First Year Of Teaching Research Articles

A Multidimensional Analysis of Teacher Preparation in Texas

Despite a healthy production of teachers, teacher attrition is a significant concern facing school administrators across the state of Texas. This study sought to determine the extent to which questions on the Exit and Principal Surveys reflect three sets of standards which guide educator preparation in Texas: Association of Teacher Educators (ATE) Standards for Teacher Educators, Texas Administrative Code (TAC) Educator Preparation Program Curriculum Standards, and Pedagogy and Professional Responsibilities (PPR) Exam Standards. This analysis provides important information about the validity of survey questions as a measure of standards compliance for educator preparation in Texas and also sought to determine if there is a difference between teacher candidates’ Exit Survey evaluation of preparation and principals’ Principal Survey evaluation of first-year teachers’ preparation. Findings indicated a clear disconnect. Recommendations are provided as contributions for future discussion on much needed educator preparation program standards reform.

A schizoanalytic exploration of the potential of fabulation for the creation of new social collectivities in pre-service teacher education

ABSTRACT This article draws on Felix Guattari’s proposition of subject and subjected groups to explore the interplay between individual and group subjectivity within the higher education context in South Africa. The exploration is specifically orientated towards considering the pedagogical possibilities of the concept of fabulation. Schizoanalysis is employed to map how six first-year pre-service teachers collectively envisioned a shared future. As a result of the mapping, diffraction is proposed as a pedagogical practice to create the conditions for fabulation to occur. It is argued that the act of fabulation enables pedagogy to be positioned as a practice of resistance to assumed orthodox truths. In addition, fabulation also orientates pedagogy as a practice of experimentation toward the creation of new social collectivities.

Transformational Learning in First-Year Australian Preservice Primary Teacher

The early experience of commencing university students is an important precursor for retention and student success and involves a transformation in learning. This article reports the experiences of commencing students in an Australian Education (Primary) degree. Data were collected using a mixed methods approach, consisting of an online survey, and semistructured interviews. The data revealed that respondents experienced some phases of Mezirow’s transformational learning theory. Interviewees were enthusiastic about their future career with high scores in the online instrument for academic orientation and student identity, which indicated that they were experiencing the building of confidence and competence in new roles (Phase 7) and provisionally trying out new roles (Phase 8). Nevertheless, all respondents indicated being overwhelmed by the unexpectedly high academic study load, indicating a disorientating dilemma (Phase 1). These results are placed in the context of student retention and degree completion.

Negotiating the complexity of teaching: a rhizomatic consideration of pre-service teachers’ school placement experiences

ABSTRACTBackground and purpose: Acknowledging that it is critical that researchers design and implement studies that examine teaching as a complex phenomenon (Strom and Martin [2017]. Becoming-teacher: A Rhizomatic Look at First-year Teaching. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers), the objective of this study was to examine pre-service teachers’ (PSTs’) experience of teaching a specific content (i.e. Sport Education) in various school contexts (i.e. diverse PSTs, contexts, students, and the SE model). Using the rhizomatic (Deleuze and Guattari [1987]. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press) concept of assemblage, this study was guided by the question, ‘How do PSTs negotiate their Sport Education physical education teacher education learning experience during school placement?’Research setting and participants: Grounded in post-qualitative methodology, this study involved twenty-one PSTs undertaking their school placement as part of a three-year physical education teacher education (PETE) programme in Norway. School placement was composed of two three-week periods in upper secondary school in which the PSTs taught SE to the same class each week. The PSTs participated in a university SE-PETE unit prior to school placement.Data collection and analysis: Three focus group interviews were conducted with three PST groups: (i) end of the SE-PETE unit and prior to school placement; (ii) between school placement blocks; and, (iii) end of school placement. Also, PST coursework was collected on completion of the PETE unit (completed in groups) and on completion of school placement (individual coursework). The nonlinear analysis process included data walking, rhizomatic mapping, situational analysis, and memo writing.Findings and discussion: This study highlighted how particular characteristics of various human and non-human elements (that is, the PSTs themselves, their contexts, their students, the features of SE) influenced and shaped PSTs’ teaching and learning. Recognizing that it is not possible to be true to the myriad of elements influencing each PST, we provide a detailed consideration of two selected PSTs and show how interactions between human and non-human elements created two different teaching practices and learning experiences. We discuss the concept of assemblage in relation to the findings and introduce the notion of ‘translating’. In ‘translating’, as highlighted by the PSTs in this study, PSTs make sense of their PETE learning within a specific setting and a set of circumstances.Conclusion: We contend that non-linear conceptual and methodologic frameworks, such as those featured in this study, can assist the PETE community to push beyond linear and simple ways of studying practice and instead encourage more complex conceptualizations of teaching and learning. Hence, we advocate for an ontological turn (Lather and St. Pierre [2013]. “Post-qualitative Research.” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 26 (6): 629–633) in PETE research that focuses on the processes of teaching and learning rather than the outcomes alone.

Mentoring for new secondary Chinese language teachers in the United States

This study investigates mentoring for four new Chinese language teachers teaching in U.S. K-12 schools. The qualitative collective case study collected data from multiple sources across the teachers' first year of teaching. NVivo 8 was used for coding and analyzing the data. The study finds that mentoring played a critical and facilitating role in the new teachers’ learning to teach. However, the varied mentoring practices and different disciplinary and cultural backgrounds between the mentors and the new teachers might have affected more successful mentoring. The findings are discussed and proposals are made for more robust and smooth development of K-12 Chinese education in the United States.

The Relationship Between a University-Based Mentorship Program and First-Year Teachers’ Performance

The Relationship Between a University-Based Mentorship Program and First-Year Teachers’ Performance

“Reality Shock” of Beginning Teachers? Changes in Teacher Candidates’ Emotional Exhaustion and Constructivist-Oriented Beliefs

Beginning teachers often feel disillusioned and stressed during their first years of teaching. In the present study, we investigated changes in teacher candidates’ constructivist beliefs and emotional exhaustion. We assessed 163 German mathematics teacher candidates 3 times: at the beginning of, in the middle of, and after they completed the induction program. The results revealed a statistically significant decrease in constructivist beliefs and an inverted U-shaped change in emotional exhaustion with an increase at the beginning of the induction program and a decrease afterward. We also found that personal (i.e., math enjoyment) and social (i.e., instrumental support from peers and a constructivist-oriented mentor teacher) resources buffered the decrease in constructivist beliefs and the increase in emotional exhaustion.

Teaching Elementary Physical Education for the First Time: A Practical Checklist for Before, During, and After the First Week of School

This article is meant to serve as a macro guide for first-year teachers as they begin their career in elementary physical education. It is hoped that this simple checklist can serve as a tool for new teachers to stay grounded and focused during the first week of school.

THE ORION PROJECT: CONNECTING A COMMUNITY

Certainly, the computer and the internet have opened up opportunities and stimulated unprecedented growth. However, even after the turn of a new century, the Digital Divide has not yet closed and sectors of people are still excluded from enjoying the opportunities and growth that now exist. El Paso Community College, in collaboration with El Paso Independent School District and the University of Texas at El Paso, have begun work to bring together all of El Paso’s independent networks into a single high-speed community network that provides online access and delivery of K-Gray education. This newly created Orion Ring Project has identified specific objectives such as delivering dual-credit enrollment classes to high school students and mentoring first-year teachers and education students in the field in order to stem high attrition rates. The next phase will involve adding other networks, such as the UTEP Internet 2 link, to the Orion Ring.

Towards a More Complete Understanding of ‘Teaching as Inquiry’: Perspectives of Beginning Teachers Explored

The New Zealand Ministry of Education identifies ‘Teaching as Inquiry’ (TAI) in the New Zealand Curriculum as an effective professional learning approach in promoting student learning and raising achievement. Aligned with this document, Auckland University of Technology Master of Teaching and Learning programme for postgraduate students wishing to become teachers provides practitioner inquiry-based papers to prepare them for engagement in inquiry. This article explores the construct of ‘Teaching as Inquiry’. A phenomenological position explores beginning teachers understanding of ‘self’ as an inquiring practitioner amidst tensions of school-based administrative systems and structures juxtaposed with theoretical knowledge of TAI. Findings from this study acknowledge that the Ministry’s TAI model significantly contributes towards development of ‘self’ as an inquiring practitioner. The findings caution, however, that challenges faced in the first year of teaching are not easily dismissed and contextual analysis of classroom and school practice to support competencies and capabilities for TAI is necessary.

Putting research first? Perspectives from academics and students on first-year undergraduates learning research

Exploring the place and potential of ‘research’ in undergraduate degrees has stimulated higher-educational debate for decades, strongly influencing policies, practices and structures. This article’s consideration of some problems associated with teaching and learning about research during the first year of undergraduate degrees, helps throw that debate into a sharper light. Should first-year undergraduates be asked to learn from their own or others’ research, and what difficulties might they experience? What relevant previous learning about research, or lack of it, might they bring with them into their degree? Working with empirical data from across one English university, and literature from universities across the world, these questions are discussed by exploring first-year undergraduate teaching and learning, through the lenses of critical inquiry and constructivist grounded theory.

‘I would be a completely different teacher if I had been with a different mentor’: Ways in which educative mentoring matters as novices learn to teach

ABSTRACTThis study investigates the role of educative mentors as two novices learn to teach, following them from their yearlong student teaching (2015–2016) through their first-year teaching (2016–2017). During student teaching, each novice was paired with a mentor teacher who received preparation and support to engage in educative mentoring practices. This study analyzes evidence from multiple data sources collected over 2 years to understand what novices take up from their student-teaching mentors and take with them into their first-year teaching. Findings illustrate that the activities of mentoring matter in the learning to teach process of novices, particularly related to the way novices are able to focus their planning, instruction, and reflection around pupil thinking and understanding.

Local Labor Market Conditions, Principals’ Leadership, Conscientiousness, and Beginning Teacher Turnover: A Study During the Great Recession

An abundance of literature sheds light on which factors determine teacher turnover, but it has yet to consider the role that local labor market conditions may play in teachers’ turnover decisions and how these labor market conditions may influence the quality of teachers who might be retained. The effect of local labor market conditions on teacher turnover could be relevant especially in times of high economic instability like the Great Recession. To study the determinants of teacher turnover, we match the Beginning Teacher Longitudinal Study (BTLS) with local unemployment rates from the USC Great Recession Indicators Database (GRID). We also build proxy measures of teachers’ conscientiousness with levels of survey effort on the baseline BTLS survey. Our results show that, in the absence of changes in unemployment, teachers who present lower levels of conscientiousness, by means of lower effort in the baseline survey, also present lower probabilities of teacher turnover during their first years of teaching. However, higher conscientious teachers seem to be better retained when there is more instability in their local labor markets. Higher quality principals appear to help retain teachers, but they seem to be more effective at retaining those teachers who show lower levels of conscientiousness on their baseline survey.

Discovering the impact of reading coursework and discipline-specific mentorship on first-year teachers' self-efficacy: a latent class analysis.

Teacher self-efficacy is critical because it predicts teachers' future behavior and impacts teacher turnover. Most teachers begin their career with moderate to high self-efficacy for teaching, but often experience a sharp decline during the first year of teaching. After the first year, their self-efficacy begins to increase but rarely rises to the level it was prior to beginning teaching. Therefore, examining first-year teachers' self-efficacy is extremely important. Previous research generally depicts teachers as a homogeneous group, relying on variable-centered approaches and including self-efficacy as a scaling score, which may not be applicable at the individual level. Simply extending findings from the variable-centered analyses is insufficient. Therefore, the purpose of the present study is to examine the heterogeneous profiles of first-year teachers' self-efficacy from the 2011-2012 Schools and Staffing Survey and to investigate how self-efficacy profiles are related to teacher training at the individual level. Using latent class analyses, we found three statistically distinctive classes within self-efficacy: high, moderate, and low. Regardless of teaching assignments, teachers who completed reading content courses during preparation programs and received discipline-specific mentoring during their first year dominated a higher level of self-efficacy. We conclude that these two factors are essential to preparing and retaining high-quality teachers.

Teachers’ first year in the profession: the power of high-quality support

ABSTRACTIn research on teacher induction, scholars have pointed at the pivotal role of collegial support to overcome the challenges inherent to the first years of teaching. In this quantitative study, we extend current work by using a social network perspective to examine characteristics (i.e. network size, frequency and perceived usefulness) of professional, emotional, and social collegial support networks. Moreover, we explore the extent to which these characteristics explain key factors affecting teacher retention, namely job satisfaction, intrinsic motivation to teach, and self-efficacy. An online survey was completed by 292 beginning primary school teachers in Flanders (Belgium). Social network data showed that, on average, they receive professional, emotional and social support from six colleagues each week and found this mostly useful. Regression analyses demonstrated that network size and perceived usefulness of professional, emotional, and social collegial support networks were positively related to job satisfaction and intrinsic motivation to teach, thus confirming the importance of collegial support in teacher induction. Frequency of support was not significant. Finally, no substantial relationship was found between collegial support and teachers’ self-efficacy. Implications of these findings for practice and policy are discussed.

Empowering Teachers Through Digital Storytelling: A Multimedia Capstone Project

Although used in teacher education at the preservice level and with in-service teachers with their students, less is known about the influence of digital storytelling created by teachers themselves. Furthermore, capstone research mostly focuses on more traditional text-driven products and the experiences of preservice teachers. The capstone discussed here is a multimedia digital storytelling project using iMovie, produced by first-year teachers simultaneously earning their master’s degree. Teachers created their own capstones representing their personal experience, professional development, and overall process toward becoming an empowered educator, while teaching students in urban schools. Utilizing a constant comparative content analysis, we determined whether and how teachers defined and represented empowerment in their capstones. Implications for the affordances of a multimedia capstone experience are discussed. (Keywords: digital storytelling, capstone, teacher preparation, in-service teachers, iMovie)

Usefulness of Speech in the Introductory Part of Practical Skills Classes Including Arts and Handicrafts Conducted by Young First-Year Teachers

Usefulness of Speech in the Introductory Part of Practical Skills Classes Including Arts and Handicrafts Conducted by Young First-Year Teachers

Exploring Possible-selves of Turkish Prospective Teachers

Teacher candidates are exposed to a variety of processes, phases and transformations to become a teacher. Examining new teacher identity can be considered as an important step to develop more effective teacher training programmes and identity development of a teacher is related to understanding the notion of ‘self’ (Beauchamp &Thomas, 2009). This study investigates the possible-selves of prospective teachers in relation to the concept of self-knowledge. Major goal of the study is to examine possible selves and fears of senior students who expect to become teachers in the near feature. A six point Likert type scale was applied to undergraduate students attending primary school teaching, science teaching and English language teaching programmes to measure their expected and feared possible-selves about their first year of teaching. The results of statistical analyses showed that prospective primary school and science teachers had higher scores than prospective English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers in expected possible-selves in the first year of their job.

Teaching in good faith: Towards a framework for defining the deep supports that grow and retain first-year teachers

‘Good faith’ refers to the existentialist concept of living and acting in harmony with one’s innermost values. An educator who teaches in good faith will fully actualize her philosophy of teaching in the classroom, which leads to greater job fulfilment and a higher likelihood of retention in the profession. Currently, much of the extant literature refers to teachers needing greater emotional support, but this original phenomenological study uncovered the need for deep supports, defined as adaptive methods for helping educators define, develop, and enact their values and beliefs in the classroom. The study hypothesizes that the need for deep supports has never been fully explored because the language of the educational industry does not fully attend to this aspect of teaching. To that end, this study explored the relationship between school environment and the development of good-faith teaching in first-year educators with the goal of providing language and a conceptual framework to understand the ways in which first-year teachers enact their emerging identities in the classroom. Ultimately, the study links good faith teaching to teacher retention and provides indicators of school environments that provide deep supports for teaching in good faith.

Student teachers’ feelings of anxiety and exhaustion: can self-regulated learning skills function as an antidote?

ABSTRACTThis study examines first-year student teachers’ (N = 310) self-evaluated, study-related anxiety and exhaustion, and self-regulated learning (SRL) skills. Our presumption is that feelings of anxiety and exhaustion can be reduced with cognitive and motivational SRL skills. The association of cognitive and motivational SRL skills with feelings of anxiety and exhaustion were analysed with multiple multivariate regression analysis. The results indicate that high time- and study-environment management strategies and high self-efficacy beliefs reduced experienced feelings of anxiety and exhaustion. In addition, effort regulation had a reducing effect for anxiety. However, high extrinsic goal orientation predicted higher levels of anxiety and exhaustion and high task value predicted higher anxiety among student teachers. Particularly, female students had a stronger tendency to experience anxiety and exhaustion. The implications of the results for higher education and for teacher education are discussed.