This article reports on the final year of a four year research project into the influences on British South Asian women’s choice of teaching as a career and on their subsequent career development. The research cohort was interviewed during their initial teacher training year on a PGCE (Post Graduate Certificate of Education) course in the English West Midlands, followed by subsequent interviews in the first and third years of their careers as teachers. Findings from the first phase of the research – into the reasons for selecting teaching as a career and issues faced during training – were previously published, subsequent findings are captured in this article. Our research suggests that British South Asian women teachers at the start of their careers face, and largely cope with, broadly similar opportunities and challenges to other beginning teachers. Despite some particular tensions created by their work, family and community lives these teachers successfully established themselves as well respected individuals, fully capable of skilfully balancing their professional and personal commitments. Respondents did not report any particularly significant issues relating to their ethnic, cultural or religious affiliations, in contrast to the findings of a number of previous studies.

This article reports the findings of the first year of a four year research project into the influences on British South Asian women’s choice of teaching as a career. Trainees from minority ethnic groups on a secondary PGCE (Postgraduate Certificate in Education) course in the English West Midlands were invited to discuss, both in focus groups and in response to semi‐structured interview questions, the reasons why they chose to enter teacher training and the issues they faced during the training period. The results reported here highlight the strong, positive influences of family and culture on the trainees’ choice of career, and their perceptions of why teaching offers them flexible and high status employment at the point of career entry. Subsequent research has tracked these trainees’ at the culmination of their first year of teaching, and will also monitor their views at the end of their third year in schools. The study is located in the UK, referring to both policy and literature relevant to this context. In contrast to the findings of much published research into the experiences of minority ethnic trainees in Initial Teacher Training (ITT) in the UK, which present negative perceptions of the training process, this study found that British South Asian women were broadly positive about the courses they took, their relationships with tutors, teachers and mentors, and the provision made for them by partnership schools. They were mainly optimistic about their prospects of career advancement and confident that they could combine a job in the teaching profession with other life demands relating to family, religious faith, culture and community.

In this paper we argue that interventions aimed at preventing social exclusion need to be informed by detailed analysis of the formation, disruption, reformation and support of trajectories of participation in the opportunities for action provided. We draw on evidence we gathered on the lives of two women who used an inner city drop‐in centre to discuss how resilience and trajectories of inclusion are built slowly over time in relationship with others. Using concepts derived from sociocultural psychology and activity theory, we interrogate the evidence to first ask whether there is a pattern of changes in participation over time and to then explore how the identity shifts these changes represent are supported. The analysis reveals that there is a pattern, but it is a pattern of using and giving support which suggests that such trajectories are likely to be recursive. This using and giving of support we term relational agency and argue that a capacity for relational agency, as both the supported and the supporter, is a crucial factor in the development of purposive identities and the building of resilience. We also suggest that it is likely to be encouraged in settings which can foster trust and reciprocity as flexible and open learning zones.

UK government policies for social inclusion through engaging with the learning society aim at repositioning people as capable participants in their social worlds. These policies at first sight appear to be aimed at a sophisticated restructuring of social contexts as well as at an enhancing of individual learning. However there is a degree of conceptual confusion within these policies. In this paper we explore some of the tensions evident in a study of a family learning centre in an English city. In the exploration we examine the extent to which the tools offered by sociocultural and activity theory (SAT) can assist in resolving that conceptual confusion and how SAT itself might need to develop in order to analyse complex and sustained forms of intervention.