Supporting beginning male teachers as they transform to skilled professionals

Abstract

There has been much media speculation and general conversation about the crisis of masculinity, the lack of male role models -in particular, the lack of fathers, and how many boys are becoming a 'lost' generation. An 2002 Australian House of Representatives report 'Boys: Getting it right' investigated this issue in depth and made recommendations to the Australian Minister of Education, Science and Training concerning policy direction and strategies that could be developed for teacher education courses relating to boys and boys educational needs. The research reported here was designed to investigate the needs of male teachers as they enter their professional life in schools. This research is significant because it addresses a major area of concern, namely the retention of newly qualified male teachers in both primary and secondary school environments, as well as issues related to the male identity and the impact of older beginning teachers as they enter the profession.

Investigating novice teacher experiences of the teaching dynamics operating in selected school communities in Finland

“…Edwards (2006) identifies the concept of relational agency, whereby novice teachers are supported by working collaboratively with experienced colleagues so as to be assimilated into the teaching community and to better understand the culture of classrooms. In contrast to the lack of support perceived by participants in this study, Knight and Moore (2012) reported that during novice teachers' (n = 95) first 6 months of teaching, they stated that support from others ranged from none (5%) to very supportive colleagues (78%), with 57 percent citing a helpful principal.…”

“…Communality is harder to develop for the elementary teacher largely due to the way in which education is organized and structured in an elementary school which creates more emotional intensity (Knight & Moore, 2012).…”

“…Based on the findings in this study, the work of a subject teacher in a secondary school appeared to be more communal in nature than that of a class teacher in the elementary school. Communality is harder to develop for the elementary teacher largely due to the way in which education is organized and structured in an elementary school which creates more emotional intensity (Knight & Moore, 2012).…”

Early career teachers’ perceptions and experiences of leadership development: balancing structure and agency in contrasting school contexts

“…The literature on this topic indicates that a complex range of factors frames and influences ECTs' development as they make the transition from Initial Teacher Education to professional life as teachers, and begin to enact their roles in post as teachers and leaders (Carver and Meier, 2013). Whilst it might be argued that agency, efficacy and resilience are characteristics of the self that new teachers need to bring with them to the profession, a number of writers draw attention to the importance of the institutional context (Burn et al, 2010;Carver and Meier, 2013) and the quality, availability and stability of school-based support (Knight and Moore, 2012;Muijs et al, 2013;Roness, 2011) in enabling ECTs to be inducted as teachers and to begin to develop as leaders. This support might take a variety of forms, for example, facilitating the involvement of ECTs in peer support (Keogh et al, 2012), communities of practice (Lambson, 2010;Newman, 2010), collaborative decision-making (Nolan and Palazzolo, 2011) or professional mentoring (Knight and Moore, 2012).…”

The impact of understanding learners and techno-pedagogical competency on effective learning environments by designing the instructional process

“…These results have led to the examination of preparedness of both prospective teachers (PTs) and in-service teachers for classroom teaching. In particular, the transition for PTs to the profession has some uncertainty since they can find teaching more challenging than they expect (Joiner & Edwards, 2008;Knight, & Moore, 2012;Pillen, Beijaard, & den Brok, 2013). Difficulties PTs encounter before starting their profession are related to two sources: either they do not have realistic notions of teaching and their students, or other stakeholders do not have realistic expectations of them (Hagger, Mutton, & Bird, 2011).…”