Session Information
Contribution
Being novice is a challenge in any job, and in most professions and businesses it is acknowledged that the novice needs an induction period during which the expectations and responsibilities are formed with this in mind. It is allowed to be new, a status which, to a certain extent invites foraml and informal empathy from colleagues and leadership. The situastion is, in many cases, not the same for new teachers. There is wide international documentation of the many challenges novices meet during their first years of teaching, from challenges in teaching, class management, asssessment, communication colleagues and parents, understanding the school culture, just to mention a few ( Lazovsky & Reichenberg, 2006; Dymoke & Harrison, 2006; Rippon & Martin, 2003; Feiman-Nemser, 2001; Achinstein, 2006; among others). Only recently has it, within the teaching profession been recognised that the induction period is, for many teachers, and if yes, crucial to future choices if to stay in the profession or not and for their future careers as teachers. Examples of this can, for example, be seen in Scotland and in Israel, time is set aside for professional development during the first year through which the novice is supported by an experienced collegaue or mentor of another kind. Support for the need of a more lenient job situation in the first phase of teaching is also based on the three stage model for professional development which calls the first stage for survival level(Fuller and Bown, 1975). However, the present situastion in Norway is mostly that new teachers are expected to be fully qualified and to dive into the profession with the same expertise as more experienced colleagues. They are given a full teaching position and in many cases, also the most difficult classes, classes that senior colleagues try to avoid. There is, though, awareness of the challenge of being new in school and in the profession, and there is a national project in collaboration with teacher education institutions called, New in School (Ny i skolen). The focus of the current study is the voice of novice teachers in secondary school; how do they experience their first years? Is it only black or does it have some bright sides as well? The framework of the study is the implementation of the support project for secondary school novices by the Section of Teacher Education in the region of Bergen and its surroundings. The study is also focusing the establishment of a network between a selected amount of schools who are working with the implementation and the University.A mixed approach was used to elicit information from the students. A quantitative questionnaire was used to map the opinions of the novices, includeing open questions to learn more in depth about their experiencees. Interviews were used to exploit tendencies found in the written responses, and finally two new teachers volunteered their narratives which adds a personal focus to the findings. We are still in the process of collecting the data, but a preliminary analysis shows that there is little new in terms of the challenges, but there is another side of the induction coin which provides a brighter picture. There is pleasure in the meeting wih young people, there is a feeling of achievement when things go right and there are many good colleagues who volunteer support. An important finding, as we see it, is that those new teachers who had been informed about the normality of feeling that there is a fight for the professional daily survival, to feel that the job fills all your time, succeeded to take a more meta-cognitive and reflective perspective on the situation, and thus avoid panick and early burn out. Achinstein, B. (2006). New teacher and mentor political literacy: reading, navigating and transforming induction contexts. Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice, 12(2), pp. 123-138. Dymoke, S. & Harrison, J. K. (2006). Professional development and the beginning teacher: issues of teacher autonomy and institutional conformity in the performance review process. Journal of Education for Teaching, 32 (1), pp. 71-92. Feiman-Nemser, S. (2001). Helping novices learn to teach. Journal of teacher education, 52(1), pp. 17-30. Fuller, F. F. and Bown, O. H. (1975) Becoming a teacher. In K. Ryan (Ed.) The Education: The Seventy-Fourth Yearbook of the National Society. Lazovsky, R. & Reichenberg, R. (2006). The new mandatory induction programme for all beginning teachers in Israsel: perceptions of inductees in five study tracks. Jouranl of Education for Teaching, 32 (1), pp. 53-70. Rippon, J. & Martin, M. (2003). Supporting induction: relationships count. Mentoring and Tutoring, 11 (2), pp. 211-226.
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