Description:
Teacher induction programs provide the critical support that new teachers need as they move from university teacher education studies to the everyday realities of teaching. Newly Qualified Teachers (NQTs) work through a range of new and challenging experiences as they explore their sense of themselves as professionals. Their identities are being constantly constructed and reconstructed as they work through their subjective experience of being a teacher and the objective structures of the wider educational field of the classroom, school and the local community. A high percentage of NQTs leave the teaching profession within the first 5 years of beginning teaching as they grapple with and succumb to the challenges caused by a number of stressors they encounter. New teachers frequently become dissatisfied with the outcomes of their work and decide that they are unsuited to teaching and leave the profession. This article is based on a study of beginning teachers in two Australian states. The focus is on multiple ways to meet the needs of new teachers to establish their professional identity within the context of a community of learners and to value diversity and complexity in the professional community. Key issues addressed included: teacher induction and quality teaching, changing school cultures and the culture of professional learning, teacher learning and responding to changes in the wider community.
Description:
Teacher induction programs provide the critical support that new teachers need as they move from university teacher education studies to the everyday realities of teaching. Newly Qualified Teachers (NQTs) work through a range of new and challenging experiences as they explore their sense of themselves as professionals. Their identities are being constantly constructed and reconstructed as they work through their subjective experience of being a teacher and the objective structures of the wider educational field of the classroom, school and the local community. A high percentage of NQTs leave the teaching profession within the first 5 years of beginning teaching as they grapple with and succumb to the challenges caused by a number of stressors they encounter. New teachers frequently become dissatisfied with the outcomes of their work and decide that they are unsuited to teaching and leave the profession. This article is based on a study of beginning teachers in two Australian states. The focus is on multiple ways to meet the needs of new teachers to establish their professional identity within the context of a community of learners and to value diversity and complexity in the professional community. Key issues addressed included: teacher induction and quality teaching, changing school cultures and the culture of professional learning, teacher learning and responding to changes in the wider community.
Description:
The focus of recent Australian political and media reports on the selection of candidates for initial teacher education programs has focused on the Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) score as one of the key indicators of worth. This narrative study conducted in an Australian regional university focuses on the life stories of twelve pre-service teachers (PSTs) who received lower ATAR scores and who may well have been rejected by other universities. The PSTs’ narratives highlight that low achievement levels in the final years of schooling did not prevent them from being able to succeed in teacher education programs. We argue that high stakes tests as gatekeeping devices are simplistic measures that fail to recognise important qualities of character crucial to effective teaching. We suggest that qualities of character such as these are hard to quantify but are central to both selecting entrants to, and developing PSTs during, their teacher education programs.