Researching Early Professional Learning

Researching Early Professional Learning

Jim McNally, Nick Boreham, Peter Cope (Stirling) and Ian Stronach (MMU)

Paper presented at Annual BERA Conference

September 2003

Edinburgh

Abstract

In the context of greater public and political attention to standards in the professions, the areas of induction and initial ‘training’ have been a particular focus for policy makers. Despite much criticism over the years it is the competence-based model which continues as the basis for the expression of professional standards or ’benchmarks’. This paper argues that effective critique now requires an extended empirical scrutiny of competencies in practice. How are competence-based expressions of standards actually used by practitioners and what sort of meanings do they attach to them? What do we really know about how beginners experience becoming competent as a whole or in any specific competency? This renewed scrutiny of competence, however, should only be part of an attempt to develop a more comprehensive appreciation of ‘early professional learning’ (EPL). Starting from a perspective on teacher education, and building on previous findings by the authors and others, a case is advanced for informal learning, context and identity formation as major components of that understanding. The paper also discusses a possible research design of a more ambitious scale and combination of methods if we are to gain a more authentic, deeper understanding of EPL.

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A proposal based on the ideas in this paper has been accepted for ESRC funding in TLRP Phase 3

The Conceptual Basis of Early Professional Learning

Competence-based professional standards

The arguments against standards based on lists of specific, behavioural competencies have been well covered before (e.g. Barnett, 1994; Stronach et al, 1994); yet such descriptions of performance have continued to serve as the basis of public accountability for some professions. In Scotland, the standards for new entrants to teaching have been formally governed by a succession of official documents that have become increasingly expansive in their lists of specific statements of competence (SOED, 1993; SOEID, 1998; QAA, 2000; Scottish Executive, 2001). Contact with practitioners, however, including interviews with headteachers (McNally, 2001), suggests the continuing use of judgements of a more holistic and socially constructed nature, such as ‘having the respect of classes taught’, ‘being valued by colleagues’ and ‘contributing to aspects of whole school life’. Although this notion is part of the standard for full registration (SFR), it is largely obscured by discrete competencies (listed as benchmarks and expected features).

The content and form of such professional standards in teaching do not appear to be based on any explicit theoretical foundation, research–informed framework or set of argued principles. Nor do they represent the process of learning to teach, an activity which is a complex, socially situated process of intuition and implicit theorising, with a degree of uncertainty in how its knowledge base develops (Shulman, 1986). We know little, for example, about whether or how new teachers draw on theory from their initial preparation as students, or the extent to which this student-to-teacher transition represents the kind of continuity presumed by connected, consecutive standards (e.g. the ITE Standard and the SFR in Scotland). These standards describe aspects of and, more interpretively, levels of performance, not how performance develops or is learned. Furthermore, their routine application to the progress of individual learners is likely to result in decontextualised assessment and reporting of performance. A first question for research is to find out how new teachers and their support practitioners actually make sense and use of competence statements, whether holistic or specific in expression, in the early years of practice.

Informal learning and social context

It is clear, however, that context is crucial. Ideas such as a ‘community of practice’ (Sergiovanni, 1994; Wenger et al, 2002), ‘situated learning’ (Brown et al, 1989), learning to teach as a ‘rite of passage’ (White, 1989), have a strong presence in the narratives of beginning teachers. We found strong evidence that ‘affective engagement with colleagues and classes taught was of paramount importance’ in their experience (McNally et al, 1994; 1997). There is evidence that an environment which hinders such engagement acts as an inhibitor to informal learning (Lohman, 2000). It is also the case that the formation of a conceptual understanding of early development in teaching benefits from ideas outside the conventional, largely insular literature on teacher education. There is explanatory power in ideas such as the importance of friendship (White, 1990); the formation of human bonds (Almond, 1988); psychosocial support and integration (Jacobi, 1991); adult development (Levinson et al, 1978). We developed the grounded concept of ‘relational conditions’ - for example ‘letting go’, ‘dropping in’, ‘always there’, ‘one of the team’ - as a way of explaining the social context within which individual beginners lived the text of their own development between extremes of ‘total abandonment’ and ‘rigidly controlled, stifling support’. The explanation is consistent with findings in studies of other teaching contexts (e.g. Oberski et al, 1999), but also with accounts in cultural psychology of the reciprocity between the ontogenesis and sociogenesis of knowledge (Valsiner and van de Veer, 2000).

New teachers also rely informally on pupils for their professional acceptance and socialisation. A pupil perspective on the new teacher is therefore required. From the established body of knowledge on what pupils say makes a good teacher, we can see that the language of children e.g. ‘is a good laugh’, ‘doesn’t shout a lot’, ‘great at Karate’ (e.g. Brown and McIntyre, 1993) is, not surprisingly, different from the language of competencies. Not that this is exclusive to teacher development. Interaction with the patient perspective in medicine results in development in areas unique to neophyte practitioners, as revealed through creative writing opportunities (Hatem and Ferrara, 2001).

The narrative data of our earlier research suggested that the strong socio-emotional nature of the transition to teacherhood might actually conceal subtler insights into the learning of beginners. Glimpses of ‘theory’ from their ITE course, for example, appeared in their narratives, a finding further explored by Drever and Cope (1999), who concluded that theory use such as this is highly context-dependent and is explanatory rather than predictive. In contrast to competence–based descriptions of early teacher development, this preliminary theorising, though strong on its broad base of evidence, is weak in fine detail. Progressive focusing on this large-scale but vague picture of informal learning could lead to a more detailed understanding. Is there, for example, is a shift from ‘maximum social relatedness’ (Valsiner, 1994) to greater independence of individuals, as Billet (2002) found in his study of workplace learning. The typology of ‘non-formal’ learning (implicit, reactive and deliberative) constructed by Eraut (2000) is likely to be another useful theoretical starting point in any conceptual framework to be devised for the progressive focussing on the nature of early professional learning.

There is then a weight of evidence and practitioner opinion indicating a strong informal, social dimension in the experience of becoming a teacher that is neglected in policy. A second major question for research, therefore, concerns the ways in which significant relationships and communities influence the early professional learning of teachers and how can these be used to develop a clearer map of non-formal learning in a professional social context?

Developing an integrated conceptualisation of EPL

Rather than hold these two contrasting views of early professional development in opposition to each other, an empirical, open-minded approach could take our understanding of each further and synthesise a more comprehensive practical theory. A recognition of positive policy impact ought to be enhanced through an equivalent recognition of the underlying realities of practice. Previous mentoring models for new teachers, for example, ultimately failed because they represented preconceptions of teaching and of learning to teach, uninformed by grounded theory e.g. the informal, natural mentoring culture that exists in schools, or research in other disciplines (McNally, 1994).

Although we propose these as the two main areas for investigation, there are other potential themes to consider in EPL. One concern is that any emergent theory/model does not overlook the intrinsic personal qualities and diversity of talent that new teachers bring to their work. Policy has undervalued this, though Reid (2001) did address the matter in his keynote speech to UCET. Children tend to include human qualities, for example ‘tells the truth’, ‘stands up for you’ (Hay McBer, 2000) as ‘their’ indicators of professional competence. This could be part of a broader focus on the nature of contemporary professional identity. Exploring the interrelation between professional learning and personal development should also recognise that individual life histories and societal shifts do have rather different registers and rhythms (Oleson, 2001). Official documents on standards and professional development do not acknowledge the student-to-teacher transition as problematic in nature. Yet it appears to be essentially so; new teachers themselves are sensitive to the distinction. It seems that the transition may be better understood in terms of the beginning teacher as a developing individual person with a biography, and the wholly different contexts of learning as a student and as an employed new teacher (Flores, 2001).

Understanding the first few years of teacher development as a whole is, as we exemplified earlier, likely to find illumination in the literatures of other disciplines. Other examples are those which examine the micropolitics of teacher induction and relate the individual professional to the organisation (Clement and Vendenberghe, 2000) in terms of autonomy and collegiality, or consider the ecology of learning communities (Lave, 1996). New theories of professional practice and learning may also need to accommodate questions of uncertainty, ambiguity and conflict in accounts of diverse professional selves and emerging identities, as argued by Stronach et al (2002) from their data on teachers and nurses. This leads to a third question about how early professional learning and support can be grounded and tested in practice, and also encompass competence, person and context (in a way that accommodates procedures of regulatory bodies such as GTCs).

Further aspects of conceptual development

These three research questions express our view of what should guide research towards an appreciation of what drives the actual development of teachers in the early stages of their professional experience. The focus of the initial empirical base could be in any of a number of contexts but should be gradually extended into other contexts. In seeking experiential commonalities and generalisable principles for early professional learning, it is inevitable that distinctive contextual differences will be found. Indeed, a comparative strand is surely to be welcomed in an area of teacher development which has seen recent, separate initiatives within the countries of the UK (e.g. DENI, 1999; DfEE, 1999) and a number of evaluations (e.g. Harrison, 2001; Bubb, 2000; Bubb et al, 2001; Simco, 1999; Tickle, 2000b). Recent research in England (Hustler et al, 2002) indicates that mentoring was an important aspect of the early learning experience, that it was a two-way process, and that respondents cited as many as 16 different types of influence (suggesting a large hinterland of informal learning).

Although valuable information is to be gained from such studies, an enduring weakness is the absence of longitudinal data. There is a need to track – from the inside - the development of at least one cohort of new teachers for some three years if we are to obtain insights from the frontline on deeper issues of professionality. This longitudinal dimension would generate data on the extent to which there are discontinuities of development at the key transitions of ‘student to inductee’ and ‘inductee to fully qualified teacher’. This kind of understanding is important for the development of meaningful policy formation on induction with perhaps a direct bearing on policy relating to teacher retention.

The case so far has been about EPL in teaching but clearly the study of EPL in a range of other professional contexts is necessary. Our proposal (as teacher educators and educational researchers) is to start from our own knowledge base and extend outwards. We anticipate that early data on potential defining differences between professions would actually be elicited from a broad sample of new teachers, as it could well include some who happen to be mature entrants from other professions. We would also draw on some of our work in related areas, for example organisational learning and health professionals (e.g. Boreham, Shea and Mackway-Jones, 2000; Boreham et al, 2002; Boreham, 2000; Cope et al, 2000; Stoddart, Cope et al, 1996; Stronach et al, 2002). A particular interest is the issue of evidence-based practice and the argument that this is used by practitioners as a rhetorical resource in the articulation of professional autonomy and identity (McLaughlin, 2001). A more direct application is a broader and deeper understanding of inter-professionality in initiatives such as the development of integrated learning communities and new community schools. The broad areas and direction of conceptual development we have in mind may be represented schematically:

CONCEPTUAL DEVELOPMENT IN RESEARCHING EPL

Practical Impact

With educational research under pressure to show some practical impact on policy, there is an obligation to envisage what that impact might be. First and foremost, there would be a comprehensive grounded understanding of early professional learning (EPL). Such a theoretical basis is surely always a major responsibility of research. A closer policy connection is the location of a competence-based standard within this extended framework of grounded and tested principles governing early professional development. A particular requirement would be to establish the relative importance of particular areas of competence or specific competencies in different contexts and at different stages and transitions. At a broader professional level, the identification of commonalities and defining differences across a range of professional situations would be a welcome contribution to inter-professional understanding.