Andrea Gallant

Early career teacher attrition: new thoughts on an intractable problem

Early career exit from teaching has reached epidemic proportions and appears intractable. Previous attempts to find solutions are yet to make much of an inroad. The aim of the research was to discover what nine beginning teachers required to remain in the classroom, by adopting a phenomenological approach. The authors identified participants’ common experiences through semi-structured interviews and unprompted written narratives. Data were examined for trustworthiness by reference to the literature. Key words from the narratives were synonyms, or broadly synonymous with, optimism, arrested development or disillusionment. The process of leaving involved entry, characterised by optimism; early experiences, characterised by arrested development; pre-exit, characterised by disillusionment; and exit.

Self-conscious emotion: how two teachers explore the emotional work of teaching

Teachers are constantly involved in emotional management. This chapter focuses on two second year teachers and the self-conscious emotional work of teaching. Both teachers were working in a prep (5-year-olds) class. The teachers engaged in The Participatory Inquiry Program (PIP), which is framed by active and critical reflections on classroom practices. The teachers collaborated with each other, firstly filming the others practice, and then acting as a critical peer when reviewing the others film. Teachers also examined internal feelings and thought processes that influenced their actions. The teachers concluded their participation in PIP by narrating their experience and learning. These narratives were then analysed by focusing on how they became cognisant of emotion and emotion regulation that enhances practice and learning outcomes. Emotion work for these two teachers revolved around three key themes: the emotion work with regard to colleagues; the emotional work that arises in relation to students (feelings of love; annoyance, anger), and emotion and self-awareness.

The Emotional Labour of the Aspirant Leader: Traversing School Politics

The emotions of the aspirant leader are underexplored. In this chapter, we detail how aspirants experience the transition from teacher to leader and report on the kinds of emotional labour associated with the transition. This was examined during events of high emotional arousal for 130 school aspirants: when they felt professionally wounded, either by colleagues, leaders, parents or students. During a time of wounding, emotional work and emotional labour hinged on the dissonance between ‘display rules’ of the school and what aspirants’ actually felt. Exploring the wounding stories revealed common display rules, which were often broken. Breaking these rules always had consequences and emotional correlates. The most prevalent form of emotional labour was surface acting. The final discovery was the resilience of the aspirants as they recovered. Invariably, aspirants progressed through an emotion cycle of Regrouping, Recovery and Resolution. The quality of collegial relationships was the key to resolving the woundings.

Is This a Meaningful Learning Experience? Interactive Critical Self-inquiry as Investigation

What conditions enable educators to engage in meaningful learning experiences with peers and beginning practitioners? This article documents a self-study on our actions-in-practice in a peer mentoring project. The investigation involved an iterative process to improve our knowledge as teacher educators, reflective practitioners, and researchers. Data sets included: video-stimulated reflections; audiotaped reflexive dialogue; individual and shared reflective writings. Data analyzed through the iterative process revealed competing tensions that were not addressed by the triad, leading to a less than meaningful learning experience. We sought to name the dilemmas and document how they impeded meaningful learning; identifying tensions proved useful in data interpretation. The research led us to focus on the tension between collegiality and criticality. Managing this tension requires being authentic with and accepting of the other and working with cognitive dissonances. Collegiality and criticality together promote reflexivity and increase growth, leading to new professional knowledge.

Teacher performance assessment in teacher education: an example in Malaysia

As part of a cross-cultural collaboration, a teacher performance assessment (TPA) was implemented during 2009 in three Malaysian institutes of teacher education. This paper reports on the TPA for graduating primary teachers in Malaysia. The investigation focused on the pre-service teachers’ perceptions about whether the TPA provided them with an opportunity to document successfully their professional learning and professional practice. Successful completion of the Malaysian TPA was closely aligned to successful relationships, support and collaboration between Malaysian lecturers and pre-service teachers, and between pre-service teachers and their classroom teachers. Overall, the TPA did provide pre-service teachers with an opportunity to focus on the connection between theory and professional learning during field-work, and to become reflective evidence-based practitioners. Recommendations for improving the assessment of pre-service teachers are discussed.

Resuscitating students’ learning : exploring the “Living Dead” phenomenon

Abstract There is research spanning the 20th century on student disengagement. Despite all the research, the problem remains. It is time to adopt a different perspective. This article attempts to make transparent the influences on disengagement in schools by applying Jean Gebsers (1985) empirical phenomenological study of cultural consciousness. What differentiates this approach from previous arguments is the basic premise that the “problem” of disengagement lies not with an individual or group, but with the cultural consciousness.

Differentiated coaching: developmental needs of coachees

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to focus on teacher coachees’ perceptions of why some coaching goals (selected by coaches or coachees) were more achievable than others and how this knowledge might advance a coaching culture that has the potential for sustainable improvements to teaching and learning. Design/methodology/approach – As educators, the authors took a constructivist approach to grounded theory because the authors believe learning is socially constructed. The relationship between coach and coachees is underpinned by their constructed meanings and co-constructed learning. constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz, 1996) requires researchers not to start with a theory or hypothesis but to engage with data in a manner (coding, categorising, theorising) that allows for a theoretical understanding to emerge. In total, 22 teacher coachees from one school participated in this research. They were asked to complete an online questionnaire about their coaching experiences, speculating about why some ...

Early career teacher attrition in Australia: inconvenient truths about new public management

Abstract Early career teacher (ECT) attrition data are often challenged by those outside of the profession. Attrition rates can only be interpolated from existing data, but fall somewhere between 8 and 53%. The Australian workforce data on ECT attrition are problematized at the outset, before presenting a collective case study examining early career male teachers’ reasons for leaving. Male teachers were chosen as the sample of convenience as they are the most sought after candidates to join the profession. We analysed their sense-making. Interviews ranged between 2 and 3 h to gain their rich descriptions and interpretations. Analysis revealed that new public management practices were the major contributor to early exit. This finding makes a new contribution to the literature on early career attrition.

Afterword: The Teaching Fantasia

As outlined in these chapters, pre-service teachers, beginning teachers, experienced teachers, teacher leaders and aspirant leaders all face the growing demands of emotional labour and are engaged in the emotional work that underpins learning environments. The ‘false apprenticeship’ (Bullock, 2013) highlights how teacher education remains historically problematic, with its focus on observation for replication, rather than the development of an individuals capability. Educators need to be enabled to refocus their attention on developing professional capital (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012). According to Hargreaves and Fullan (2012) there are three elements that produce professional capital, these are human capital, social capital and decisional capital. The presence of all three is vital for a healthy productive education system. The education system is made up of people and education is for the people. Society and future societies rely on professional capital being promoted within education.