Issues of teacher identity in a restructuring Australian vocational education and training (VET) system

Abstract

In this paper I examine the impact of change on the identities of Australian technical and further education (TAFE) teachers. I suggest that a great deal of debate, in recent times, has implied that teachers not only need new knowledge and skills but need to perform their professional practices in new ways and in new contexts. However, what this debate has failed to recognise is that these change discourses are in effect constructing new professional identities for teachers, which interact and compete with the traditional discourses that once provided TAPE teachers with a distinct and separate educational identity.