analyses implications for educational goals and practices in FE. Growing disillusionment with subject-based crafts and knowledge in FE, concern about social exclusion and an aversion to functional, employer-led outcomes lead some educators to advocate an overtly therapeutic pedagogy. Teachers in FE are trapped between relentless targets, auditing, repeated restructuring and growing numbers of students who do not want to be in education but have little alternative.
