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.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-386552 |
| Date | January 2019 |
| Creators | Heywood, Philippa |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för pedagogik, didaktik och utbildningsstudier |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
| Relation | Master's Theses in Sociology of Education ; 10 |
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