“Functioning effectively as a person in a class”: the early professional learning of teachers. Allan Blake School of Education University of Strathclyde

EPL Project Background ESRC TLRP Phase 3 ( , £770K) Stirling and MMU Develop and test a model of EPL Combine qualitative and quantitative methods Enhance competence-based professional learning ?

Dimensions of Early Professional Learning Emotional Relational Structural Material Cognitive Ethical Temporal

Induction… or initiation? Teachers should “ensure learning tasks are varied in form, differentiated and devised to build confidence and promote progress of all pupils” (GTCS, 2006). “ Instead of talking the way that I probably should as a teacher, I will be more slangy with them because that is what they understand, and I will be more friendly with them than what I probably should be. I call one of the boys, I say, ‘Come on Shauny Shaun’, and he is like, ‘Nobody calls me that, just you’. He appreciates that, but I would never do that with any other class, but that is what they need. I started thinking, I need to respond to you the way that you need me to… and that has worked” (Kerry).

The relational dimension now a major conceptual theme, proposed in our earlier research (1994; 1997): –informal relational support as ‘natural mentoring’ –experience of new teachers governed by ‘relational conditions’ with colleagues and pupils. ‘informal support from people on the spot’ (Eraut, 2004).

The cage in search of a bird? “I guess I learnt a few things, simple things, I guess cumulatively, just walking past some of my colleagues’ doors […] nipping in to pick up a book, you learn a lot of things that way, a lot of how other teachers conduct themselves […] I was at the photocopier chatting to an English teacher [who had] overheard a conversation I was having with another probationer about some particular boys in my class giving me trouble […] She said, ‘don’t worry about it, I’ve been teaching for 45 years and they are one of the worst [classes] I’ve ever seen in my career’. And it was just so reassuring and made me feel so much better to have somebody like that, with so much experience, just say: ‘don’t worry about it. It’s not you’ […] I guess I’ve learnt that you should share these things with everyone cause I think everyone feels these things about behaviour at some time or another.”

The Indicators Job satisfaction (jobsat – 241 returns) Children in classes taught (cepsati ) Interactions (interact - 382) Expert Judgement (exjudge - 84) Pupil Development (PDI -27)

Job Satisfaction

I can’t get no… p = 0.642, p<0.01, n = 29 Suggests that 41 per cent of the variation in new teachers’ overall job satisfaction is attributable to working relationships with colleagues. “I am being undermined at times when people [other teachers] come into the classroom and make comments in front of pupils about the way I am teaching or the way things are being done, and I don’t necessarily think that is the way it should be done. I think perhaps that it should be said at a different time and certainly not in front of pupils.” (Butterkist)

Interact

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Mean scores of the rank ordering (1-12) of most significant person with whom NTs interact Person categoryNMin.Max.Mean Std. Deviation Teacher your department Pupils I teach PT or faculty head Mentor/supporter Other new teacher Teacher in nearby room Family or friends Teacher other department Other staff Senior manage team LEA staff other Mean scores of the rank ordering (1-12) of most significant person with whom NTs interact Person categoryNMin.Max.Mean Std. Deviation Teacher your department Pupils I teach PT or faculty head Mentor/supporter Other new teacher Teacher in nearby room Family or friends Teacher other department Other staff Senior manage team LEA staff other Mean scores of the rank ordering (1-12) of most significant person with whom NTs interact Person categoryNMin.Max.Mean Std. Deviation Teacher your department Pupils I teach PT or faculty head Mentor/supporter Other new teacher Teacher in nearby room Family or friends Teacher other department Other staff Senior manage team LEA staff other

The emotional-relational Very special and demanding situations, often with a crisis-like character, can lead to deep and comprehensive transformative learning processes that include simultaneous change in all the three learning dimensions (cognitive, emotional, social) and have to do with the very identity of the learner (Illeris). Learning an inherently emotional process embedded within a relational context … as an accepted concept of the development of self and identity (Bosma and Kunnen).

The place of self? Self can never be a self-sufficient construct… placed radical emphasis on particularity and situatedness… abstract questions about selfhood only pursued as specific questions about location (Bakhtin). “It doesn’t actually give anything of me you know ‘Rachael the teacher’. It’s just like a ticky box style of a form and in some cases I did put in a lot of work and to an extent I would have liked to have blown my own horn about it, saying I put in all this work and look what I have achieved, whereas no I just put in ‘fourteen-eleven-o-four’.” “The accent [is] on actually functioning effectively as a person in a class.”

… and self again Self under self, a pile of selves I stand Threaded on time and with metaphysic hand Lift the farm like a lid and see Farm within farm, and in the centre, me. (from ‘Summer Farm’ by Norman MacCaig)