This research investigates what teaching experiences, strategies and factors impact on early career teachers’ (ECTs’) resilience in secondary colleges in the south of the Netherlands. The ECTs are undergraduate trainee teachers who are enrolled as part-time English as a Foreign language students. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with twelve individual ECTs from three different cohorts, twice in the timespan of two years, in order to get access to the reality of everyday school life viewed through the ECTs’ lens. The three different cohorts consisted of four beginning ECTs, four regular ECTs and four long-term ECTs. Data was collected over a two-year period and included recorded interviews with ECTs, line drawings, relational maps, ECTs’ portfolios and the researcher’s memos. The participants recalled their teaching experiences by means of analysing critical incidents that occurred in their classrooms. The data collection, analysis and discussion were organised into twelve cases. A thematic data analysis was used (Guest et al., 2012; Braun & Clarke, 2013), with the help of ATLAS.ti 7 software. The findings show that the ECTs were often expected to take on the full range of teaching tasks in isolation, with little support to cope with all the demands of their new role. The ECTs found that personal factors, such as self-efficacy and a sense of agency, helped develop their resilience, as well as contextual resources provided in schools and by employing bodies. Although the development of resilience was different for every ECT, participants also shared common strategies that contributed to development of resilience, such as emotional regulation, seeking renewal, goal setting and help seeking, when overcoming the setbacks they experienced. By identifying strategies that impact on resilience, this research has strengthened the guidelines on which induction programmes at Teacher Education Colleges can be made. It is suggested that ECTs are mentored around developing resilience strategies, in order to increase their confidence to work and teach in a new school environment. It is argued that the critical incidents approach, designed to support ECTs in building stories about their teaching experiences, could be used as a teaching methodology for trainee teachers at Teaching Education Colleges.

This research study examines the status of mentoring programs for beginning teachers in Manitoba’s public school divisions. Based on reviewed literature, a distinction is made between formal and informal mentoring programs for beginning teachers. The study is a naturalistic inquiry using a semi-structured interview protocol. Twenty four of 38 school divisions in Manitoba participated in the study. Interviewees were asked if the school division had a formal mentoring program in place, the histories, goals and rationales of their formal mentoring programs, and the strengths and challenges of the mentoring programs. If the division did not have a formal mentoring program, they were asked to comment on the way they support beginning teachers and on rationales for not having a formal mentoring program. Based on the school divisions interviewed, the study found that the province was almost evenly split between divisions with formal mentoring programs and those not having formal programs. However, formal programs were more prevalent in urban areas than in rural and northern areas. Mentoring was recognized as a strong support for beginning teachers providing benefits to the beginning teacher, the mentor and the school division. Programs varied greatly from division to division with little or no communication or collaboration between divisions to develop a common program as is done in some other Canadian provinces. The challenges for school divisions to offer formal mentoring programs included time, money, and geography. The study offers five recommendations to support beginning teachers. / May 2017

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This narrative inquiry began with queries into the identity-making experiences of two teachers, Anna and Penny, at the beginning of their careers. Through weekly research conversations over 2 years, they told stories of their experiences in school. Over time, it became clear that their personal experiences with their families outside school shaped who they were in their classrooms with children. Their professional identities—their stories to live by—began on personal knowledge landscapes and then were recomposed into professional knowledge landscapes. They experienced tension when their familial stories of what it meant to be a teacher were interrupted or challenged. From the midst of teachers’, children’s, and families’ lives together in schools, Anna and Penny worked to make sense of these tension-filled experiences. Travelling between each others’ worlds was complex. Their personal experiences helped them make sense of difficult situations in their classrooms and contributed to their teacher knowledge. Connelly and Clandinin refer to this form of teacher knowledge as “personal practical knowledge” (1988, p. 25). The research presented in this dissertation attends to the personal practical knowledge, the intellectual work, that Anna and Penny used as beginning teachers. This research contributes to the larger practical and social aspects of beginning teachers. Stories of attrition and retention, struggle and survival, have iii shaped previous research literature as well as the professional practical landscape where beginning teachers work. Attending to ways beginning teachers make sense of these stories around them, and the stories of tension in their first classrooms, opens possibilities for teacher educators, administrators, policy makers, colleagues, families, and students to create spaces for new stories to be told. In any new situation uncertainty will occur. This research acknowledges that tension is inherent in any new situation and emphasizes the possibility of sustaining beginning teachers in their stories of themselves as teachers in the midst of that tension. This inquiry makes openings for conversations about the importance of acknowledging familial and personal stories as part of what sustains a person at the beginning of a teaching career.

The quality of teaching occurring in schools is directly linked to the quality of preservice preparation that teachers receive (Darling-Hammond, 2000). This is particularly important in the area of music teacher education, given the unique challenges that classroom music teachers commonly face (Ballantyne, 2001). This thesis explores early-career music teachers' perceptions of the effectiveness of their preservice teacher education programs in Queensland. It also explores influences impacting upon early-career music teachers' perceptions of effectiveness and early-career music teachers' perceived needs in relation to their preservice preparation. The study addresses the research questions through the use of questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. In Stage 1 of the research, questionnaires were completed by 76 secondary classroom music teachers in their first four years of teaching in Queensland, Australia. In Stage 2 of the research, 15 of these teachers were interviewed to explore findings from the questionnaire in depth. Findings suggest that preservice teachers perceive a need for teacher education courses to be contextualised, integrated and allow for the continual development of knowledge and skills throughout their early years in schools. This research provides an empirical basis for reconceptualising music teacher education courses and raises important issues that music teacher educators need to address in order to ensure that graduates are adequately prepared for classroom music teaching.

No description available.

Doctor of Philosophy / Curriculum and Instruction Programs / Gail Shroyer / David Allen / This study was designed to gather input from early career elementary teachers with the goal of finding ways to improve elementary mathematics methods courses. Multiple areas were explored including the degree to which respondents’ elementary mathematics methods course focused on the NCTM Process Standards, the teachers’ current standards-based teaching practices, the degree to which various pedagogical strategies from mathematics methods courses prepared preservice teachers for the classroom, and early career teachers’ suggestions for improving methods courses. Both qualitative and quantitative methodologies were used in this survey study as questions were of both closed and open format. Data from closed-response questions were used to determine the frequency, central tendencies and variability in standards-based preparation and teaching practices of the early career teachers. Open-ended responses were analyzed to determine patterns and categories relating to the support of, or suggestions for improving, elementary mathematics methods courses. Though teachers did not report a wide variation in the incorporation of the NCTM Process Standards in their teaching practices, some differences were worth noting. Problem Solving appeared to be the most used with the least variability in its frequency of use. Reasoning, in general, appeared to be used the least frequently and with the most variability. Some aspects of Communication, Connections and Representation were widely used and some were used less frequently. From a choice of eight methods teaching practices, ‘Observing in actual classrooms or working with individual students’ and ‘Planning and teaching in actual classrooms’ were considered by early career teachers to be the most beneficial aspects of methods courses.

The tools of Pierre Bourdieu are garnered in the present study to examine the mechanisms behind choice strategies employed by secondary NQTs when choosing where to teach. 10 Semi-structured interviews, supported by 50 survey responses, form a qualitative foundation, delivering detailed personal narratives which offer a unique insight in to the career trajectories envisioned by the most recent cohort of trainee teachers. Administrative data on secondary schools, with a geographical focus on the area of Greater Manchester, forms a backdrop of the job market, and highlights a concurrent and historical North/South divide which continues to segregate communities, schools and teachers.          Narratives of a teacher shortage prevail and increasingly, where holding a relevant degree is used as a marker of teacher quality, evidence illuminates a significant socio-economic gradient, intensifying the pertinence of the question; who chooses to teach where, and why? The interviews testify to the importance of social background, motivating teachers to pursue a best fit approach which allows them to recreate their own experiences of education and ‘return home’, a divide characterised by a preference for the academic versus the pastoral. Equally, NQTs’ individual levels of capital manipulate the ‘choice’, manoeuvring actors into positions, sometimes outside their comfort zone.

Doctor of Philosophy / This arts-informed inquiry is grounded in the lived experiences of five self-proclaimed artists including the researcher, who have turned to careers in teaching at varying stages of their lives. The stories of their transitions and evolving identities as both artists and teachers provide the investigative focus for this study. Although this research is relevant to teachers more generally, it specifically focuses on those who have chosen to teach Visual Arts. Particularly suited to a postmodern, arts-informed inquiry, the diverse forms of knowing that create our everyday experiences are acknowledged. The researcher became the bricoleur who collaged the individual stories of the first year artist-teachers into an integrated work of art. This constructivist approach included the use of visual imagery to transcend linguistic description. Through artworks, photographs, a self-narrative and novelette, the multiple ways these early career Visual Arts teachers came to understand themselves and their journeys are explored. This study has the potential to inform novice teachers of the transitions they may experience as they enter the teaching profession. Possible challenges, including the recognition that idealised beliefs might be traded in for more realistic representations, are discussed along with the notions of teaching as an art and the concept of resilience.

Doctor of Philosophy / This arts-informed inquiry is grounded in the lived experiences of five self-proclaimed artists including the researcher, who have turned to careers in teaching at varying stages of their lives. The stories of their transitions and evolving identities as both artists and teachers provide the investigative focus for this study. Although this research is relevant to teachers more generally, it specifically focuses on those who have chosen to teach Visual Arts. Particularly suited to a postmodern, arts-informed inquiry, the diverse forms of knowing that create our everyday experiences are acknowledged. The researcher became the bricoleur who collaged the individual stories of the first year artist-teachers into an integrated work of art. This constructivist approach included the use of visual imagery to transcend linguistic description. Through artworks, photographs, a self-narrative and novelette, the multiple ways these early career Visual Arts teachers came to understand themselves and their journeys are explored. This study has the potential to inform novice teachers of the transitions they may experience as they enter the teaching profession. Possible challenges, including the recognition that idealised beliefs might be traded in for more realistic representations, are discussed along with the notions of teaching as an art and the concept of resilience.