Chapter 13

Learning from Research on Beginning

Teachers

Beatrice Avalos

Introduction

The transition from teacher education into classroom teaching has been the subject
of intense study in the last 25 years and an object of policy concerns, despite alerts
on the particular situation of beginning teachers being raised in earlier times (Fuller
& Bown, 1975; Huberman, 1989; Lacey, 1977; Lortie, 1975; Veenman, 1984;
Waller, 1932). Evidence of the “reality shock” produced by having to face diverse
and difficult situations in schools and classrooms, has been reviewed and conceptu-
alised as problems or as concerns (Conway & Clark, 2003; Veenman, 1984; Watzke,
2007). Equally how teachers learn to consolidate professional practice and the fac-
tors that contribute to this learning, either by self-discovery or assistance from oth-
ers, have been part of copious literature related to the process of beginning to teach,
as evident in recent year reviews (Cherubini, 2009; Cooper & Stewart, 2009;
Dempsey, Arthur-Kelly & Carty, 2009; Ingersoll & Strong, 2011; Orland-Barak,
2014; Schaeffer, Long & Clandinin, 2012; Silva, Rebelo, Mendes, & Candeias,
2011; Tynjälä & Heikkinnen, 2011).
In terms of international policy the situation and needs of beginning teachers
were highlighted by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development
(OECD) in its influential Teachers Matter policy document (OECD, 2005) which
recommended the need for induction in this phase of a teacher’s career. Although
acknowledging the support that a number of educational systems were offering to
their new teachers, the document noted that out of 24 countries surveyed, eight did
not consider induction and another six left it to the initiative of each school. More

Funding from PIA-CONICYT Basal Funds for Centres of Excellence Project BF0003 is gratefully
acknowledged
B. Avalos (*)
Research Associate, Centre for Advanced Research in Education,
University of Chile, Santiago, Chile
e-mail: bavalos@[Link]

© Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2016 487

J. Loughran, M.L. Hamilton (eds.), International Handbook of Teacher
Education, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-0366-0_13
488 B. Avalos

recently the 2008 Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) reported
that, in countries such as Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Brazil, 20–60 % of new
teachers had “appraisal and feedback from any source” (Jensen, Sandoval-
Hernández, Knoll, & González, 2012, Figure 2.1, p. 43). The same results of low
participation of new teachers in induction programmes are reported in the recent
version of TALIS (OECD 2014).
Despite what seems still to be an insufficient recognition in country policies of
the particular characteristics of entry into the teaching profession and the need for
support, the existing body of research and experiences offers insight into how new
teachers handle the demands of classroom teaching and school responsibilities, the
role and forms of induction that may or not be appropriate to their needs, the
interaction between what teachers learn in their teacher education programmes and
what their schools and school systems expect when they begin to teach, the role
of intellectual, emotional and social factors in this process, and the particularity of
situations which may lead to “survival”, “enduring commitment”, or “walking out”.
This chapter seeks to review some of this research over the last 15 years with the
following two main purposes:
1. Examine the available literature from 2001 onwards using a conceptual organizing
framework derived from research and experience and anchored on the complexities
in beginning teachers’ practice.
2. Shed light on the diversity of teaching and systemic conditions that impinge on
professional learning, and on the processes, both individual and collective,
through which teachers become self-sufficient and competent.
The review is organised in the following sections: Conceptual organising
framework and review procedures including a schematic description of sources,
three main analytic-thematic sections and a concluding analysis about beginning
teacher professional learning and the implications this has for teacher education and
educational policy.

Conceptual Organising Framework and Review Procedures

Every new teacher contributes with specific personality traits, funds of knowledge,
dispositions, beliefs and skills, which are partly the result of teacher education
experiences and partly their somewhat tentative, but personal definitions of profes-
sional self or identity. What a teacher encounters when she or he begins to teach is
a set of tasks to be performed, groups of students with varying characteristics and
possibilities and particular school environments. Their work involves interacting
with instruments expressed in curriculum documents and learning targets as well as
participating in school communities and handling different patterns of interaction
with colleagues, parents and authorities. The beginning teacher has prior knowledge
of some of these conditions and demands, which were acquired during teacher
education field experiences, but the range and combination of possibilities and
restrictions actually encountered in the first formal employment setting, is certainly
new. Added to these elements of interaction, are contractual conditions which for
13 Learning from Research on Beginning Teachers 489

Professional Professional
learning identity
building

Teaching
Emotional
procedures
valuation and
and practical
managementl
tools

Cognitive
Social
competency
valuation and
and
management
complexity

L earning as L earning as
reflection collaboration

Fig. 13.1 Beginning teachers, professional learning and identity building (Source: Personal
elaboration)

some new teachers may mean a full time job in a school of their choice, a full time job
in the only school that offered work or part time teaching in more than one school.
The diversity of conditions, personal and external, and the demands of the job
form a mesh, which is uniquely experienced or perceived by the teacher, although
not necessarily fully reflected upon and understood. Whatever the form of each
situation, every new teacher must engage in those activities demanded by his or her
specific field of teaching and become part of the school context where this occurs,
using cognitive capacities and practical tools, being emotionally involved and com-
mitted to the growth of others, and seeing him or herself as the bearer of a social
mission (Dewey, 1990; Freire, 2000). The interplay of all these factors contributes
to changing definitions of professional identity and self-efficacy perceptions along
the life career and leads to the progressive consolidation of forms of teaching and of
educating pupils considered to produce desirable learning results (Huberman,
1989). Understanding this process means recognising that the quality of teaching
and learning is a social product that emerges and grows from collaborative work
with colleagues within and across school contexts and is nourished by systematic
reflection. Figure 13.1 attempts to illustrate the various components of what is an
integrated process of learning development throughout a teacher’s career, but which
has its own particularities in the beginning stages of teaching.
The concepts and relationships illustrated in Fig. 13.1 will be used, for the pur-
poses of this chapter, to organise and discuss the vast amount of research on beginning
teachers produced in the past 15 years. These concepts respond to the author’s views
490 B. Avalos

of teacher development in terms of broad processes (identity building and learning)

and more specific thematic elements having to do with teaching actions, emotions,
social capacities and knowledge processing, all of which appear in the teacher related
literature and specifically, as will be shown, in beginning teacher research.

Review Sources

The key criteria for the selection of sources was that they be published reports or
reviews of research on beginning teachers, including reflective analysis or essays
based on research, representing as much as possible different geographical areas.
The period covered was 2001–2015. The main search instrument was the Scopus
abstract and citation data-base which has gradually incorporated journals from
different countries: Also consulted was the Scientific Electronic Library Online
(SciELO), which contains journals from Latin America, Spain, Portugal and South
Africa and has recently been incorporated into the Scopus data base. “Beginning
teachers” was used as a key word for the search as it was broad enough to yield the
maximum number of relevant references. Over the period there was an interesting
growth in the number of research articles on beginning teachers, particularly from
2009 onwards as shown in Fig. 13.2.
Altogether, there were 463 articles identified of which 47.5 % were published in
USA sources and/or by USA authors and 15.5 % in Australia or by Australian
authors. There was a growing number of articles over the period from European

I ncrease in Nº of Research Reports

100

60

50

40

30

20

10

0
2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014

Fig. 13.2 Research on beginning teachers 2001–2014 (Number of published articles. Source:
Scopus database)
13 Learning from Research on Beginning Teachers 491

Table 13.1 Main emphasis of examined research articles

N° of
Thematic area studies %
1. Attrition/retention (factors affecting, resilience) 22 7.3
2. Beginning teacher assessment (instruments, processes) 4 1.3
3. Beliefs, attitudes, tensions, challenges, concerns 20 6.6
4. Classroom management experiences 5 1.7
5. Contextual factors (school micro-cultures/principals and macro policies) 15 5.0
6. Emotional factors, commitment, motivation 6 2.0
7. Induction (programme description, processes and effects) 73 24.3
8. Interpersonal competence (collaboration) 8 2.6
9. Mentoring (relationships, mentor qualities, problems) 20 6.6
10. Particular populations and teaching situations (racial, male teachers, 15 5.0
multi-ethnicity, special needs, children under care, out-of-field and
alternatively certified teachers)
11. Professional identity development 8 2.7
12. Professional learning (reflection, cognitive skills, leadership 29 9.6
development)
13. Self-efficacy development 10 3.3
14. Subject-matter teaching/learning (cognitive, affective, social, practical 49 16.3
aspects)
15. Technology and professional development 7 2.3
16. Teacher education effects 10 3.3
Total 301 100

countries (22 %) covering towards the end of the period 10–12 countries a year, a
change from very small numbers at the beginning. From the rest of the world there
were 23 articles from Canada, 12 articles from Latin America (Argentina, Brazil,
Chile and México), 9 from New Zealand and scattered numbers from Singapore,
Malaysia, Israel, Hong Kong, Japan, Shanghai, Taiwan, as well as Ghana, Nigeria
and South Africa from Africa.
While the articles examined centred on a wide variety of specific issues and
processes, it was possible to detect on the basis of the abstract descriptions 16
main thematic approaches covered in just over 300 articles, which are presented in
Table 13.1.
As observed in Table 13.1, a third of the research articles published in the period
focused on induction and mentoring (30.9 %) followed by those covering specific
subject teaching and related capacities (mostly science, mathematics and language).
However, there were another 54 research articles that centred on various combina-
tions of these themes. For example, while a focus on induction and mentoring was
a logical combination, these themes also included reference to technology (as in
cases of online mentoring), effect of school micro-cultures and the obvious
references to theoretical aspects of professional learning. Technology was also
associated in several articles to professional learning themes, to identity and to its
uses in interpersonal or collegial interactions. In analysing causes or factors involved
492 B. Avalos

in rates of new teacher attrition, several research articles linked these to emotional
factors, identity conflicts, effects of external policies and school micro-cultures. The
studies on “particular populations and teaching situations” provide an interesting
focus on teachers who have to teach “out of their field” subjects, were prepared in
diverse forms of “alternative certification” programmes, “males” teaching small
children, teachers who only find casual employment. They also include teaching
particular populations in terms of racial composition or children in foster care.
In terms of the preferred research approaches as gleaned from 278 abstracts that
provided such information 65 % were clearly qualitative studies (case studies,
action research, focus groups) using a diversity of data collection instruments such
as narratives and stories, interviews and observation, electronic journal analysis and
various reflection means such as metaphors. Another 22 % could be classified
as predominantly quantitative (surveys, cohorts, panel, experimental). Finally, 13 %
of the abstracts reviewed declared the use of mixed-methods approaches.
Many of the qualitative approach abstracts examined reported the use of Case
Study designs (58) involving one or more individuals (usually not more than five in
this category). There were also 33 studies focusing on what are known as trajectory,
follow-up or longitudinal approaches involving the study of a case(s) during at least
a year, but also from teacher education into 1 or 2 years of teaching. Finally, there
were 11 reported studies that involved the analysis of existing databases in order to
examine trajectories and cohorts, often with a focus on retention/attrition levels.
For the purposes of this review, however, not all the research areas noted in Table
13.1 were examined in their own right. For example, many of the articles on mentoring
and induction were specific to its processes and would need a longer review to be
handled properly, as also studies that looked at rates of attrition among beginning
teachers and its causes. This is not to say that studies that referred to these themes
as part of broader beginning teacher processes were excluded.

Subject-Matter Teaching, Cognitive Processing and Concerns

for Relevance and Student Learning

In what follows, and in line with the concepts presented in Fig. 13.1, three thematic
areas related to beginning teacher professional learning and identity building and to
the specific tasks of teaching and student learning and the cognitive, emotional and
social aspects involved are discussed on the basis of selected research articles:
(a) subject-matter teaching, cognitive processing and concerns for relevance and
student learning; (b) teaching and school communities: social and emotional
tensions and development; and (c) reconfiguration of professional learning from
teacher education into classroom teaching. For each theme, besides an overview of
the relevant themes and issues in the studies, a group is selected for closer discussion
for reasons that will be explained in the introduction to the section.
Once the new teacher has been given responsibility for one or more classes per-
forming its main tasks involves concurrent actions accompanied by thinking about,
13 Learning from Research on Beginning Teachers 493

Table 13.2 Main curricular subjects covered by research in the period 2001–2015
N° %
Art 3 2.4
Language (mother tongue) 18 14.5
Language (foreign or second language) 11 8.9
Mathematics 18 14.5
Mathematics & science 3 2.4
Music 6 4.8
Physical education 4 3.2
Science 47 37.9
Social studies (history, geography, social 5 4.0
justice)
Special education 9 7.3
Total 124 100
Source: Scopus abstracts, 2001–2015

seeing and interpreting the subject matter in relation to what is appropriate for
pupils and their learning. While there will be a curriculum frame or a specific syl-
labus to consider, and ways of teaching such a curriculum of which some were
learnt and practised during teacher education, every teacher needs to explore what
is best to use in the particular situation, trying out diverse forms and being alert to
pupils’ signals and responses (Wang & Paine, 2003). A generalist primary teacher
experiences different degrees of competence and confidence in teaching the range
of subjects required and the classes or age groups under his or her responsibility
(Smith, 2007). The doubts and uncertainties of a specialist teacher may have to do
with the nature of the curriculum frame that must be enacted and with how his or
her specialised knowledge base fits in with its demands and those of the school
system (Lovett & Dave, 2009; Serra, Krichesky, & Merodo,2009). Uncertainties
may include being able to reach students who have difficulty in understanding and
challenging those who are capable of deeper learning or who simply do not care
about the content being taught (Choy, Chong, Wong, & Wong, 2011).
To a large extent the processes related to subject matter teaching have been con-
ceptualised as “subject content knowledge” (SCK) and “pedagogic content knowl-
edge” (PCK), and have been linked to beliefs about the subject, its teaching and
about those who learn its contents. Out of the total 301 pieces of research over the
review period, 124 specifically dealt with main subject area demands and the ways
in which beginning teachers face them (see Table 13.2).
As Table 13.2 illustrates, science is by far the area most studied in terms of how
beginning teachers perform or manage their teaching responsibilities, followed by
mathematics and language (Turner, 2012; Hough, 2007; Justi & van Driel, 2006;
Farrell, 2006; Roehrig & Luft, 2004; Luft, Roehrig & Patterson, 2003; Mulholland
& Wallace, 2003; Mullholland & Wallace, 2001; Ensor, 2001). This emphasis may
be a consequence of the emphasis given to these subjects in policies as well as in
national and international assessment systems.
494 B. Avalos

The approaches and findings of a group of these studies are discussed below
under the following themes: (a) beginning teacher relationships with the curricu-
lum; (b) connecting subject-knowledge to student understanding; and (c) cognitive
processing and thinking about subject teaching. Two or three articles were selected
to illustrate each theme on the basis of their specific focus, conceptual originality
and complexity as well as representing some geographical diversity.

Teaching to or with the Curriculum

There are different ways in which teachers interact with the curriculum, depending
on whether they have to work with mandated curriculum or interpret less structured
curriculum frames. But, in essence, they must take the curriculum and convert it
into teaching plans and activities in line with their knowledge and beliefs about
what are its key elements, about what are their students’ needs and taking into
account their own subject matter confidence level. The links between curriculum
interpretation and students’ perceived needs are mediated by forms of instruction,
which are subject-specific but also coloured by more directive or constructivist
forms of teaching. In what follows, three research pieces carried out in different
geographical contexts and curricular policy structures serve to illustrate the rela-
tionship of teachers with curriculum frames, both in their mode of interpreting them
as well as in their teaching approaches.
The first of the studies by Valencia, Place, and Martin (2006) in the United States
illustrates the effect of different curricular policy contexts over teachers who also
are different in their way of interpreting demands, levels of subject confidence and
teaching approaches. The case study reported followed four language arts teachers
from teacher education through their first 3 years of teaching in schools and centred
on the teaching of primary level reading. The teachers were studied in their schools
and classrooms through various means: observations; individual and group inter-
views with the teachers and with school and district personnel; as well as document
analysis. The curriculum conditions under which they worked varied from tightly-
prescribed mandated curriculum to “build your own” curriculum approaches, from
having to teach on the basis of highly structured scripts and assessment forms to
having a wide variety of sources from which to decide on teaching activities such as
readers, anthology and teacher developed materials. Each teacher taught a different
grade from 1 to 4 to student populations that were different from school to school in
terms of racial composition (20–75 % blacks), socio-economic level and proportion
of those reading at or above the grade level (39–78 %). The teacher with the greatest
degree of curricular prescription also taught the students with lower reading achieve-
ment and who were mostly black. All teachers shared the purpose of carrying out a
complete reading programme and were concerned primarily with how to teach it
and meet their students’ needs.
Given the differences in curricular prescriptions, not surprisingly, the four teachers
studied by Valencia et al. (2006) were also diverse in their teaching of reading
13 Learning from Research on Beginning Teachers 495

approaches. Those who had less freedom to alter materials relied greatly on them
and tended to follow the indicated procedures. They also showed a limited range
of teaching repertoire. But it was not simply the degree of prescription of the
curriculum in use that marked the differences among the teachers studied. The
teacher’s pedagogical orientation, subject knowledge competency and understand-
ing of the reading materials and their uses (partly carried over from their teacher
education) also impacted on the degrees of confidence and freedom they felt to
experiment with different approaches.
Teachers in contexts with a greater degree of curricular freedom were able to
work towards developing a deeper understanding of their own reading instruction
practices, while teachers with a lesser degree of curricular freedom remained more
superficial in their approach and more procedural. Their pedagogic orientations
were also influential in how they dealt with the curriculum, but did not shift much
in kind over time as a result of their experiences, showing “shifts in degree rather
than kind”. Among its important conclusions, the authors contend that in whatever
way, more or less mandated curriculum materials do influence beginning teachers’
practice (Valencia et al., 2006).
Almost the reverse of the Valencia et al. (2006) study is an in-depth case study
in the very different context of China (Wang & Payne, 2003). The policy setting of
the study had two major elements: a “contrived curriculum” on the one hand and the
practice of teacher investigative groups involving collaborative planning and
reflection, coupled with the public delivery of a lesson. The “contrived curriculum”
issued by the Chinese educational authorities consists of a teaching and learning
framework, a textbook and a teachers’ manual which teachers in China must use.
Although the study was based on interviews with 26 beginning teachers on
the links between the contrived curriculum, learning in research groups and their
teaching capacity as demonstrated through the public lecture delivery, the article
reviewed centred on one teacher’s public lesson delivery of a particular mathemati-
cal concept and examined how the prescriptive nature of the curriculum was enacted
in that particular lesson.
The conclusion, after analysis, was that although the teacher maintained her
focus on the curriculum documents, she did not follow its suggestions exactly nor
use the provided example as indicated. She also engaged her students in practice
questions and activities that were other than those suggested. The authors attributed
these variations to the teacher’s confidence in her subject knowledge and pedagogy
increased as a result of the weekly lesson preparation and teacher research group
meetings in which she and other teachers participated. As described by Wang and
Payne (2003) these activities are similar to the well-known “lesson study” practice
of the Japanese education system (Cf. Lewis, Perry & Murata, 2006), which also
involves collaborative preparation and feedback after observation of lessons taught
by participants.
The authors noted the need to moderate conclusions about there being a necessary
lessening of professionalism resulting from having to teach a structured mandated
curriculum (as shown in Valencia et al., 2006). In this case the entire policy context
-the contrived curriculum and collaboration/feedback opportunities – allowed room
496 B. Avalos

for degrees of freedom in deciding about curriculum and teaching practices that
rested on the teachers’ self-confidence as far as subject matter and pedagogy was
concerned. In this respect, Wang and Paine (2003) called for more research on how
contrived curriculum is implemented in different situations and its effect on the
quality of subject teaching.
A third case of interaction between centrally mandated curriculum and beginning
teacher practices is illustrated in a study of Turkish teachers (Haser, 2010). The
main thrust of this study, however, is not so much on the centralised nature of the
curriculum but on the lack of teacher support materials and especially of support via
some form of mentorship for beginning teachers.
Haser (2010) interviewed middle-school mathematics teachers in their first and
fourth/fifth year of teaching, noting changes in their practices mostly due to growth
in experience. Similar to Valencia et al.’s (2006) study the Turkish teachers began to
teach in different types of schools, although most were rural and had more difficult
to teach student populations (as perceived by the teachers in the studies). In their
eyes, the curriculum had not been fixed with “these kinds of students’ in mind” and
the teachers found it difficult to teach through the curriculum. They tended to
attribute their teaching problems to their students’ perceived levels of prior knowl-
edge and to the students’ former mathematics teachers. The number of national
examinations (6th, 7th and 8th grade) also exacerbated the pressures to which these
teachers needed to respond.
The difficulties persisted 4 years after although moderated by a more settled
perception that “not all groups can achieve at all levels” (p. 298). Interestingly, in
their interviews the teachers did not refer to possible personal knowledge difficul-
ties in teaching certain mathematical concepts although conversely they attributed
greater ownership to those concepts about which they felt more confident. Haser’s
(2010) analysis attributed the practices and views expressed by the teachers to a mix
of prescription in the national curriculum (same content and results expected of all
students), the mixed quality in prior knowledge levels of their students and lack of
collegial or mentorship support. But Haser also suggested possible inadequacies in
teacher preparation in terms of learning to deal with differences in students’ prior
knowledge and with their cultural differences (rurality in this case), but also in the
quality of mathematics content knowledge preparation.
Seen together, the three studies above highlight the differences in how teachers
engage in their classroom activities in systems with greater or lesser “mandated”
curricular frames. Both the studies of Valencia et al. (2006) and Haser (2010), in
different national contexts, highlight the restrictive nature of highly prescribed cur-
ricula over how teachers work with materials and their degree of confidence in
being able to innovate to suit students’ learning needs.
In Haser’s (2010) study the restriction also extended to the lack of appropriate
teaching materials making teaching even more difficult, especially in its relation to
difficult to teach school populations such as rural settings. Curriculum restriction
is also the case in the third study (Wang & Payne, 2003) but a different factor
intervenes which moderates its effect and which is provided by the practice of
collaboration in preparing and implementing a “public lesson” in that it increases
13 Learning from Research on Beginning Teachers 497

the possibility of adjusting the curriculum or deviating from its prescriptions in order
to suit learning needs. Simply put, these studies highlight that contrived curriculum
has a restricting effect over teaching quality among beginning teachers but that this
may be moderated if there are opportunities for collaboration and feedback and if
the new teacher has been well prepared in both content and pedagogical
knowledge.

Relating Subject Knowledge to Student Understanding

The process of teaching for understanding – a repeated concern of new teachers –

may be examined from different standpoints associated with nature and conceptions
of the subject as well as from approaches derived from learning theory and specific
evidence about how to teach it. The cases of science and foreign language teaching
are used here to illustrate the teaching implications derived from approaches closer
to “inquiry” (science) and approaches closer to “performance” (foreign languages).
The two selected studies were carried out with teachers in the United States.
Roehrig and Luft (2004) examined how 14 secondary science teachers under-
stood and enacted the teaching of inquiry based science lessons in the context of an
induction seminar in which they had been participants. Inquiry based lessons were
defined in the words of the National Science Education Standards of the USA as
“the diverse ways in which scientists study the natural world and propose explana-
tions based on evidence derived from their work” (Roehrig & Luft, p. 3). For the
purposes of the study attention was focused on the constraints experienced in the
teaching of inquiry based science of the 14 teachers who were in their first, second
or third year of teaching, considering what they knew, believed and practised in
relation to this approach. To this end they used beginning and end-of-the-year
interviews on teaching and teacher beliefs as well as open-ended questionnaires for
views about the nature of science. The teachers’ practice was also observed.
The key findings of the study allowed teachers to be described according to three
different teaching orientations: “inquiry”; “process-oriented”; and, “traditional”. In
relation to inquiry teaching there was no specific set of factors that influenced pri-
marily whether teachers would use this approach, although there were interactions
and combinations of situations that influenced the possibility of its use. For exam-
ple, students’ ability and school context could deter the implementation of science
inquiry instruction despite the teacher’s convictions and knowledge about the
approach. Also, while lack of adequate content knowledge might have been a factor
in not using the inquiry science approach, in others this might have resulted from a
lack of suitable pedagogy. Thus, although there was indication of that which was
basically needed to teach in line with scientific-inquiry such as solid content knowl-
edge, student-centred teaching beliefs and a “contemporary” view of science, the
authors concluded that none of these on their own were a solid contributing factor.
All three components interacted with other factors derived from general teaching
orientations and prior teacher preparation in science knowledge or pedagogy.
498 B. Avalos

From the perspective of foreign language teaching, Watzke (2007) reported on

a study that followed a group of teachers in their first 2 years of practice who
taught Spanish, French and German. The focus of the study was on changes in
pedagogical content knowledge (Shulman, 1987) overtime and on the development
of teacher crucial concerns related to student learning and personal wellbeing. To
this end, the research sought to identify core categories related to knowledge,
instruction and learning expressed by beginning foreign language teachers, and
how these changed over the first 2 years of teaching, as reflected in electronic
journal entries of the participant teachers, interviews and focus groups. After
careful qualitative analysis of the data, Watzke (2007) was able to conceptualise
four categories considered to be crucial to the participants’ teaching: prior knowl-
edge as framing instructional decisions, attitudes towards teacher control in the
classroom, instructional goals for daily lessons and considerations for respond-
ing to student affect (p. 69), all of which were consistent across the different
teaching contexts. However, in the analysis of how these categories played in the
classroom teaching of foreign languages and over time, Watzke (2007) observed
a clear process of moving from the situation of being still “learners” to one of
being more confidently “teachers”.
Through Waztke’s (2007) study, progress was noted as evident in the initial use
of more traditional forms of teaching followed by a sort of gradual recalling or re-
experimenting with the student-centred learning to which participants were exposed
during teacher education and which was in line with the communicative approach to
foreign language teaching. This was evident in the observable increase in language
teaching with an emphasis on task performance and communication as well as
student-centred activities in which the teachers progressively engaged. It was also
accompanied by a gradual control over classroom management and handling of its
diverse emotional implications. Watzke suggested that in order to better understand
how beginning foreign language teachers moved to the full use of a communicative
approach in language teaching, the issue to be examined was “not where teachers
are, but where they are going” (p. 74).
The two studies (noted above) centred on quite different subjects (science and
language arts) point to the interaction of factors that impact on the degree to
which teachers enact a subject’s particular teaching approach, be it inquiry-based or
performative: knowledge-base, attitude and responsiveness to students as well as a
suitable pedagogy. Added to this the studies highlight the interaction between
teacher education knowledge and growing experience, which as indicated by
Watzke’s (2007) study, may not necessarily be linear.
13 Learning from Research on Beginning Teachers 499

Thinking About Subject Teaching and Cognitive Processing

Uncertainties

The thinking behind how teachers plan and enact the teaching of their subject in the
light of their students’ needs has for a long time been a subject of research (Clarke
& Peterson, 1986). More recently teachers’ thinking has been examined through
case studies that follow teachers from teacher education to their first years of
teaching (Dumitriu, Timofti & Dumitriu, 2011, Haggarty & Postlethwaite, 2012).
Such research is able to be illustrated through three examples from different geo-
graphical locations. Two looked at teacher thinking in relation to the subjects of
English (Ellis, 2009) and science (So & Watkins, 2005) and the third was centred
generically on the complexity of thinking expressed in the ability to deal with
uncertain situations in teaching (Bullough, Young, Hall, Draper, & Smith, 2008).
Ellis (2009) studied three English graduates during their teacher education year
in England in their Post-graduate Certificate of Education (PGCE), and through
their first year of teaching, with the purpose of examining how, over time, these
teachers processed their knowledge and understanding of English as a teaching sub-
ject. Besides interviews, Ellis used narratives about their teaching experiences and
drawings that depicted their understanding of the content areas in English as a
teaching subject and of the relationships between them. His interest lay in unveiling
the teachers’ conception of English as a teaching subject and changes over time,
including the concept of themselves as teachers. He was also interested in their
pedagogic orientations, that is, in how they envisioned their teaching approaches
either as being more directive or more constructivist – assuming that they would be
reflected in the teaching methods used with different groups of students.
Among Ellis (2009) central conclusions about the teachers studied was that they
had personal stance regarding the teaching of the subject. Their conceptions of
English as a curricular subject were personal in the sense of being influenced by
their background or history as in former school experiences, and by their views on
their selves as educators. This epistemological stance was changed or modified over
time in the light of the evolving nature of their teaching experiences. Changes were
observed in how teachers reflected through the drawings their understandings of the
interrelationships among content areas, and in how they were different in each case,
indicating also a different epistemological stance. Thus, on the one hand, one
teacher developed a more socially critical stance that impacted her thinking about
that which matters or is important in the teaching of English. On the other hand, the
second teacher’s stance about English teaching was closer to views expressed in the
English National Curriculum standards. Interestingly, the third teacher’s views
illustrated a move towards affirming the communicative approach in language and
literature teaching. The same was not the case, however, about whether their peda-
gogical orientation supported “objectivist” or “constructivist” teaching approaches.
There seemed to be no clear demarcation between holding these positions, and
instead there was increasing evidence of tensions between them.
Finally, looking into the role played by teacher education and as to how the par-
ticipants’ growing experience impacted their thinking of English as a teaching
500 B. Avalos

subject, Ellis (2009) concluded that both teacher education and experience inter-
acted with each other in a non-linear fashion. By this he meant that skills acquired
in teacher education may not be specifically observable in classroom teaching as
they may have been modified or replaced by the new teacher learning resulting from
having to handle unexpected or diverse contextual situations.
Also focused on the transition from a 2-year teacher education programme to
first year classroom teaching, So and Watkins (2005) studied changes in the
thinking about science teaching, of 26 primary teachers in Hong Kong, within a
constructivist frame of reference. This study utilised as research tools interviews,
observations, concept maps and post-observation reflective notes written by the
teachers while they were in teacher education. While most of the analysis was
qualitative, the authors also used statistical techniques to transform the data into
quantifiable indicators in order to examine the fluctuations over time in the teach-
ers’ thinking.
From the early interviews So and Watkins (2005) detected four types of
epistemological positions about teaching or stances (see Ellis, 2009 above), which
they described as “learner-centred constructivist, experimental-inductive, teacher
exposition and teacher transmission”. These positions were not found to be pure in
that they appeared in pairs with one being predominant and the other taking a sec-
ondary position. In the course of the period studied from teacher education into their
first year of teaching all teachers moved towards a more constructivist or learner-
centred position, either predominant or secondary. As far as complexity in thinking,
there was no clear evidence of linear development as the concept maps the teachers
drew during their teacher education programmes showed more complexity in think-
ing for planning than was the case when they were actually teaching in their first
year. This could have been due to pressures on time resulting from the many new
demands in their school contexts and the lack of specific help to cope (So & Watkins,
2005). Importantly, their teaching practices which during their pre-service phase
had moved to becoming largely learner-centred, continued to improve over time and
approximate that which the authors described as constructivist teaching. Beginning
teachers who had used these practices well during teacher education continued to do
so in their first year of teaching.
The study also examined reflective practices. Reflective practices were concep-
tualised as mostly centred on “confronting” or diagnosing their teaching and its
needs or mostly centred on “re-constructing”, that is, modifying such practices. In
that respect the authors observed that the reflective practices in which the teachers
engaged did not change substantially from teacher education to classroom teaching.
For the most part they remained at the confrontation or diagnostic phase. Only a few
teachers engaged in “reconstructing” reflection.
Looking at the evidence provided by all the data sources, So and Watkins (2005)
finally examined the degree of coherence in the teachers’ way of thinking about sci-
ence teaching over the study period. On the whole, teachers exhibited coherence
between their views about teaching and constructivist practices, but noted a slight
drop in coherence as they began teaching. Taken together, So and Watkins observed
13 Learning from Research on Beginning Teachers 501

that the evolution of thinking on the part of teachers was not linear in every respect,
especially in thinking complexity and reflective orientation.
The lack of clear evidence of a linear development from lesser to better was also
found in a longitudinal study in England of primary science teachers moving from
teacher education into schools (Smith, 2007). Although teachers in this study
widened their scientific knowledge during their first year of teaching there was no
real increase in the depth of their subject knowledge and practices. Smith considered
that the result could well have been connected to identity conflicts related to the
generalist focus of primary teachers’ work and having to cover the teaching of
several subjects, all of which may not leave room for deeper subject-related think-
ing and practice.
To some extent inconsistencies found between learning approaches at pre-
service preparation level and approaches and practices when beginning to teach can
be traced to the sheer number of new obligations faced by teachers as well as to the
unclear, or not obviously resolvable, issues that arise in their practice. In order to
explain the thinking of beginning teachers in dealing with uncertainties, Bullough
et al. (2008) explored the concept of “cognitive complexity” using a reasoning test
about current issues developed by Kitchener, King and DeLuca, 2006 (in Bullough
et al., 2008).
Bullough et al.’s (2008) study involved nine teachers who graduated from one
teacher education institution and to whom the test was administered. On the basis of
the test results, the researchers distributed the teachers across two groups depending
on how predominantly formal or predominantly reflective their reasoning was about
situations not susceptible to being fully or completely defined or resolved with
certainty.
After the participants began teaching in schools, the two groups of teachers were
asked to send an e-mail every 2–3 weeks describing high and low moments in their
teaching. Based on their reasoning for selecting the low and high moments as well
as on reports of interviews with their assigned mentors, Bullough et al. (2008) were
able to detect differences in how the two groups described their high and low
moments of teaching.
The teachers with higher cognitive complexity capacities, tended to be more
reflective and concerned about the different patterns of learning observed in their
classrooms rather than about “learning in general”. They noted aspects of the
curriculum that needed improvement and rather than blame students tended to look
to their own role in situations that interfered with learning, i.e., they accepted
personal responsibility for dealing with identified learning issues and problems. In
contrast, those teachers with lower cognitive complexity tended to explain or
attribute the noted problems to factors outside of the learning processes such as
relationships with parents or the degree to which they were fitting in and doing what
was expected from them. They also sought much more help from their mentors in
trying to handle the issues (Bullough et al., 2008).
These two groups differed in the use of tools to handle their teaching issues, in
the degree to which they examined their use and results and in the degree of self-
assessment and flexibility of planning. Despite these findings, the authors did not
502 B. Avalos

suggest that there was a kind of determinism that caused teachers to be higher or
lower in their thinking complexity, but more so highlighted instead the need for
teacher education and mentoring to engage in more proactive development of higher
and more complex reflective activities among future and beginning teachers.
The non-linear character of cognitive development and teaching practices seems
to be a linking thread in the three studies (reviewed above), an observation that
derives from the longitudinal character of all of them. Although, the key concepts
in each study are different, in Ellis (2009) study the focus was on the personal and
epistemological stance regarding the teaching of English as a subject and how it
developed differently in each case as a result of experience. This development was
not equally observable in relation to the teachers’ pedagogic orientation, and showed
a non-linear interaction between teacher education and experience in relation to
their conception about English teaching. So and Watkins (2005) found that although
their participating teachers developed some coherence between their views about
teaching and the constructivist science teaching orientation of their teacher education
preparation, the coherence diminished slightly as they began to teach as did their
thinking complexity and reflective orientation. Bullough et al.’s (2008) study, in
turn, provided some evidence of why there may be a lack of continued and growing
effect of capacities acquired in teacher education once teachers begin to teach.
Overall, the degree of cognitive complexity used to manage teaching situations that
are not clearly definable, is shown to be an important factor and teachable during
initial teacher education as well as developed through appropriate mentorship
experiences.
All in all, these studies highlight a differential mode of moving from teacher
education into schools illustrated by how the knowledge and pedagogical stances of
teachers interact with their new experiences, which to be maintained or enhanced,
require a more sophisticated capacity of reflective analysis.

Teacher and School Communities Social and Emotional

Tensions and Development

Studies that have inquired into teachers’ motivations for selecting the profession
have consistently reported that one of the key factors is a desire to contribute to
society, not just through the education of young people but also through the personal
position as an actor for social change (Watt et al., 2012). In this respect, it is not
uncommon for future teachers to select teacher education as an option prompted by
previous experience of a social nature such as activities that involve children or
young people or contributing in general to social welfare. However, the social side
of teaching is more than just an ideal that orients teachers’ lives. It is embedded in
the nature of work, which is anchored in turn on social interaction with students,
with other teachers and with parents. The way in which these social relations are
experienced or lived by teachers carries emotional connotations involving feelings
13 Learning from Research on Beginning Teachers 503

of affection or rejection, enthusiasm or depression, commitment despite difficulties

and constraints or laissez-faire feelings and detachment (Gallant, 2013; Intrator,
2006; Ria, Saury, Thereau, & Durand, 2003).
The social situations which beginning teachers encounter in their first
employment(s) have often been described as a key factor as to whether or not they
will pursue their profession with growing engagement despite its complexities, or
whether they will move along half-heartedly until they decide that it is not for them
and therefore leave (Jones & Youngs, 2012).
The encounter with the social environment of the school, including the broader
policy environment in which it is located, has been the subject of research in many
national contexts (Hargreaves et al., 2007; Liu & Ramsey, 2008; McKenzie, Kos
et al., 2008). The research illustrates the variety of forms that these encounters
take, which may involve compliance or resistance to school accepted practices or to
external policies, but also engagement in innovative approaches to teacher collabo-
ration. In other words, these encounters may act as positive or negative experiences
that affect how a new teacher settles into a school environment, but also may
contribute to his or her continued professional learning.
The fact that the educational results of a particular group of students are seldom
the result of the individual work of one teacher, but rather of the community of
those who form part of an educational institution points also to the importance of
teacher collaboration and their co-construction of improved educational processes.
The extent to which such collaboration forms part of the continued professional
development of a beginning teacher is also a matter of importance. The next sec-
tions examine some of the research that covers both how teachers encounter and
negotiate the social environment of places in which they work (classrooms, schools),
its effect on their self-efficacy and wellbeing, as well as forms of working together
and how these assist (or not) in beginning teacher professional learning.

The Work Environment

The combined effect of different dimensions of a school’s organisation and culture

over how new teachers handle the web of relationships and demands of their school
environment has been a subject of study since at least the late 1960s (Blumer,
1969 in Cherubini, 2009; Hargreaves, 1993; Lacey, 1995; Kardos, 2003, 2005;
Huntley, 2008), and followed more recently with research on the transition from
teacher education into the school workplace (Tynjälä & Heikkinen, 2011).
In various studies schools have been described in terms of their “micro-politics”
(Ball, 1987; Kardos, 2005) or the power interplay that occurs among the key actors
of school life such as principals and teachers and their relationship with the outside
demands of the school systems. These processes in turn are examined from the
standpoint of how they are lived by new teachers and the degree to which they
develop “micro-political literacy” or the understanding needed to deal with them
(Kelchtermans & Ballet, 2002a, 2002b; Curry, Jaxon, Russell, Callahan, & Bicais,
504 B. Avalos

2008). Equally, the “spaces” of school life such as the staffrooms where teachers
spend much of their non-teaching time are also an object of research (Christensen,
2013; Lisahunter, Tinning, Flanagan,, & Macdonald 2011), as also the conflicts
generated by the socio-cultural characteristics of students versus those of teachers
(Consuegra, Engels & Struyve, 2014).
The organisational structure and the relationships in the school environment
delimit the extent to which new teachers are able to respond to both to the institutional
and education system’s expectations and policies and see themselves as actors with
a say in what takes place. From this stand point they interpret intellectually and
emotionally the quality and effectiveness of their work and react in diverse ways to
how the schools function.
The three pieces of research that are synthesised below were selected because
they serve to illustrate in three different national settings and through different
lenses and research approaches, how new teachers interact with their school
orientation and culture. Thus the studies examine the effect of the school’s goal
orientation on new teachers’ perceptions of capacity and their feelings of inadequacy
(Devos, Dupriez, & Paquay, 2012), the manner in which new teachers prepared in a
reform-oriented teacher education programme interact with their school cultures
(McGinnis, Parker & Graeber, 2004) and the enhancement of micro-political liter-
acy in different school cultures as result of participating in collaborative inquiry
groups (Curry et al., 2008).
Devos et al. (2012) report on two investigations conducted in a Belgian (Flemish
speaking) school setting. The studies used multiple regression analysis to examine
questionnaire responses by 110 teachers with 1 year of experience (first study) and
185 with 3 years (second study), all at primary or middle schools. The focus of both
studies was on how teachers perceived the school cultures and the mentorship
opportunities provided to deal with them. The key constructs underlying both
studies referred to the school’s goal orientation as an indicator of culture and the
perceived teacher self-efficacy and feelings of depression as indicators of teacher
reaction to the specificities of their school’s culture.
Following achievement-goal theory (Kapplan et al., 2002; Marsh et al., 2003,
cited in Devos et al., 2012) the school’s goal orientation, or expectations about that
which is considered as work “well done”, was conceptualised as having either a
“mastery” or “performance-goal” structure. The “mastery” approach highlighted
the individual’s push to increase or move beyond past performance while the
“performance-goal” orientation emphasised overt demonstration of competency or
avoidance of incompetency.
Seen from the perspective of a school’s goal orientation the mastery approach
would support freedom to experiment and assess its results in terms of broad
educational goals, while the performance approach would expect the school to
meet external expectations as demanded by the school’s system of standards. The
concept of self-efficacy developed by Bandura (1997) and for beginning teachers
by Hoy and Spero (2005) is used to indicate a sense of being “able to” on the part
of teachers. Conversely, negative emotions represented as “feelings of depression”
13 Learning from Research on Beginning Teachers 505

produced by social and environmental constraints were taken to be predictors of

dissatisfaction with the school’s goal orientation or culture.
The first study reported by Devos et al. (2012) was based on a questionnaire that
included school culture variables such as the principal’s practices, frequency of
teacher collaboration, mastery or performance goal structure, as well as indications
of difficulties, feelings of depression and perceptions of self-efficacy of the begin-
ning teachers questioned. The key finding was that the goal structure of the school
(mastery or performance-oriented) was a statistically significant predictor of teacher
perceptions of self-efficacy and of feelings of depression. In schools with a mastery-
oriented culture new teachers expressed more positive self-efficacy perceptions
while feelings of depression prevailed among teachers in schools with a performance-
oriented culture.
The second study looked at beginning teachers’ mentoring opportunities and
follow-up meetings with the school principal and how these related to perceived
self-efficacy and feelings of depression. In this study, both the reflective and
feedback dimensions of mentoring and the quality of follow-up meetings with the
principal were significantly related to positive perceptions of self-efficacy of the
new teachers surveyed. In turn, these processes were unrelated to feelings of depres-
sion. The authors of the study provided an interesting discussion about the implica-
tions of these results for further research and policy and noted that, of itself,
mentoring quality or induction did not necessarily predict new teacher wellbeing
and self-efficacy perceptions unless it occurred in a school which had a mastery
orientation goal.
Using a socio-cultural perspective, McGinnis et al. (2004) examined the
relationship between the specific orientation of a mathematics and science teacher
programme in the United States defined as “inquiry-oriented and standards-guided”
and the capacity of its teacher graduates to enact that orientation in their practices
and in interaction with different school cultures. The thrust of the programme was
to prepare teachers who felt confident about their subject knowledge, could use
technology, make connections between the disciplines and challenge students from
diverse backgrounds. The research was centred around two main questions related
to the enacting and reflective capacity of the teachers and to the “affordances” or
“constraints” experienced in using the reform-based instruction in which they had
been prepared.
The researchers followed five teachers over 2 years who were located in different
types of schools and taught primary or middle-level science and mathematics.
They interviewed the participants four times each year, held focus groups twice a
year, analysed video-taped lessons by the teacher participants and their students’
reflections as well carried out informal classroom observations. These rich sources
of data benefitted also from data collection during their undergraduate teacher
preparation. To analyse the data the researchers used the “inner” perspective of
the teachers’ own accounts and reflections and the “outer” perspective of the
researchers provided by the analysis of all the sources of data represented in
vignettes for each teacher.
506 B. Avalos

The findings were extensive as it involved noting differences among teachers and
schools. However, on the whole the study offered exemplars as to how each teacher
enacted their teaching, what their preferred approaches were, and what they used
from their initial teacher preparation learning to achieve expected results. The report
also provided evidence of perceived affordances and constraints on the part of the
teachers. The affordances reported were different for each teacher, but not so the
constraints – although variable depending on the school culture. The summary of
such constraints (below) in the words of McGinnis et al. (2004) illustrate common
experiences of new teachers in many contexts and with different intensity ranging
from availability of resources, and influence of their teacher colleagues to the clash
between having or wanting to do “different” while having to respond to external
factors such as prescribed curriculum and testing:
The number of mathematics objectives to meet; the shortage and availability of computer
equipment, the diverse level of student abilities; the science kits’ prescribed curriculum and
schedule; the prescribed science and mathematics curricula; the districts ongoing student
testing of instructional outcomes; the frequent instructional interruptions; the number and
extent of standardized student testing; the more experienced teachers’ expectation that the
beginning teacher would become less active and less innovative with time; and the suspicion
of parents to new assessment ideas. (McGinnis et al., 2004, p. 735)

Some of the above constraints correspond to the categories described by

Kelchtermans and Ballet (2002b) as forming part of the school micro-culture:
material, organizational functioning, socio-professional relationships, cultural
ideological orientations and self-interest.
Handling and interpreting the micro-political manifestations in school cultures
constitutes an important portion of new teachers’ social learning. Although defined
as micro-political literacy (Kelchtermans & Ballet, 2002b), this naturally occurring
process is not always reflected upon without the mediation of an intentional
effort to produce such reflection. Along these lines, Curry et al. (2008) described an
induction programme in the United States that allowed new teachers to become
aware of situations conflicting with their personal professional interests and to
develop capacity (micro-political literacy) to deal with them. On the basis of five school-
based inquiry projects and intra-group discussions of 25 teachers, the researchers
were able to highlight micro-political issues and how the groups discussed and dealt
with them. The data sources for the research were based on the inquiry projects of
five teachers and included qualitative analysis of their group meeting transcripts,
complemented with individual and focus group interviews as well as documents
collected during the time of the study.
The interactions and mutual assistance in interpreting the situations either by
validating, or challenging interpretations, appeared to prove in itself the value of the
induction project. Beyond that they served to detect characteristics of an “emergent
micro-political awareness and literacy” expressed in the shift from participants as
individuals to understand themselves as affected by institutional situations such as
norms, traditions and power relationships. This led the teachers to propose and
carry out change actions in their schools such as designing and conducting a teacher
survey on homework practices related to learning and assessment. In other words,
13 Learning from Research on Beginning Teachers 507

the inquiry projects, the collaborative analysis and personal reflection of these
teachers (micro-political literacy) helped them to move away from mere diagnosis
and passive resistance to more active ways of changing in line with their profes-
sional commitment. The fact that all but one of the focal teachers had a particular
social justice orientation embodied as a result of their teacher education programme,
made them more alert to socio-critical issues in their schools and more prone to
change situations rather than “learn to live with them”.
In line with the concepts illustrated in Fig. 13.1, the studies reviewed above
centre on the social and emotional aspects of teaching through the lenses of the
school institutions (orientation and culture) and how to deal with conflicting
situations arising from these (micro-culture literacy). Devos et al. (2012) provided
interesting evidence about how a more rigid (performance-based) school orientation
affects new teachers’ wellbeing in the form of feelings of depression, while a school
that allowed or pushed for innovation enhanced new teacher self-efficacy.
Equally, the report of constraints experienced by new teachers prepared to be
self-confident and to work with difficult populations (Mc Ginnis et al., 2004) high-
lighted the links to the sort of performance-based school climate described in the
study by Devos et al. (2012). Dealing with such situations requires preparation in
how to manage such a school climate, something highlighted by Curry et al.’s
(2008) account of the positive effects of an induction programme on the development
of “microliteracy” and responses to various and conflicting situations linked to
school cultures.

Collaborative Learning and Its Impact on the Practice

of Teaching

The benefits of collaborative teacher interactions have a long history of research and
advocacy as powerful instruments to exchange experiences and learn from such
exchanges. Spontaneous forms of collaboration among teachers in schools or
structured ones in school departments have long been part of school cultures as
illustrated for example in Talavera’s (1994) fascinating ethnography of a Mexican
primary school over an 18 month period. In her study Talavera found numerous
informal and formal ways in which beginning teachers adapt and learn in a highly
interactive teacher context, seeking and finding assistance from teachers who
spontaneously take on mentorship roles, borrowing and lending books to supple-
ment the official texts, which are distributed in the Mexican school system, and
discussing among themselves how to face the demands of being responsible for a
school class for the first time.
McNally, Blake, and Reid (2009) in a similar ethnography of informal learning
by new teachers in Scottish schools noted the importance of learning about the rela-
tional and emotional handling of teaching demands. Similarly, in the absence of any
formal kind of mentoring Chilean teachers with less than 3 years of practice recalled
the help received from colleagues in their school or in the rural micro-centres that
508 B. Avalos

gather teachers from multi-grade schools for a monthly exchange of experiences

and professional learning (Avalos & Aylwin, 2006).
More recently the impact of work on communities of practice (Lave & Wenger,
1991; Wenger 1998) and other research on learning communities (Vescio, Ross &
Adams, 2008) have prompted the examination of diverse forms of induced begin-
ning teacher collaboration – as reported in the above cited research by Curry et al.
(2008). Among such studies are those that look at particular collaborative activities,
including the “book club” described and researched by Kooy (2006) which involves
new teachers reading, discussing and drawing implications for their practice from
fictional books on education and teaching.
Other forms of collaboration using technology involve the sharing of electronic
journals and teacher online communication continued from pre-service to beginning
to teach (Goos & Bennison, 2008). Not all these forms, however, lend themselves to
teacher reflection, analysis, new knowledge and changes in practice (Moore &
Chae, 2007). Killeavy and Moloney (2010) reported, for example, that Irish begin-
ning teachers who engaged in blog-sharing were inclined to superficial accounting
of events in teaching rather than reflective analysis.
Windschitl, Thompson, and Braaten (2011) described a more contrived experi-
ence of inducing new science teachers into thinking about their practice through
analysis and collective discussion of their students’ work. This experience, framed
within socio-cultural activity theory, assumes that teachers need adequate tools
to analyse students’ work, a shared language and the holding of a reasonable
conception of “good teaching”. These elements together constitute what the authors
characterised as “ambitious pedagogy” and comprise the capacity to “understand
important ideas, participate in the discourses of the discipline and solve students’
problems” (Windschitl et al., 2011, p. 1315).
The experience described by Windschitl et al. (2011) involved working in a
group with 11 science teachers, before and after they completed their teacher educa-
tion at one institution in the United States, in the form of a collaborative “critical
friends group”. The purpose of the group was to elicit teachers’ engagement in
professional discussion around work produced by their students, previously collected
and analysed on the basis of specified guidelines and rubrics. The group meetings
followed a specific protocol, beginning with each participant’s presentation of the
analysis of their students’ work, followed by the group engaging in clarification,
probing and discussion connected with the presenter’s analysis, reaching conclusions
and offering suggestions about how to deal with situations requiring improvement,
ensuing reflection on the part of the presenter and final debriefing by the group
facilitator.
The critical thinking group meetings took place during the practicum experi-
ences of the future teachers and later during their first year of teaching and its effects
over time were documented and comparatively examined through analysis of
the group-meeting videos, teacher interviews, classroom observation and field-
notes. The group meetings and the possession of relevant tools of analysis proved
efficacious in that it was possible to document positive changes in practice occur-
ring over time in the degree of professionalism with which teachers analysed their
13 Learning from Research on Beginning Teachers 509

student’s work, particularly in relation to one of the categories of the pedagogic

model used: “pressing students for evidence-based explanations”.
The process also laid bare the important mediating role played by the pedagogic
standpoint that each participant brought to the process regarding the greater or
lesser complexity of the teaching-learning process. Thus teachers holding to an
“acquisition model of teaching” tended to explain the results of their students’ work
as problems related to students’ background and capacity, while other teachers
holding to a more problematic and complex notion of teaching tended to puzzle
about why and what might have been their own or their students’ interpretations that
led to such conclusions: “I didn’t push students to a higher level of thinking”
(Windschitl et al. 2011, p. 1323). This awareness of the role that is played by the
nature of the teaching and learning process (pedagogy) suggests the need to work
early on during teacher education on future teacher beliefs and conceptions of
teaching.

Re-configuration of Professional Identity and Practice

from Teacher Education into Classroom Teaching

The preceding sections have carried a selection of themes that are part of that which
is studied about beginning teachers and their professional development. In the first
section the centre of attention was on the content of teaching and on how teachers
enact what they have learnt about a specific field of knowledge bearing in mind, or
being affected by, the possibilities offered in an existing curriculum frame as well
as by its limitations. This enactment was illustrated through means of a limited
number of subject areas, mostly science, mathematics and language, partly because
as indicated earlier in the chapter, these tend to be subjects considered key in light
of existing national and international testing (i.e., TIMSS and PISA).
As has long been acknowledged enacting the curriculum or seeking to stimulate,
widen or transform student learning in a subject area requires thinking skills related
to knowledge of students and understanding of subject concepts and abilities as
required in music, arts or physical education. In turn, the process of teaching is
influenced by beliefs (Nespor, 1987; Pajares, 1992) that are partly acquired through
earlier school experience (Lortie, 2002), teacher education and sustained by
personal inclinations.
The preceding sections offered examples of research dealing with thinking in
teacher preparation and the enactment and managing of complexity through cogni-
tive capacity development. The social nature of teaching and teachers as relational
professionals in turn was discussed from the perspective of literature dealing with
schools, which, like other organisations, are characterised by their particular
cultures and the power relations operating within them.
The extent to which such school cultures afford opportunity for new teachers to
find a stimulating environment in line with their still developing capacities and
510 B. Avalos

pedagogic orientations was illustrated through studies looking at the “settling-in”

experience, the contextual conditions for self-efficacy development, organizational
and relational tensions and constraints leading to frustration or depression, all factors
studied also in research that identifies conditions that emotionally impact on teachers
and influence their attrition rates (Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2011). The previous section
also looked at the positive side of teacher relational capacities embodied in their
spontaneous learning together or in different forms of collaborative work – some of
which are promoted by teacher education institutions as well as schools.
In what follows, the centre of attention is on what might be termed the current
discussion and understanding of teachers’ professional learning and its support
forms in different contexts: vision and conceptions of teaching and professional
identity and its tensions, socio-political conflicts, and the support structures for
beginning teacher learning, all of which help to bring together the various interact-
ing elements illustrated in Fig. 13.1.

Vision and Conceptions of Teaching: Constructing

a Professional Self Mediated by Tensions

The decision to prepare as a teacher is not always informed by a full view of the
profession as such in the prospective teacher’s country and social context. Deciding
on a concurrent programme of teacher education immediately after completing
secondary schooling implies that other tertiary or university alternatives have been
left aside (voluntarily or involuntarily); depending on the available options not
considered or for which the person was not eligible. For some teacher education
candidates, the decision may represent the only or a secondary choice if they were
educated in systems of unequal quality observed in higher or middle-income econo-
mies such as Chile or South Africa. On the contrary other candidates may choose to
become a teacher with a good understanding of the implications of such a choice
and a clear desire to become an educator, a decision facilitated perhaps by already
being a graduate entering a post-graduate teacher education programme.
Both types of teacher candidates may attend a teacher education programme for
periods ranging between 12 and 24 months for a post-graduate course and 4–5 years
for a concurrent course, during which time presumably they will have built the
knowledge base and engaged in the practical learning needed to begin to teach.
Presumably, also they will have reconstructed their original selves and developed a
burgeoning teacher identity. The point is that there can be different motivations and
different trajectories for becoming a teacher but that in the end these converge in
having to engage and share in similar tasks and responsibilities.
Yet, how similar are these tasks and responsibilities and what is the common
thread that links them? In the light of much of the research examined for this
chapter, which is largely centred on individual teacher accounts of their trajectories
and early teaching experiences, there are many differences between one teacher and
13 Learning from Research on Beginning Teachers 511

another but also many similarities. The differences are not just due to subject
speciality, grade level, school types and contexts, but also to conceptions and approaches
related to pupils, to other teachers, to subject-matter teaching, to the facing of conflicts
even if they were graduates from a same teacher education programme.
The similarities in turn have to do with the communicative nature of teaching
whether within a direct or a constructivist approach, the need to “seduce” students
to learn whether softly or harshly, degrees of awareness of external constraints or
supports that assist in the process of teaching, and the sense that teaching while
possibly technical in its operation requires a vision to sustain improvement over
time that exceeds the narrow forms of compliance with teaching objectives. These
similarities and differences found in the approaches and practice of teachers extend
to the profession as a whole and underlie the construction of the widely researched
concept of professional identity.
Professional identity is described from different perspectives depending on the
conceptual framework used (sociological or psychological). Teacher professional
identity and task definition is dynamic and changes over time (Beijaard, Meijer &
Verloop, 2004), but is not necessarily available for communication to others unless
there is a motive to reflect and do so. The key elements that build into a teacher’s
identity are found in personal biography, teacher education specialisation and
experiences, the human and educational interactions in classrooms and schools, and
more broadly in relation to the socio-political contexts in which teachers work.
Teachers illustrate a particular configuration of their identity marked by what they
teach, whom they teach (age group, type of school) and how prepared or competent
they feel in relation to their required task. These conditions, which also include
teaching as valued by society (status, prestige) encompass views about education
and the teaching/learning process as well as pupils’ response to their acts of teach-
ing (Windschitl et al., 2011; McElhone, Hebard, Scott, & Juel, 2009). They are very
much in flux in the beginning stages of teaching. Not only is a teacher’s perceived
identity subject to re-construction over time, but it is also lived through tensions
expressed in different forms that connect with their teaching experience and their
schools as well as with the education system (Pillen, Beijaard & den Brok, 2013,
Toren & Iliyan, 2008).
Part of a teacher’s professional identity is provided by the broader vision of
teaching that is held as important. Eliciting such vision and describing the condi-
tions under which it can be enacted was the subject of McElhone et al.’s (2009)
study on the transition of primary literacy teachers from teacher education into a
diversity of schools from New York City to New Mexico towns in the United States,
through interviews and filmed lessons. In comparing patterns in the visions elicited
during these two phases of the teachers’ experiences, the researchers found a
common feature in the importance given to types of student talk and collaboration
(“productive buzz”) and to producing “colourful” classroom climates. But they also
noted the effect of the literacy subject itself on the enactment of these visions. This
meant, that those teachers whose school context did not sustain their vision of teaching
were able to hold on to it if they were equally strong in their literacy teaching
approach. On the other hand, teachers weaker in the literacy teaching approach
512 B. Avalos

became discouraged or unsure about enacting their broader vision in their everyday
teaching and tended to be drawn into the more day-to-day concerns of teaching
(McElhone et al., 2009).
The influence of different types of induction activities in sustaining teachers’
evolving professional self-conceptions as they relate to identity construction was
the subject of a case study by Cooper and Stewart (2009) in Australia. The study
was grounded in three concepts of capital as applied to teachers: professional
capital or acquired knowledge and skills; cultural capital afforded by tools and
technologies and social capital expressed as participation in networks; rituals; and,
conventions. Data was collected by means of survey, interviews and observations.
Using direct quotations from interviews with four teachers who were in their second
year of teaching, the researchers were able to assess the degree to which these
teachers grew or not, particularly in professional and social capital.
Access to quality induction experiences (not the case for all the teachers) was a
factor in how teachers managed their teaching demands and felt confident and
stimulated by what they were doing. Particularly important was the participation in
networks of collaboration which some of the induction schemes facilitated. Also
highlighted were the micro-political issues in the teacher’s context, as well as the
fading role of prior teacher education influences over the beginning teacher profes-
sional identity definitions as they encountered situations for which such experience
had no relevance.
Professional identity conceptions are very much linked to the school level or
subjects for which teachers are trained. This does not necessarily hold true for a
primary generalist teacher whose main source of identity is the age group taught
rather than a specific subject. In this respect, Smith (2007) studied the professional
identity tensions connected with the teaching of science as experienced by primary
generalist teachers in England. According to the report these teachers functioned
with different identity concepts: some clearly operating within a “generalist” iden-
tity definition, others moving towards a greater identification with the teaching of
science and a third group who saw themselves primarily as teachers of small chil-
dren rather than of middle school students. Based on these findings, Smith argued
that primary teachers’ preparation and the support provided during their early teach-
ing experiences should work towards assisting them to integrate role definitions of
a generalist cum subject-oriented perspective within their primary teacher
identities.
Similarly, from the perspective of reconciling a “geography teaching self” within
the self of a primary generalist teacher, Martin (2008) suggested that teacher
education programmes make use of the “geographical” self in which everybody
shares. This “self” is constituted in Martin’s words by the everyday geographical
knowledge that we all have – our ethnogeography – also experienced by future
teachers, beginning teachers as well as by their pupils. Because it belongs to the
every-day world, drawing on this kind of experiential knowledge in the preparation
of generalist teachers could facilitate the construction of a subject focus within a
primary teacher identity in all those thematic areas about which there is such an
experiential base.
13 Learning from Research on Beginning Teachers 513

Other identity tensions appearing in the research literature are those related to
gender in the case of male teachers who work with young children (Hansen &
Mullholland, 2005) and more specific ones involving generalist and special educa-
tion teachers who work alongside each other in primary classrooms (Youngs, Jones
& Low, 2011). The latter tensions are possibly resolved or eased by clearer and
overt valuation of inclusion in schools and classrooms on the part of the school
authorities and teachers.
The studies referred to above highlight not just the importance of identity con-
struction in new teachers but also how in this construction there are always tensions:
between visions of teaching and the degree of subject knowledge (professional
capital) to enact them, between visions of teaching and ability to be part of the
school culture and community, between male and female constructs of teaching or
between generalist or specialist, rural or urban teacher identities. The resolution of
these tensions, in the light of the studies reviewed, may to a degree, be possible
through attention being provided to them in teacher education processes and
practices, through collaborative induction experiences and through a policy-climate
that favours inclusion and respects difference.

Socio-political Issues Surrounding Beginning Teachers’

Practice

In line with prior identity definitions and with their own education and social expe-
riences, beginning teachers are not simple inexperienced practitioners when they
begin to teach. They come with visions of teaching, personal stances about the cur-
riculum and greater or lesser degrees of confidence in their teaching and managerial
capacity (self-efficacy) all of which interact with the systemic policy environment
and the particular cultures of their schools. Part of the research literature on begin-
ning teachers explores some of the conflict areas experienced by teachers in that
respect; not so much with the purpose of resolving them but of laying them bare
especially in relation to decisions about remaining or abandoning the teaching
profession. These issues vary depending on national policy contexts or the relation-
ships between local systems of education and schools (Grossman & Thompson,
2004 ) as well as reflecting conflicts within the school environment in which
the teacher begins to teach (Craig, 2013) or between the orientation of teacher
education programmes and the responsiveness of the school environment to such
orientations (Curry et al., 2008).
In facing their new schools and classrooms beginning teachers are confronted
with external frames that encircle their daily activities which in countries such as
Chile, Singapore, England, the United States and others are marked by strong
accountability policies, competition among schools, and frequent external stan-
dardised examinations. While the entire thrust of these policy instruments may not
be fully comprehensible to new teachers their impact on the organisational demands
514 B. Avalos

of the school, such as pressures to succeed in competitive examinations, of neces-

sity constrains their resolve to innovate and pushes them to conform to existing
forms and practices.
Loh and Hu (2014) offer a worrying example of how the Singaporean education
system built on neo-liberal principles and institutions broke the original idealism
and resolve of a beginning primary teacher to enact the constructivist teaching she
embraced during her teacher preparation. The study was based on interviews that
started before her final teaching practice and continued during her first year of
teaching in which a key piece of information was the narration of stories and
incidents referred to her teaching experience. Although the researchers did not set
out to examine the effects of the educational policy environment over the teacher’s
practice, it became progressively evident throughout the interviews.
Besides the hardships involved in having to teach a full schedule (contrary to
regulations that it be 80 % of contract time), the teacher involved in Loh and Hu’s
(2014) study faced a host of activities related to school competitions internal and
external, which took a big chunk of her time. She was considered “outspoken” for
raising concerns about the evaluative climate of the school management and was
not able to get the support of other teachers. Faced with a competitive environment
and its demands, the teacher found it increasingly difficult to enact her preferred
ways of teaching and gave up trying. As observed by the researchers in the course
of the year: “her beliefs and practices had metamorphosed from a passionate pursuit
of meaningful engagement to an overwhelming reliance on transmissive drill and
practice” (Lo & Hu, 2014, p. 19).
Although not entirely similar the social justice orientation of new teachers
derived from personal convictions and influenced by teacher education programmes
can also be a source of conflict in schools where testing and results are paramount
in their goals (Curry et al., 2008). Even if such stressful conditions are not the case,
enacting forms of teaching based on principles of social justice are difficult and how
teachers may progress in that direction is not always felt; especially when unable to
voice uncertainties. The authors recommend that teacher educators in programmes
oriented to social justice alert future teachers to the inevitable struggles surrounding
the teaching for social justice, scaffold opportunities for them to reflect and assist
teachers in the enactment of curriculum that incorporates social justice elements
(Agarwal, Epstein, Oppenheim, Oyler, & Sony, 2010).

Support Structures

The need for mentorship and support of beginning teachers has been widely recog-
nised, and yet as indicated earlier in the chapter, these structures are not necessarily
appropriately available for teachers in various countries. Support forms range from
spontaneous assistance offered by a beginning teacher’s colleagues in a school
situation to formal systems of induction. A comparative review of different arrange-
ments for induction in Shanghai, Switzerland, France and New Zealand (Britton,
13 Learning from Research on Beginning Teachers 515

Paine, Pimm, & Raizen, 2003) showed induction as centred on subject teaching,
understanding of pupil needs, assessment, reflective practices as well as understand-
ing the school organisation and of the self as a teacher. Howe’s (2006) review
covering the same countries as Britton et al.’s (2003) with the addition of Australia,
Canada and Germany highlighted different induction structures ranging from being
part of initial teacher education in the form of internships as in the case of Germany,
being linked to Professional Development Schools as in several locations in the
United States to loose arrangements for mentorship during the beginning years of
teaching, and possibly reduced teaching load.
The less structured forms may simply consist of information meetings or the
assignment of an experienced teacher as mentor to the new teacher. Around 45 % of
beginning teachers who responded to the OECD TALIS survey (Jensen et al. 2012)
covering 23 countries worked in schools where formal mentoring for new teachers
existed, but only 38 % indicated that the programmes were actually restricted to
those teaching for the first time. The TALIS survey also found that 54 % of the new
teachers in schools with induction programmes and mentoring only received
appraisal or feedback once a year or less.
Despite the complications produced by the diversity of induction opportunities
in different countries, over the last decade there have been a number of reviews and
studies on the effects of induction and mentoring in contexts where such practices
are well established. Searching for studies documenting the effects of mentoring
Totterdell et al. (2008) could only find a limited number, mainly in the United
States, Great Britain and Australia that showed positive effects on professional
learning, performance and retention. These positive effects depended on there being
regular meetings between mentors and new teachers, adequate time for such
meetings, and a match between both in terms of subject speciality and age/grade
taught. Wang, Odell, and Schwille (2008), covering research on induction in similar
countries plus China, concluded that the different components of induction
programmes (mentorship, workshops, classroom observation) had a combined
effect on how teachers think about teaching and their practices, but not through their
single elements. On the role of mentors, Wang’s review detected positive effects if
their belief patterns were similar to those of the new teachers and if mentors and
new teachers were matched as far as possible in subject specialisation. Equally
important in the studies reviewed by Wang et al. (2008) was that induction effects
are mediated by the social and organizational contexts of the schools in which
teachers work.
While the research done prior to 2008 should, in Wang’s (2008) view, be taken
with caution in terms of policy implications, a more recent body of research on
induction and mentoring has extended its coverage to other geographical locations
and topics. For example, research by Main (2009) examined the role of induction
within the Maori culture context in New Zealand and research in Brazil moved from
describing beginning teacher problems to evaluating the effects of an on-line men-
toring programme conducted by educators from a Brazilian university (De Reali,
Tancredi, & Mizulami, 2010). The Brazilian scheme was described in terms of three
phases, which were part of the format of the mentoring scheme, but which also
516 B. Avalos

included the lived narrative descriptions the participants transit through in the stages
of “initiation”, “targeted learning” and “disengagement or closure”.
Tynjälä and Hekkinen (2011) in reviewing teacher learning in the workplace,
referred to the peer group mentoring model developed and implemented in Finland.
Based on the notion of professional autonomy as “collective meaning making and
will formation” (Tynjälä & Hekkinen, 2011, p. 24), the model involved 4–6 new
teachers meeting infomally 6–8 times a year for an hour and a half to 3 h to exchange
experiences, discuss issues and learn from each other. An experienced teacher facil-
itated the meetings and though it may involve structured elements, it was basically
informal with no assessment involved.
Despite the growing importance given to induction and support for new teachers
in policy analysis (OECD, 2005, UNESCO/OREALC, 2013) as well as the practice
of countries such as those mentioned above, the experience of many new teachers
continues to be described as problematic and their support left to informal practices
in their schools as well as their own efforts in looking for help. This is particularly
evident in relatively recent literature on teachers in Spain (Eirin Nemiña, García
Ruso & Montero Mesa, 2009) Argentina (Serra et al., 2009), Chile (Avalos &
Aylwin, 2006; Flores, 2014), Mexico (Martínez, 2014; Tijerina & Martínez
Sánchez, 2006) and Nigeria (Koko, 2007), but also in relation to teaching
specializations such as early childhood teaching in countries with well-established
induction and mentoring practices such as the United States (Mahmood, 2013).

Conclusion

It was not an easy task to write a chapter on beginning teachers in the second decade
of the twenty-first century that would avoid rephrasing much of that which was
copiously studied at least two decades ago. Therefore, it seemed important to search
among the many research pieces developed in the last 15 years for studies that
offered new insights into the process of beginning to teach, while at the same time
reflecting the diversity of contexts and policy environments around the world where
teaching takes place. It was also useful, in terms of organising the research reviewed,
to hang on to the schematic illustration (see Fig. 13.1) of the components of a
teacher or educator’s self and the actions or constructions that enable or give form
to teaching and its quality.
The core components of Fig. 13.1 comprise the knowledge, procedures and
competences that teachers gain through education and practice, the set of emotions,
both positive and negative, that accompany teaching and are key to the job, the
quality of teaching understood as constructed with others (teachers, pupils, friends,
family, policy-makers) and critical reflective dispositions fuelled by continuing to
learn. Although teacher education experiences should help future teachers develop
these capacities and grow beyond what they originally brought with them, essen-
tially they are only put to the test when they begin to teach. The process is not, or
13 Learning from Research on Beginning Teachers 517

need not, be a solitary task for new teachers driven by a missionary sense of
commitment to the education of others. It can, and should, be enhanced, improved
and corrected as it unfolds, which is possible through support in such things as peer
mentoring (e.g., the model offered by Tynjälä and Hekkinen, 2011) based on
rigorous research about teaching and its conditions.
Throughout this chapter different pieces of research on beginning teachers were
examined and discussed. These were studies that suggested new or different ways
of understanding the beginning-to-teach phase of a teacher’s career such as thinking
about teaching and reflecting on its results, learning and sharing with others or
facing the contradictions of sites and situations in relation to acquired and believed-
in knowledge and practices. Many of the studies reviewed had different conceptual
anchors that helped to make sense of the resulting interpretations and conclusions,
such as socio-cultural and symbolic interaction theories, the notion of capital as
applied to the professional, cultural and social learning of teachers or goal achieve-
ment theory in relation to schools and their target definitions.
The studies reviewed offer several messages for teacher educators and policy
makers to seriously consider. Among the central messages is that the influence of
teacher education over what transpires in beginning to teach is not linear but rather
that it “comes and goes” (So & Watkins, 2005; Watzke, 2007). That some expected
capacities to face the uncertainties of teaching must be fostered during initial teacher
education (Bullough et al., 2008), and that it is not sufficient to infuse a sense of
working for social justice if at the same time future teachers are not helped to enact
appropriate curricular activities or learn about conditions in schools and school
systems that work against those ideals (Agarwal et al., 2010; Loh & Hu, 2014). In
turn, policy makers and school authorities must understand the contradiction
between pushing for high quality teacher education that prepares teachers to enact
challenging forms of teaching and being responsive to pupils’ needs, while further
narrowing accountability structures based on standardised testing (Cherubini, 2009;
Curry et al., 2008; Loh & Hu, 2014).
A final addendum to this chapter has to do with the research process in the studies
reviewed and a note about themes that were not included. Many of the studies
looked at the trajectories followed by teachers through teacher education and used
multiple ways of learning about their experiences, difficulties, processes, challenges
and successes. Also most of the studies reviewed were careful in the reporting of
how the qualitative data had been analysed and converted into meaningful catego-
ries to develop understanding of the given situation. There were fewer identified
large-scale studies using quantitative or mixed methods approaches, although a
number of the research articles dealt with select cases that were embedded in bigger
studies. Some important areas were not covered in this review such as working
conditions affecting the high rates of attrition among beginning teachers in many
countries, as well as much of the specific research on mentoring processes and their
effects. However, these are raised in other chapters of the Handbook and offer good
insights into the issues.
518 B. Avalos

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