Induction and professional development of teachers. Pilot experience of Newly Qualified Teachers 2014/2015

Abstract

The initial training programmes for teacher induction to school activity, need to be integrated within a recursive, self-sustaining circularity, able to produce professional skills. The present work defines an innovative theoretical framework underpinning the experience of Newly Qualified Teachers (NQT) in the 2014/2015 academic year, based on a pattern which envisages an alternation of theory-practice. Such a pattern finds in the teacher's portfolio, structured into training curriculum, teaching and competence assessment, a time of tight integration of the perspectives that guide the teacher’s work, maximizing moments of action, reflection and appraisal. The evaluation of the way in which, either a personal perspective, responsive to one’s understanding of teaching and of designing a teaching method, or a social perspective, reified in competence profiles defined at the international level and summarized by National Guidelines, have been perceived to be a continuum and functional to the teacher development, is presented here through the analysis of qualitative and quantitative results obtained during the pilot experience.