Playing it real in a virtual context: developing sustainable connections to university (original) (raw)
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The aim of this thesis is to highlight the growing understanding that schools and all its members are continually learning. This has provided a new lens for educationists to view the professional and personal needs of teachers. Goodson (1996) refers to the fact that researchers have often omitted the ‘lived voice’ of the teacher in educational research. By this he means that the life stories and experiences of teachers, told by themselves, are ruled out as irrelevant data by many researchers. The early work of Hall and Morgan (as cited in Queensland Consortium for Professional Development in Education (1996)., and later Dreyfus and Dreyfus (1996) who based their work on the stages of nurse development, but adapted to assist with understanding the professional and personal lives of teachers, formed the initial interest in exploring the under researched area of teachers’ lives. This qualitative research study explores the interrelationship between the personal and professional lives o...
Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 2011
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. Adams, G. (1996). Using a Cox regression model to examine voluntary teacher turnover.
‘I Want to Educate School-Age Children’: producing early childhood teacher professional identities
Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 2013
The Australian government's current workforce reforms in early childhood education and care (ECEC) include a major shift in qualification requirements. The new requirement is that university four-year degree qualified teachers are employed in before-school contexts, including childcare. Ironically, recent research studies show that, in Australia, the very pre-service teachers who are enrolled in these degree programs have a reluctance to work in childcare. This article reports on part of a larger study which is inquiring into how early childhood teacher professional identities are discursively produced, and provides a partial mapping of the literature. One pre-service teacher's comment provides the starting point, and the article locates some of the discourses that are accessible to pre-service teachers as they prepare for the early years workforce. An awareness of the discursive field provides a sound background for preparing early childhood teachers. A challenge for the fi...
E-Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
The Ministry of Tertiary Institutions of South Africa charged post-secondary institutions to implement measures to achieve the government’s social distancing policy. Institutions shifted to remote learning to sustain their core business of teaching and learning. However, there were concerns with the implementation of these measures. For instance, pre-service teachers were seen as ill-equipped and poorly supported during remote learning. This paper aims to contextualise the identity of pre-service economic and management science teachers and reflect on their experiences of curriculum practice during remote learning. Architecture theory was used as the main lens for this study. Furthermore, the goal is to reflect on their adaptation to remote learning as the new normal. Participants’ experiences and factors that affected them are discussed as data collected using the critical participatory action learning and action research (CPALAR) approach as a form of critical education science. C...
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This study investigates the value that early career secondary teachers (ECSTs) in Australia might gain in their professional learning from belonging to a Community of Practice. In particular, it considers whether their self-efficacy, professional identity and social connection might be developed from belonging to these collaborative groups. The study was, in part, motivated by the recent statistics of the Initial Teacher Education: Data Report 2017 1 (AITSL, 2017c) that 15% of ECSTs in Australia consider permanently leaving the teaching profession within their first five years of teaching, whilst only 65% of graduating teachers (in 2015) attained a full-time ongoing position. The researcher has endeavoured, through her research and a review of literature, to determine the reasons behind these disturbing statistics and to generate possibilities for addressing these important issues. The conceptual framework of this research is based on an understanding of Communities of Practice as a quintessential type of Social Learning Space. Other Social Learning Spaces that this research considers are networks, such as the relatively recent phenomenon of TeachMeet, a "grassroots" form of gathering, organised by teachers for teachers and online networks such as private Facebook groups and Twitter Personal Learning Networks (PLNs). The Value Creation Framework of Wenger, Trayner and de Laat (2011) has been adapted for use in these new contexts. A constructivist paradigm was used to design the research and a mixed methodology was employed as the most appropriate method to capture the breadth and depth of the ECST experience. This included a questionnaire, focus groups and semistructured interviews, which arose from a sample of participants drawn from the questionnaire. The data were analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively. 1 The Initial Teacher Education: Data Report 2017 presents a wide range of new data and analysis. The report includes a comparison of six-year completion and attrition outcomes in Initial Teacher Education (ITE) institutions compared to other higher education programs; an analysis of multiple demographic factors affecting completion in ITEs; 'overall' and 'full-time' employment rates are presented for recent ITE graduates who studied at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels; and there are new data on the induction experiences and career intentions of early career teachers.
Influencing pre-service teachers' intentions to teach in rural locations
The Australian and International Journal of Rural Education, 2015
Education is seen as a vehicle for supporting sustainability in rural and regional contexts, but attracting and retaining teachers in rural and regional contexts remains an area of concern across Australia as well as internationally. Therefore attracting teachers to rural and remote locations requires targeted intervention during pre-service teacher education. Ninety-nine students enrolled in a Bachelor of Education program offered by the University of Queensland participated in this study. A mixed method approach was used to capture the ways in which the sample of pre-service teachers understood their experiences of 'being, knowing and doing' (Gee, 1996) teaching in rural and remote contexts. The outcomes of this study provide insights into the effectiveness of initial exposure to a targeted online intervention, in terms of challenging pre-existing perceptions of practice in such contexts and the possibilities of accepting a rural and remote teaching position upon graduation. Graduates entering the workforce can find themselves working in contexts of which they have limited experience. As such, preparatory university programs of study need to reflect these changes and ensure that degree programs that are offered do indeed meet the ever-changing needs of the students that enrol, providing them with the necessary knowledge and skills to create a stable vocational identity and to understand the opportunities and challenges that choosing to practice in rural and remote contexts affords.
Early Child Development and Care, 2014
This paper presents the findings of a research project investigating the perceptions and expectations held by pre-service teachers regarding the childcare sector. It presents the views of a group of pre-service teachers both before and after their exposure to practice within childcare following a ten week practicum. The personal experiences of the research participants impacted greatly on their evolutionary understanding of and attitude towards the childcare sector. Thematic analysis of the data produced several key concepts that illuminated issues of identity conflict across the care and education divide. This paper makes a necessary contribution to the current research context where research on perspectives of teacher-educators within childcare is limited. It is particularly pertinent in the context of Australia's implementation of the policy requiring a qualified teacher to be employed within childcare settings from 2014 onwards.
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Down B and Wooltorton S Beginning Teaching in Rural Remote Schools Implications For Critical Teacher Development Change Transformations in Education 71 Pp 31 46, 2004
This article reports the findings of the authors conversations with beginning teachers posted to rural-remote schools in Western Australia. The stories provide some insight into the personal-professional dilemmas, tensions and constraints that new teachers encounter in the transition to teaching and living in rural-remote communities. The article explores the implications of these stories for teacher education, in particular the challenge of producing critically reflective practitioners who are committed to not only understanding their social and cultural contexts but challenging and changing it.