Section archive - Beginning Teachers

In this case study, the authors examine the ways in which one Asian immigrant teacher’s beliefs, experiences, understanding of his students, and school setting influenced his instructional decisions. The findings reveal that immigrant teachers must be learners, too, and they must recognize and negotiate the unique social understandings students from other cultures bring to the classroom. The findings suggest the participant is thoughtful about his practice and that he believes he knows what is best for immigrant students. His beliefs stem from his personal experiences as an immigrant student and this helps him shape how he teaches. He expects his students to work as hard as he did, and he provides them with the same highly structured learning environment that worked for him, both in Vietnam and in the USA. He believes if his students meet his high expectations they will become active and productive citizens.

The purpose of this study was to discover what novice teachers required to remain in the classroom. The authors identified four key elements that describe the process of teachers' attrition: entry, early experiences, pre-exit and exit. When the participants entered teaching, they were confident about what they would contribute. However, their early experiences reflected that their progress prevented. The participants were disappointed by leadership and/or veteran colleagues at pre-exit phase of leaving. The authors conclude that the participants enjoyed engaging with ideas and teaching practice during their preservice education. However, they reported that the schools they entered did not foster their growth as teachers or as individuals. They felt that this led to a sense of disillusionment, which led to their decision to leave school.

In this article, the authors were interested to examine the teaching experiences that lead beginning teachers to become early career leavers. The authors found that the participants learned to tell acceptable stories about why they decided to leave teaching profession. For example, one participant argued that she left teaching career because she wanted to become a mother or because she was accepted to graduate school. However, the authors argue that these answers are also cover stories that silence the struggles she experienced at school. Her silence about the harder to tell more complex stories could have disrupted the professional knowledge landscape of schools.

The purpose of this study was to explore the change in preservice teachers’ conceptions of effective history teaching across a secondary history methods course in a postgraduate diploma of education program. The findings reveal that three participants out of the seven clearly indicated conceptual change and professional growth. The concept maps constructed by these participants showed that conceptual understandings were established through the use of linking arrows with accompanying linking words – in a hierarchy of concepts linked to each other to form one knowledge domain.