The differences between the formal programmes of study that trainee teachers follow in different European countries and across the world are well documented (Eurydice 2002; Britton et al 2003, OECD 2005), but less well known is the extent to which beginning teachers’ orientations towards their own professional learning might be strong determinants of the success or otherwise of that learning. While we might expect the majority of beginning teachers, particularly during their initial training, to draw on a range of different sources to inform their professional learning and development, we cannot assume that this will necessarily be maintained in the initial stages of a teaching career. Our own previous findings show that while trainee teachers all claim to learn from experience, and in so doing may develop the required levels of classroom competence, there is no guarantee that experience in itself will automatically result in the development of strategies to ‘sustain and take forward their learning once the resources and support structures of the ITE programme [are] removed’ (Mutton et al., 2010:89). If genuine learning is to continue beyond the supported induction phase, it is vitally important to establish secure foundations for it in the early stages (Hagger et al.,2008), enabling and inspiring teachers to strive for continued improvement, for example, through ‘collaborative engagement ‘ with opportunities for continuing professional development (Kennedy, 2011).

This paper focuses on one element of beginning teachers’ orientations towards learning – their ‘frame of reference’, one of five categories (or dimensions) within an established analytical framework. This framework was developed originally in order to categorise beginning teachers’ orientations towards learning from experience in the PGCE year (Hagger et al. 2008) and was subsequently tested and refined, first in light of the lesson-based interviews conducted with the same teachers in their first and second years of qualified practice, and then in relation to their more general reflections on their learning.  Each dimension is represented as a continuum with opposing orientations at either end.

Thus ‘frame of reference’ (referring to the extent to which beginning teachers look beyond their own experience in order to make sense of it) is represented at one end of the continuum by teachers who draw on a wide ranges of sources to shape and inform their experience, and at the other end by an almost exclusive reliance on the experience of classroom teaching itself. In addition, not only is the range of these sources important, but also the teachers’ capacity to use the resources available to them in as rich a way as possible.

The questions informing our analysis are:

1. How does such a ‘frame of reference’ manifest itself in the learning of beginning teachers?
2. To what extent is there variation in the ‘frame of reference’ across individuals and within individuals over time (i.e. during the initial training year and through the first two years of full-time teaching)?

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