Edward Liu

Counting on Colleagues: New Teachers Encounter the Professional Cultures of Their Schools

Within the context of an impending teacher shortage, this article considers the professional cultures that new teachers encounter in their schools. Using new entrants’ accounts, we characterized three types of professional cultures or subcultures within schools: veteran-oriented cultures, novice-oriented cultures, and integrated cultures. In veteran-oriented cultures, new teachers described norms of professional interaction determined, in large part, by the veterans, with little attention to the particular needs of beginning teachers. In novice-oriented cultures, on the other hand, new teachers described norms of professional interaction determined by novices, thus leaving them with little experienced guidance about how to teach. However, in integrated professional cultures, new teachers described being provided with sustained support and having frequent exchanges with colleagues across experience levels. Principals proved to be important in developing and maintaining integrated professional cultures where the particular needs of new teachers were both recognized and addressed.

Lost at Sea: New Teachers' Experiences with Curriculum and Assessment.

ed by Benjamin Dotger Results of this study were published in Teacher College Record, 104, 273-300.

New Teachers' Experiences of Hiring: Late, Rushed, and Information-Poor

Purpose: Teacher hiring decisions have far-reaching consequences for a school, its students, and faculty. This article examines how new teachers in four states are hired and explores whether the process leads to good matches between these individuals and their schools. The authors conceive of hiring as a two-way process and examine the extent to which the hiring process provides opportunities for prospective teachers and schools to collect rich information about, and form accurate impressions of, one another. Research Methods: This study surveyed a representative random sample of 486 first-year and second-year teachers in California, Florida, Massachusetts, and Michigan. Participants were chosen using two-stage stratified cluster sampling, and the study achieved a response rate of 65%. Statistical methods used in the analysis include principal components analysis, chi-square analysis, and t tests. Findings: The data reveal that the majority of new teachers in these states are hired through a decentralized, school-based process. Despite the opportunity this provides schools and prospective teachers to explore the potential match between them, most new teachers actually have limited interactions with school-based personnel during the hiring process, and the process is relatively information-poor. Many new teachers are also hired quite late—more than one third of new teachers in California and Florida are hired after the school year has already started. Implications: The results of our analysis suggest that shifting hiring decisions to the school level is not sufficient to guarantee information-rich hiring. They also suggest that schools may need help removing barriers to conducting more information-rich hiring.

New Teachers and the Massachusetts Signing Bonus: The Limits of Inducements.

In 1998, Massachusetts instituted a

The Next Generation of Teachers: Changing Conceptions of a Career in Teaching.

20,000 Signing Bonus to address concerns about the supply of quality teachers. This article reports on a longitudinal, qualitative study of the experiences of 13 of the original 59 recipients of the Signing Bonus, and analyzes their responses to various incentives embedded within the Massachusetts Signing Bonus Program (MSBP). Interviews revealed that the bonus money had very little influence on recipients’ decisions to enter teaching. Far more important was the alternate certification program created to implement the policy. Findings suggest that the MSBP: (a) relied too much on inducements and not enough on capacity-building; (b) focused too narrowly on recruitment and not enough on retention, and (c) centered too much on individuals and not enough on schools.