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Community Education and Neoliberalism pp 195–225Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Insiders, Outsiders and the Professionalisation of Community Education

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Abstract

Increasingly, there are growing conversations within community education about the need to professionalise. This is not unique to community education but is part of a wider national and international trend in monitoring standards of practice through State-endorsed regulatory practices. But what happens when we problematise professsionalism by examining it as a contested concept? Following my own contextualising narrative, this chapter takes on to do this with particular emphasis on the relationship between professionalism and grass-roots activism.  It argues an over-reliance on State-endorsed qualifications and a measurement of appropriate practice and a corresponding under-reliance on lived experience.  Relationships with the academy and employment precarity are equally explored with a particular focus on the experiences of pracitioners participating in the research that underpins this publication.

The Professionalisation of community education

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The women attending the programme in the late 1990s prepared a submission for the Department of Education as part of the consultation process leading up to publication of the White Paper Learning for Life.

  2. 2.

    This was through the Teaching Council [registration] regulations, 2009. A directive introduced on foot of section 38 of the legislative Teaching Council Act 2001. Section 38 ‘review of standards required for entry into teaching profession, (a) review and accredit the programmes of teacher education and training provided by institutions of higher education and training in the State, (b) review the standards of education and training appropriate to a person entering a programme of teacher education and training and (c) review the standards of knowledge, skill and competence required for the practice of teaching, and shall advise the minister and, as it considers appropriate, the institutions concerned’.

  3. 3.

    Recognised programmes are offered at NUI Galway, Mary Immaculate College, Limerick (two programmes), National College of Ireland, Dublin, Waterford Institute of Technology (two programmes) NUI Maynooth, Co. Kildare, Marino Institute of Education, Dublin, Dublin City University and the National College of Art and Design, Dublin.

  4. 4.

    Data are being collected about qualifications, length of service, training, confidence in skills areas and staff opinions on future education and training supports There is extensive information about the Skills profile for the FET workforce on the ETBI website at this address http://www.etbi.ie/etbi-services/education-resources/further-education/fet-skills-profile/ Accessed 28 May 2016.

  5. 5.

    This was built from ideas originally conceived of within work of the Community Action Network and Partners TfT.

  6. 6.

    I spoke to this person in person and also by e-mail, full and informed consent was given before inclusion of this comment.

  7. 7.

    This question is asked on a personal reflection sheet which is circulated within the first two focus groups.

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  1. Maynooth University, Maynooth, Kildare, Ireland

    Camilla Fitzsimons

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Fitzsimons, C. (2017). Insiders, Outsiders and the Professionalisation of Community Education. In: Community Education and Neoliberalism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45937-0_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45937-0_7

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