Becoming a teacher of early reading: charting the knowledge and practices of pre‐service and newly qualified teachers

Abstract

Education policy in England requires student teachers to demonstrate effective teaching of early reading, including systematic synthetic phonics, in order to qualify to teach. Although there is a range of literature about initial teacher education, little is documented about how pre-service or 'student' teachers develop specific knowledge and practices for teaching early reading and how they apply these in their first term as newly qualified teachers (NQTs). This research used a primarily qualitative longitudinal, collective case study design involving seven lower primary (3-7 years) postgraduate certificate in education (PGCE) students enrolled at one university in the East Midlands of England. Semi-structured interviews, classroom observations and documentary analysis with the students and their teacher mentors were used to gather data from entry onto the course to the participants' first term as qualified teachers. A thematic analysis was applied in conjunction with deductive observation codes developed from a previous study. Findings indicate a broad continuum of progression in student and newly qualified teacher knowledge and practice for teaching early reading which could be used to inform university organisation, mentoring and school participation. They highlight the influence of school cultures on the experiences of student and pre-service teachers.

Examining Teacher Preparation for Code‐Related Reading Instruction: An Integrated Literature Review

“…All intervention studies included at least one outcome focused on technical knowledge. Qualitative studies and mixedmethods studies documented how technical knowledge was taught in teacher preparation programs (van der Merwe & Nel, 2012) or understood and used by preservice teachers (Brannon & Fiene, 2013;Fang & Ashley, 2004;Hendry, 2020). Fewer than half of the studies (n = 10) addressed pedagogical knowledge.…”

“…Interestingly, Sayeski et al (2015) implemented a pedagogical intervention-preservice teachers mock-tutoring one another-but assessed the effectiveness of this intervention by measuring gains in the participants' technical knowledge of grapheme-phoneme correspondences. Qualitative studies analyzed pedagogical knowledge in open-ended questionnaires (Shaw et al, 2007), classroom observations and/or interviews (Fang & Ashley, 2004;Hendry, 2020;van der Merwe & Nel, 2012), and preservice teachers' writing (Al Otaiba et al, 2012;Brannon & Fiene, 2013).…”

“…Although many studies noted that the preservice teachers had clinical or field experiences built into their coursework, only six studies documented these experiences or otherwise addressed situated knowledge. These studies included survey questions asking preservice teachers to describe their clinical experiences (Salinger et al 2010;Tetley & Jones, 2014), analyses that compared one kind of clinical experience with another (Al Otaiba et al, 2012;Brannon & Fiene, 2013;Tetley & Jones, 2014), and qualitative documentation of field experiences (Al Otaiba et al, 2012;Fang & Ashley, 2004;Hendry, 2020). Two of these studies involved preservice teachers tutoring students in local districts (Al Otaiba et al, 2012, Fang & Ashley, 2004.…”

“…Two of these studies involved preservice teachers tutoring students in local districts (Al Otaiba et al, 2012, Fang & Ashley, 2004. Three studies documented placements in local schools that were overseen by mentor teachers (Brannon & Fiene, 2013;Hendry, 2020;Tetley & Jones, 2014)…”

Наставництво В Галузі Навчання Іноземних Мов: Анотована Бібліографія

“…Крім іншого, зазначено, що в межах програми вчителі отримували менший обсяг наставництва порівняно з традиційними програмами, що дещо негативно вплинуло на її кінцеві результати. Проаналізовано підготовку вчителів-початківців до навчання читання учнів початкової школи (Hendry, 2020, де одним з елементів такої підготовки є наставництво. За допомогою інтегрованих якісних і кількісних методів досліджено уявлення вчителів-початківців англійської мови щодо соціальної підтримки та професійної ефективності (Brannan & Bleistein, 2012).…”