Hazel Hagger

Mentoring: Perspectives on School-Based Teacher Education

The political and historical aspects of mentoring are mentor teachers educators? from supervisor to colleague-mentor competence and the mentor-student relationship the role of the mentor mentoring teachers - what are the issues? a theoretical justification of the generic skills approach to mentoring the impersonation of wisdom.

Practice makes perfect? Learning to learn as a teacher

The context of this research is one in which teachers are now expected to equip their pupils with the disposition and skills for life‐long learning. It is vital, therefore, that teachers themselves are learners, not only in developing their practice but also in modelling for pupils the process of continual learning. This paper is based on a series of post‐lesson interviews, conducted with 25 student teachers following a one‐year postgraduate course within two well‐established school‐based partnerships of initial teacher training. Its focus is on the approaches that the student teachers take to their own learning. Four interviews, conducted with each student teacher over the course of the year, explored their thinking in relation to planning, conducting and evaluating an observed lesson, and their reflections on the learning that informed, or resulted from, that lesson. The findings suggest that while the student teachers all learn from experience, the nature and extent of that learning varies considerably within a number of different dimensions. We argue that understanding the range of approaches that student teachers take to professional learning will leave teacher educators better equipped to help ensure that new entrants to the profession are both competent teachers and competent professional learners.

Learning to plan, planning to learn: the developing expertise of beginning teachers

Learning how to plan is recognised as a key skill that beginning teachers have to develop but there has been little research examining how they may actually learn to plan. This paper, based on the analysis of 10 post-lesson interviews with 17 secondary school teachers across three years (the PGCE year and the first two years in teaching) focuses on: what these beginning teachers learned about planning; the nature of that planning; and the development of their awareness as to what planning could and could not achieve. The findings demonstrate that learning how to plan is a feature of beginning teachers’ learning well beyond the PGCE year, indicating that it is through planning that teachers are able to learn about teaching and through teaching that they are able to learn about planning. We discuss the implications for teacher educators and others involved in the professional learning of beginning teachers.

Surprising but not shocking: The reality of the first year of teaching

The need in many countries not merely to recruit but – critically – to retain effective teachers has been a key factor in shaping induction policies. Past reviews of teacher induction have highlighted two important sources of difficulty: novices’ own unrealistic expectations of teaching and of students, and others’ unrealistic expectations of the novices. This article, which examines the relationship between teachers’ expectations of the first year of teaching and the realities that they encounter, explores the ways in which two policies in England – school-based initial teacher education partnerships (established since the early 1990s) and formal induction arrangements (re-introduced in 2000) have impacted on beginning teachers’ experience of the transition. Drawing on data from a three-year longitudinal study it focuses specifically on how the teachers’ reflections on their experience of their first year in teaching are related to the accounts that they give of their learning over the same period.

Strengthening and sustaining professional learning in the second year of teaching

The data discussed in this paper derive from post‐lesson and end‐of‐year interviews with 17 teachers in their second year of teaching. They form part of a longitudinal study which first tracked these teachers through their initial postgraduate teacher education programme and induction year. In the light of earlier analysis, which had highlighted both the enduring importance of individuals’ dispositions towards their own learning and the profound sense of professional isolation that some teachers experience once the support of their induction year is withdrawn, this paper focuses specifically on the interplay between teachers’ orientations towards their own professional learning and the nature of the learning environments in which they are working. The complex interrelationships between these two dimensions are illuminated by six case studies, which offer strong support to those who have challenged exclusive conceptualisations of ‘learning’ as either ‘construction’ or ‘participation’. The findings have important implications for all those responsible for the professional education of beginning and early career teachers, especially as they respond to the government launch in England of a new ‘national framework’ intended (eventually) to offer opportunities for Masters level professional learning to all newly qualified teachers.

Towards a Principled Approach for School-Based Teacher Educators: Lessons from Research

This chapter was inspired by our concern to provide a summary of key insights into teacher education for teachers in school who are increasingly taking responsibility for designing curricula for beginning teachers’ school-based professional learning, as a result of the ‘practicum turn’ in initial teacher education. Drawing on our own empirical research into the development of beginning teachers’ expertise and on wider literature, it sets out the particular challenges inherent in learning to teach and summarises what we know of beginning teachers as learners to propose a series of research-informed and practice-sensitive principles that could effectively underpin the practice of school-based teacher educators.