Michael Dyson

Becoming a Teacher and Staying One: Examining the Complex Ecologies Associated With Educating and Retaining New Teachers in Rural Australia?

Abstract: The problem of teacher retention has intensified in Australia, particularly in rural areas, with a number of studies suggesting that beginning teachers are not entering the profession with a commitment to remaining there. This paper reports on a study of 102 new teachers graduating from a rural campus of a major Australian university. Utilising a self devised survey over a 3 year period, graduate reflections were captured on what it meant for them to become a teacher. The research sought to determine graduates’ goals and aspirations for working in the profession in both the long and the short term. Participants reported that while they were looking for stability and would like to remain in their current positions, they were hampered by the present contractual system which eroded any sense of permanence. It is argued that contractual employment disrupts the development of a sense of belonging to the profession and the building of meaningful connections between teachers and their schools, a factor that will require attention if retention issues within rural Australia are to be seriously addressed.

New teachers learning in rural and regional Australia

This paper reports on a longitudinal ethnographic study of beginning primary school teachers in rural and regional Victoria, Australia. The study uses a conceptual framework of place and workplace learning to ask: How do new teachers learn to do their work and how do they learn about the places and communities in which they begin teaching? In this paper, we focus on data from the first year of the three-year longitudinal study, using a place-based survey and ethnographic interviews. We found that the space of the classroom was the dominant site of learning to become a teacher for the new teachers in this study. This learning was understood through the discourse of classroom management. Analysis of these storylines reveals the ways in which the community and classroom are not separate but intertwined, and the process of learning about their communities began through the children in their classes.

What does it mean when they don’t seem to learn from experience?

In this paper we use an example of when students appear not to have learnt from their experience to examine some of the ‘orthodoxies’ of experiential education. This frames a discussion exploring how it is possible for a teacher to declare that students have got it ‘wrong’ in relation to learning from experience. It is argued that both learning through experience and who has experiences is viewed through specific forms of reason within contemporary experiential education. The paper concludes with a challenge to open reason up to greater scrutiny in experiential education and consider the possibilities that emerge through the indeterminacy of relationships inherent in experience and education.

Enhancing Interpersonal Relationships in Teacher Education through the Development and Practice of Reflective Mentoring

This chapter presents research on a model of reflective mentoring developed and implemented as a way of enhancing interpersonal relationships between pre service and mentor teachers involved in a longitudinal school-based professional experience. The process of reflective mentoring (Dyson, 2002) was developed as an alternative to the more traditional forms of supervision, which tend to involve a power relationship in which the student teacher is monitored and assessed by an experienced teacher or a university lecturer.