This paper examines how early career teachers cope with or manage the challenges that they experience during the transition from pre-service to the first and then the second year of teaching as they seek to establish stable, positive, professional identities and teach effectively in various school and policy contexts. Findings from three waves of…

This paper presents an international comparison of Australian and Spanish secondary teachers' perceptions about the effectiveness of their pre-service education and their learning as in-service teachers. It aims to identify, firstly, the extent to which beginning teachers believe they are prepared for their careers through their teacher training…

The results presented in this article are taken from a case study of novice primary school mathematics teachers' professional identity development from the perspective of the teachers themselves. The empirical material was collected through self-recordings, observations and interviews. The results show how the professional identity development of…

This article reports findings from a study of 14 beginning teachers in their first year of teaching in primary schools. By the end of the first year, half were reconsidering their long-term commitment to teaching. The study found they were considering leaving because they were struggling to be the teachers they had envisaged being. One reason for…

Novice teachers need to develop their professional judgment. Teaching is performed in the face of imperfect, complex but above all continuously emergent situations. These matters have not received adequate attention in theories relating to professional judgment and professionality in teaching or in the contemporary discourse of education policy.…

This paper addresses beginning teachers thinking about the nature and purposes of their subject and the impact of this on their practice. Individual qualitative interviews were undertaken with 11 history teachers at the beginning of their teaching careers. Data was analysed using writing as the method of analysis and revealed that teachers whose…

In this article, the early professional development of mature, early career teachers who entered the profession via an employment-based route to teaching in England is presented and explored from the teachers' own perspectives. From a larger sample in a longitudinal study, the development of four career changers is traced in detail, using a model…

In recent years there has been very high international interest around induction programmes aiming for the smooth integration of newcomer teachers in the working environment of the school unit. In addition, educational systems in many countries lay great importance on the provision of equal opportunities to all students and the provision of a more…

Today the quality of teachers is held to be increasingly important yet there continue to be doubts about whether teacher education programs graduate teachers ready to meet the challenges of their initial years of teaching. In some jurisdictions, other agencies (Ministries of Education, school districts, and private providers) are supplementing the…

The authors conducted a phenomenological inquiry that described factors that influenced two novice and two experienced teachers' decisions to remain in the teaching field. These teachers taught in both Title I and non-Title I elementary schools, and their teaching experiences ranged from four months to 38 years. Data for this research…

This article presents findings from a large-scale, longitudinal study of teachers' experiences of initial teacher preparation and early professional development in England. Data were generated via annual surveys, in-depth interviews and email communications. The study established that beginner teachers' perceptions of the support they received…

Experience in the workforce influences teacher educators' responses to professional development efforts for adapting new practices. This study examines trajectories of novices and experienced teacher educators in a three-year longitudinal professional development community focused on infusing thinking into college teaching. A four-stage trajectory…

Each year, the National Center for Educational Statistics, through the US Department of Education Institute of Educational Sciences, publishes information about the need for millions of new teachers in the USA. Many of these positions are in urban schools. What makes new teachers beat the odds and remain in challenging schools? This study…

Using a longitudinal design, the job satisfaction and career development of beginning teachers are explored in the present study. Beginning teachers were initially interviewed after graduation from the teacher training programme and then after gaining a two-year teaching experience. The results are presented in a fourfold typology in which the…

This study focusses on a group of student teachers who were participants on the Post Graduate Diploma in Education at a Scottish university and assesses their engagement with cooperative learning as a result of their training. The participants were experientially trained in cooperative learning approaches through modelling by their tutor for the…