Context: Understanding newly qualified teachers’ experiences of arrival into the profession is a well-established research concern in teacher professional learning discourse (Ingersoll and Strong 2011; Kearney 2014, 2015, 2021; Aspfors and Fransson 2015; Spooner-lane 2017; Reeves et al 2022; Shanks et al 2022). Such research has highlighted the complexity of this transition: for example (i) the tensions that newly qualified teachers [NQTs hereafter] may experience (Aspfors and Bondas 2013; Pillen et al 2013; Correa et al, 2015; Van der Wal et al 2019; Stenberg and Maaranen 2021; Kvam et al 2023), (ii)  the stress associated with entering the profession (Gallant and Riley 2017; Kelchtermans 2017b; Schaefer and Clandinin 2019; Mc Carthy et al 2020; Schaefer et al 2021), (iii) the techniques used to navigate school micro-politics (Kelchtermans and Ballet 2002a, 2002b; Kvam et al 2023) and (iv) a variety of coping mechanisms that NQTs employ in response to the challenges of arrival in the profession (Mansfield et al 2014; Christensen et al 2018; Bjørndal et al 2022; Lindqvist et al 2022). In parallel, the need for supporting NQT professional learning/socialisation into the profession is a well-established international policy concern (OECD 2005, 2019a, 2019b, 2020; European Commission 2010; European Commission/EACEA/Eurydice 2021; Courtney et al 2023). Subsequently, and in most jurisdictions, NQT induction into the profession has become an established component of teacher education continu/pathways. Despite such widespread attention, there are emerging concerns regarding how NQTs are positioned within induction support structures (Corea et al 2015; Simmie et al 2017; Kelchtermans 2019; Kvam et al 2023). For example, Kelchtermans (2019, p. 86) makes the case that ‘deficit thinking’ in teacher induction/mentoring processes (i) positions the NQT as ‘incomplete and not fully competent’ and (ii) focuses on ‘individual’s weaknesses and shortcomings, rather than their strengths and potential’. To counter the potential for deficit thinking, Kelchtermans (2019, p. 87) argues that ‘the very idea of early career teachers and teacher induction needs to be re-thought, reconceptualised and revised’ and one of the mechanisms put forward for doing so is to acknowledge NQTs existing expertise and agency. We see that this is best approached by appraising NQT arrival in the profession as a form of ‘identity learning’ (Geijsel and Meijers 2006, p. 420) i.e., the ways NQTs navigate ‘the collective meaning-giving’ and ‘personal sense-making’ (Geijsel and Meijers 2006, p. 428) that accompanies the transition.

Aim: Using a Foucauldian framework (Foucault 1983, 1985; Clarke 2009), the aim of this paper therefore is to understanding how NQTs construct themselves in ethico-political terms i.e., how NQTs, both as person and teacher, construct the relationship that they have with themselves.  

Conceptual Framework: Informed by Foucault (1983a, 1985) our understanding of the ethico-political is framed by his conceptualisation of both the ‘values and rules of action that are recommended to individuals through the intermediary of various prescriptive agencies’ (Foucault 1985, p. 25) and the enactment of ‘real behaviour’ by ‘individuals in relation to rules and values that are recommended to them’ (Foucault 1985, 25).  As a fusion between the political and the personal, we understand ‘real behaviour’ as those ascendant discourses that steer how the NQT sees themselves and importantly, how they wish to be seen by others. This paper addresses the ethico-political identity of the NQT in terms (i) the ethical substance i.e., the ways that the NQT constitutes themselves (ii) the authority sources i.e., the attributed sources through which the the NQT comes to know their ethical substance (iii) self-practices i.e., the ethical work that the NQT undertakes to understand themselves vis-à-vis unfolding experiences and (iv) telos i.e., the mode of being the prospective teacher aspires toward.

This study is located within a wider research context that followed a small sample of primary school teachers across their final semester of initial teacher education (n=4) across the first year of teaching (n=3). The university research ethics board approved the study and participants were provided with an information letter prior to signing in consenting to participate. Framed within the interpretivist paradigm, phase 1 of the broader study consisted used multiple interview techniques including photovoice-elicited interview (Wang and Burris 1997) emphasising biographical story-telling (Court, Merav & Ornan 2009; Altan & Lane 2018) and semi-structured interview and unstructured interview (Kvale 1996; Brinkman and Kvale 1996; Roulston 2010). This paper uses data collected during phase two of the study which consisted of two rounds of unstructured interview that took place at the close of each teaching term (autumn and summer) during participants first year in the profession. While the interviews were unstructured, each ethico-political axis was used to frame the flow of the conversation. Interviews were transcribed and the transcripts cleaned to remove fillers, colloquialisms and repetition. Data was reflexively interpreted (Gudmundsdottir 1996) in the thematic analysis tradition (Braun and Clarke 2009, 2022) using ethical self-formation axes as deductive lens. Indicative findings from the first round of interviews were (re)explored during the second round. In order to demonstrate the generativity of ethico-political conceptualisation of NQT identity formation, this paper will focus on one illustrative and composite case (Seán) sequencing our analysis as substance, telos, authority sources and self-practices. Applying Flyvberg (2006), we believe that ‘the force of example’ (p. 229) of a ‘good case narrative’ (p. 237) enables ‘a nuanced view’ (p. 227) of NQT ethico-political identity formation that has worthwhileness via the depth of insight it provides.

Findings illuminate NQT identity as: (i) a multi-dimensional, character-oriented ethical substance comprised of three interactive/reactive dimensions (emotional, pedagogic and professional) with unique subjective resources within each dimension. (ii) telos as three interactive/reactive valuational endpoints (practical, professional and pedagogic) with unique moral imperatives within each endpoint (iii) NQTs perception of their social-professional standing in the school as a nascent authority source of NQT identity formation and ethical work in the form of two dynamic self-practices (observational self-practices in the looking-glass tradition and ongoing self-reflection on the basis of such observations). In the context of calls to revisit how we think about NQTs and their socialisation into the profession, the paper concludes by contemplating the generativity of an ethico-political conceptualisation of NQT identity formation and professional learning upon entering the profession for reconceptualising NQT professional learning in terms of its contextual, conceptual, integrative and potentially transformative utility.

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