This paper deals with how ‘workplace culture’ and ‘workplace identities’ are (not) constructed in and through the Further Education (FE) curriculum. More specifically, it examines the ways in which two competing identities — one educational and the other, workplace — are negotiated by FE students and sustained through the FE provision in the British setting. Drawing upon Bourdieu’s and Bernstein’s models of ‘cultural reproduction’ associated with mainstream schooling, in the first part of the paper I reassess this conflict model of stratified ‘culture’ and ‘codes’ in the overall context of vocational education. This is followed by an appeal to the Gramscian notion of ‘hegemony’ to suggest a shift towards a consensual form of ‘workplace identity’ negotiation. With the help of data taken from the various stages of the further education process (e.g. course objectives, teacher perceptions, patterns of classroom interaction, students’ work experience narratives), I argue that the competing educational and workplace identities are constituted in the contradictions and ambiguities inherent in further education. © 1996 R. Iedema.
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