Book excerpt: What does ‘professionalism’ mean for teachers and trainers in further education colleges or adult education centres? Over the last twenty years, ideas about professionalism and professional identity within the post-compulsory sector have been shaped and reshaped by successive policies, standards, and professional bodies. Yet, these ideas themselves remain controversial and continue to be the focus of debate as well as research. This book gathers together a series of articles published over the last ten years, providing critical and research-based perspectives on professionalism within post-compulsory education and training. The twelve chapters that are presented here explore issues such as professional standards and continuing professional development and their impact on current definitions and frameworks of professionalism, as well as the policies that have shaped these processes. These are issues that are of relevance and importance not only to practitioners and researchers in the post-compulsory sector, but to anyone who is concerned with contemporary debates about what it means to be ‘a professional’ in education and training. The chapters in this book were originally published as articles in Research in Post-Compulsory Education.