The article examines trainee lecturers' perceptions of teaching and learning in the sector, drawing upon a small-scale study of trainees on a full-time further education teacher-training programme at an English new university. The article explores how current changes may be affecting the development of lecturers' professional practice. It seeks to examine the relationship between critical pedagogy, performativity and a politics of hope. It concludes by arguing that it is not enough to hold to an ethic of care or even a concern to engage students, and that there is a wider politics inscribed within pedagogic practice: a politics of hope that is characterised by an aspiration towards critical and democratic practice. (Contains 1 note.)