Jim McNally

The student teacher in school: Conditions for development

Abstract This paper is based on an analysis of interviews with student teachers, which focused on the nature of the support they received in school in making the transition from student to teacher. The success of this transition in interactional terms, appears to depend on experiencing a number of relational conditions, which are largely determined by others, but which serve as a crucial context for individual development. These conditions are represented idiomatically and non-prescriptively; yet between the identifiable extremes of practice, they may be capable of defining the socio-professional environment of experiential learning on teaching practice.

Current realities in the student teaching experience: A preliminary inquiry

Abstract The experiences of 22 student teachers completing a final 10-week teaching practice in secondary schools were obtained by ethnographic interviewing. Their developing sense of “belonging” to the teaching community in their schools was the dominant theme. Recognition by teachers as a colleague and confirmation of teacher status by pupils were major dimensions of this feeling. On the basis of the student narratives, the teaching practice acts most powerfully as an initiation into “teacherhood”, focused particularly on the classroom and the subject department. The sympathetic and supportive environment of colleagues was especially important in meeting the mentoring needs of the student teachers. It was concluded that initial professional education needs to take more account of the dominant emotional needs of students.

Finding an identity and meeting a standard : connecting the conflicting in teacher induction

This article has the apparently contradictory aims of describing a discourse of new teachers that is at odds with the policy‐derived competence‐based discourse of the professional standard for teachers, and of also seeking to find some points of connection that may help start a dialogue between policy and research. The experience of new teachers is conceptualised as personal stories of identity formation with a clear emotional‐relational dimension and a sense of self and intrinsic purpose in which others, especially colleagues and children, are central – themes not visible in the standard. The empirical context is that of new teachers in Scotland but the argument is supported through a wider literature that extends beyond the traditional limits of teacher education, drawing on, for example, notions of self‐identity, pure relationship and ontological security in the work of Giddens. Whether a more constructive dialogue can begin depends partly on the extent to which the formal standard can be expected to capture the complex, personal nature of the beginner’s experience, and partly on the possibility of research identifying particular areas of competence, such as understanding difference, that connect in some way to the standard.

The informal learning of new teachers in school

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present what the study of the experiences of beginning teachers and their informal learning says about the process of learning to teach, and to discuss the main emerging themes in relation to a wider literature.Design/methodology/approach – The design of the paper is essentially ethnographic and building of grounded theory, based on an accumulation of data derived from interviews with beginning teachers and connecting to extant theory.Findings – The findings are that a focus on the informal learning of beginners in teaching leads to the notion of learning as becoming that is predominantly emotional and relational in nature with the emergence of teacher identity.Research limitations/implications – The research is limited in its exploration of the cognitive dimension of professional learning, a dimension which may be elicited using a more tightly focused and structured method.Practical implications – The implications are that learning to teach is not determined by a...

Not choosing nursing: work experience and career choice of high academic achieving school leavers.

Work experience has been a feature of the secondary school curriculum in the United Kingdom for a number of years. Usually requested by the pupil, it aims to provide opportunities for school pupils to enhance their knowledge and understanding of an occupation. The main benefits are claimed to be that it can help pupils develop an insight into the skills and attitudes required for an occupation and an awareness of career opportunities. However the quality and choice of placements are considered to be of great importance in this process and in influencing career choice [Department for Education and Skills (DfES), 2002a. Work Experience: A Guide for Employers. Department for Education and Skills, London]. As university departments of nursing experience a decline in the number of school pupils entering student nurse education programmes, and with the competition for school leavers becoming even greater, it is important to consider whether school pupils have access to appropriate work placements in nursing and what influence their experience has on pursuing nursing as a career choice. This paper is based on interview data from 20 high academic achieving fifth and sixth year school pupils in Scotland, paradigmatic cases from a larger survey sample (n=1062), who had considered nursing as a possible career choice within their career preference cluster, but then later disregarded nursing and decided to pursue medicine or another health care profession. This was partly reported by Neilson and Lauder [Neilson, G.R., Lauder, W., 2008. What do high academic achieving school pupils really think about a career in nursing: analysis of the narrative from paradigmatic case interviews. Nurse Education Today 28(6), 680-690] which examined what high academic achieving school pupils really thought about a career in nursing. However, the data was particularly striking in revealing the poor quality of nursing work experience for the pupils, and also their proposal that there was a need for work experience which was more representative of the reality of nursing. Participants reported that proper work experience in nursing could make it more attractive as a career choice but that there were difficulties and barriers in obtaining an appropriate work experience in nursing. These included unhelpful attitudes of teachers towards work experience in nursing in general and the placements themselves which were typically in a nursing home or a care home. They felt that departments of nursing within universities should have an input into organising more realistic work placements and that their involvement could foster greater interest amongst pupils in nursing as a career.

Students, Schools and a Matter of Mentors

The mentoring of beginning teachers has not received enough critical examination. Argues that a body of knowledge does exist which forms a basis for a better theoretical understanding of mentoring as a concept, and as an activity within organizations. By drawing on literature beyond the field of initial teacher education, and on empirical work conducted by the author on the student‐in‐school experience, a case is made for the development of natural mentoring in schools.

Confidence and Loose Opportunism in the Science Classroom: Towards a pedagogy of investigative science for beginning teachers

This paper attempts to establish a conceptual basis on which beginning teachers may be introduced to investigative science teaching in a way that accommodates the teacher voice. It draws mainly on preliminary theory from the shared reflections of 20 science teachers, augmented by a more general interview‐based study of the experience of early professional learning of 18 new teachers. Internationally, it is situated in the wider concern in the literature with the nature of science, mainly in initial teacher education. Empirically located within the Scottish context, a grounded epistemological base of teacher knowledge is illustrated and presented as components of confidence in a cycle of professional learning that needs to be set in motion during initial teacher education. It is proposed that, given protected experience in their early attempts to teach investigatively, new teachers can begin to develop a confident pedagogy of loose opportunism that comes close to authentic science for the children they teach.

Right at the start: an agenda for research and development in teacher induction

Abstract Recent developments in teacher induction in both England and Scotland are bringing long-overdue improvements, but there is a range of issues in need of further exploration if policy is to be developed. Current evaluations have begun to reveal the absence of some important conceptual aspects of induction in the somewhat hasty implementation. Some of these have been well rehearsed in the literature over the years but have generally failed to make any impact hitherto in induction policy. This article picks up and discusses some of the conceptual tensions and weaknesses that have, or are likely to, become practical issues of quality, in both Scottish and English induction policies. These include the use of competence-based descriptions, the non-formal dimension of learning to teach, open narrative and focused approaches to classroom observation and feedback, individualism and a pupil perspective. The array of concepts is organised into a constructive, topical agenda which, it is argued, brings a much-needed formative dimension to research and development in this crucial area of professional learning.

Miss, What's My Name? New teacher identity as a question of reciprocal ontological security

This paper extends the dialogue of educational philosophy to the experience of beginners entering the teaching profession. Rather than impose the ideas of any specific philosopher or theorist, or indeed official standard, the exploration presented here owes its origins to phenomenology and the use of grounded theory. Working from a narrative data base and focussing on the knowing of name in the first instance, the authors develop their emergent ideas on self and identity in relation to children taught, through connection to a wider literature that includes reference to Giddens, Illeris, Deleuze and Heidegger, for example. The paper is thus also an exercise in suggesting that research on practice by academics working in professional education, who are non‐philosophers, can lead to constructive and relevant engagement with philosophy in developing theory from and about about practice, even though the approach, in the initial stages, may well be serendipitous and eclectic in nature.

Grading the practice of teaching: an unholy union of incompatibles

This paper reviews policy in the assessment of school experience and examines the practice of grading currently in place in Scotland and supported by the General Teaching Council for Scotland. It discusses the problems inherent in attempts to grade practice, notably the difficulty of controlling for contextual variation between different placements. It explores research in this area in order to see whether there is any evidence that such practices can be reliable or valid. It concludes that grading is unsustainable in the light of both the research evidence and the conceptual problems that underpin the assessment of school experience.