Learning together, shaping tomorrow : New teachers try new ways
- Authors: Cooper, Maxine , Stewart, Joan
- Date: 2009
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Research in Comparative and International Education Vol. 4, no. 1 (2009), p. 111-123
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- 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: 2003008004
Assumption interrogation : An insight into a self-study researcher's pedagogical frame
- Authors: Brandenburg, Robyn
- Date: 2009
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Research Methods for the Self-study of Practice Chapter p. 195-211
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- Description: 2003008008
Powerful pedagogy : Self-study of a teacher educator's practice
- Authors: Brandenburg, Robyn
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Book
- Relation: Self-Study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices No. 6
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- Description: 2003006416
Teachers learning through complex social processes
- Authors: McGraw, Amanda
- Date: 2004
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Idiom Vol. 40, no. 3 (2004), p. 55-64
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- Description: The author works in a partnership between a regional secondary college and the University of Ballarat. She discusses an initiative that allows teachers to work in collaborative learning partnerships. Teachers observe one another in classrooms and reflect in conversation on emerging ideas, thoughts, and patterns. She draws on some of these conversations as teachers make sense of their learning and what it is that is helping them to see their practice differently. [Author abstract, ed]
The impact of complex social processes, observation and reflective thinking on teacher learning and practice
- Authors: McGraw, Amanda
- Date: 2005
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at NIE International Conference 2005: Redesigning Pedagogy: Research, Policy, Practice, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore : 30th May - 1st June 2005
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- Description: In an educational climate sharply focused on school improvement, a large Australian multi-campus secondary college has developed a formal and ongoing partnership with the School of Education at their regional university. This paper examines one of the initiatives they developed together; an approach aptly called Collaborative Learning Partnerships that aims to enable teachers to learn more deeply in the context of their work through critical reflection, self-analysis, collaborative planning processes, substantive conversation and the testing of new ideas and approaches. The initial concept was inspired by the growing body of research that indicates that teachers make the fundamental difference to students' learning. If teacher learning became a real priority in the college it was felt that students'; learning would subsequently be enhanced. How then could the classroom, the space where teachers spend most of their working time, be used as a context in which teachers too could learn deeply about their role and the complexity of their work? This paper points to the influence of complex social processes that are at play when teachers work together in this way and to the understandings about learning itself that are surfaced through such processes.
Supporting beginning rural teachers : Lessons from successful schools
- Authors: White, Simone , Lock, Graeme , Hastings, Wendy , Reid, Joanne , Green, Bill , Cooper, Maxine
- Date: 2009
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at ‘Teacher education crossing borders: Cultures, contexts, communities and curriculum’ the annual conference of the Australian Teacher Education Association (ATEA), Albury, New South Wales : 28th June - 1st July 2009
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- Description: Across Australia and internationally, the vexed problem of staffing rural school remains a major issue affecting the educational outcomes of many rural students and their families. TERRAnova, (New Ground’ in Teacher Education for Rural and Regional Australia), is the name of a large Australian Research Council funded (2008-2010) project involving: a national study of pre-service preparation and rural incentive schemes offered by both University and State government agencies, a longitudinal study of beginning teachers who take up rural appointments and a study of communities where teacher retention is high. In 2008 calls for nominations for rural schools with high rates of retaining beginning teachers were sought (over three years), and twenty-four of nearly fifty nominated schools were selected as case studies. Each case study has involved researchers from the TERRAnova team travelling and staying as close to the community nominated as possible. Numerous teaching staff, parents and community members were invited to be interviewed and their recordings were transcribed. Five of these case studies have now been completed, and this paper examines common themes derived from the strategies that support beginning teachers in these rural communities. Key factors emerging to date from the data relate to particular models of rural school leadership, ongoing teacher learning and mentoring, and school support and innovative community practices.
- Description: 2003008006