Early Career Teachers: Stories of Resilience

ISBN-13: 9789812871725 / Angielski / Miękka / 2014 / 124 str.

Bruce Johnson; Barry Down; Rosie Le Cornu

Opis

This book addresses one of the most persistent issues confronting governments, educations systems and schools today: the attraction, preparation, and retention of early career teachers. It draws on the stories of sixty graduate teachers from Australia to identify the key barriers, interferences and obstacles to teacher resilience and what might be done about it. Based on these stories, five interrelated themes - policies and practices, school culture, teacher identity, teachers' work, and relationships - provide a framework for dialogue around what kinds of conditions need to be created and sustained in order to promote early career teacher resilience. The book provides a set of resources - stories, discussion, comments, reflective questions and insights from the literature - to promote conversations among stakeholders rather than providing yet another 'how to do' list for improving the daily lives of early career teachers. Teaching is a complex, fragile and uncertain profession. It operates in an environment of unprecedented educational reforms designed to control, manage and manipulate pedagogical judgements. Teacher resilience must take account of both the context and circumstances of individual schools (especially those in economically disadvantaged communities) and the diversity of backgrounds and talents of early career teachers themselves. The book acknowledges that the substantial level of change required- cultural, structural, pedagogical and relational - to improve early career teacher resilience demands a great deal of cooperation and support from governments, education systems, schools, universities and communities: teachers cannot do it alone. This book is written to generate conversations amongst early career teachers, teacher colleagues, school leaders, education administrators, academics and community leaders about the kinds of pedagogical and relational conditions required to promote early career teacher resilience and wellbeing.

Spis treści

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: Policies and practices

·         Pre-service preparation

·         Transition to the workforce

·         Employment processes

Chapter 3: Teachers’ work

·         Nature of teachers’ work

·         Curriculum and pedagogical knowledge

·         Engaging learning environments

·         Access and support

Chapter 4: School culture

·         Social connectedness

·         Democratic and empowering processes

·         Transition and induction

·         Learning community

Chapter 5: Relationships

·         Belonging, acceptance and wellbeing

·         Student-teacher relationships

·         Professional growth

·         Collective ownership and responsibility

Chapter 6: Teacher identity

·         Personal and professional identities

·         Self-reflection

·         Agency, efficacy and self-worth

Chapter 7: Conclusions

References

O autorze

Dr Bruce Johnson is an Adjunct Research Professor of Education at the University of South Australia. His research interests include human resilience, curriculum theory and development, school reform, classroom management, and sexuality education.

Professor Barry Down is the City of Rockingham Chair in Education at Murdoch University, Western Australia. His research interests include teacher education, critical policy ethnography, and pedagogies for social justice.

Associate Professor Rosie Le Cornu is an Adjunct Associate Professor of Teacher Education at the University of South Australia. Rosie's current research interests are quality teaching and learning, professional experiences framed around learning communities, early career teachers and the role of mentoring.

Dr Judy Peters is an Adjunct Lecturer in Education at the University of South Australia. Current research interests include: pre-service teachers’ learning, early career teacher resilience, leadership for educational change and transformational learning cultures.

Dr Anna Sullivan is a Senior Lecturer in Education at the University of South Australia. Her current research interests include critical policy studies, micropolitics, teachers’ work, classroom management and school discipline.

Dr Jane Pearce is Senior Lecturer in Education and Associate Dean, Learning and Teaching in the School of Education at Murdoch University. Her research interests include social inclusion in education, pedagogies for literacy learning, and teachers’ work.

Janet Hunter teaches literacy education at Edith Cowan University, Perth, Western Australia. Janet’s current research interests focus on supporting students who are underperforming in literacy, the pedagogy of writing, developing teachers’ knowledge about literacy instruction and supports for Early Career Teachers, particularly those in rural schools.