Findings from the Early Professional Learning project Jim McNally & Allan Blake

1. Findings from the Early Professional Learning project Jim McNally & Allan Blake Department of Curricular Studies University of Strathclyde

2. EPL Project Background ESRC TLRP Phase 3 (2004-2008, £770K) Enhance competence-based professional learning ? Stirling and MMU Combine qualitative and quantitative methods Develop and test a model of EPL

3. Dimensions of EarlyProfessional Learning Identity Formation Emotional Temporal Relational Ethical Structural Cognitive Material

4. The Indicators • Job satisfaction (jobsat – 241 returns) • Children in classes taught (cepsati - 3181) • Interactions (interact - 382) • Expert Judgement (exjudge - 84) • Pupil Development (PDI -27)

6. Relationality • now a major conceptual theme, proposed in our earlier research (1994; 1997): • informal relational support as ‘natural mentoring’ • experience of new teachers governed by ‘relational conditions’ with colleagues and pupils. • supported later e.g. ‘informal support from people on the spot’ Eraut (2004)

7. Identity Formation Newcomers into teaching are joining a community of practice but this transition involves, as Wenger (1998) argues, a relationship between learning and identity in which a sense of identity is integral to the individual’s feeling of belonging. The learning is transformative and is a process of becoming a new person or, in this case, a teacher. (McNally et al. 2009: 328)

8. “I am being undermined at times when people [other teachers] come into the classroom and make comments in front of pupils about the way I am teaching or the way things are being done and I don’t necessarily think that is the way it should be done. I think perhaps that it should be said at a different time and certainly not in front of pupils.” (Butterkist)

9. A general theory of relationality ρ = 0.642, p<0.01, N = 29 Suggests that 41 per cent of the variation in new teachers’ overall job satisfaction is attributable to working relationships with colleagues.

10. Interact

13. ?

16. CEPSATI

20. No Standard Experience “It doesn’t actually give anything of me, ‘Rachael the teacher’. It’s just like a ticky box style of a form and in some cases I did put in a lot of work and to an extent I would have liked to have blown my own horn, saying I put in all this work and look what I have achieved, whereas no I just put in fourteen-eleven-o-four (14/11/04).”

21. Interviewer: Did you give out the [Cepsati] questionnaire to the pupils? New Teacher : There were some rather bizarre pictures of me that they drew and there were also some comments about it was a bad class and they didn’t behave […] they are quite a difficult class. Interviewer: Was it helpful? NT: I think it was yes, I think it was quite helpful because it raised a couple of points about things that they were doing in class and how they were kind of doing them maybe differently. We were about to start a new course for the second years and it hadn’t been written yet, so with that class I sat down and spoke to them and said, well you raised these things and I know that you don’t like doing this or that. So we spoke about things and actually discussed what they would actually like to do and based the new course roughly round that, which is something that we were planning to do anyway but didn’t realise that they felt that strongly about it, so it was quite good to get input from them.

22. What’s in a name? • “Instead of standing there, well talking the way that I probably should as a teacher. I will be more slangy with them because that is what they understand and I will be, not their friend, but I will be more friendly with them than what I probably should be. I call one of the boys, I say, ‘Come on Shauny Shaun’, and it is like, ‘nobody calls me that, just you’. You know, he appreciates that, but I would never do that with any other class but that is what they need. …. I started thinking … I need to respond to you the way that you need me to…. and that has worked.” (Kerry)

23. What Children Say • A good teacher . . . • is generous • has faith in you • keeps confidences • likes teaching children • likes teaching their subject • helps you when you're stuck • allows you to have your say • doesn't give up on you • makes you feel clever • stands up for you • tells the truth • is forgiving • Year 8 pupils from Hay McBer Report

24. Relationality 2 Very special and demanding situations, often with a crisis-like character, can lead to deep and comprehensive transformative learning processes that include simultaneous change in all the three learning dimensions (cognitive, emotional, social) and have to do with the very identity of the learner (Illeris) Learning an inherently emotional process embedded within a relational context … as an accepted concept of the development of self and identity (Bosma and Kunnen)

25. Relationality 3 Ethical nexus inscribed in relations with others in the workplace. Inescapable and bound up with technical skills. Important for human flourishing and for the quality of work that is done. (Hinchcliffe 2004)

26. Mutuality • ‘ontological security’ for pupils through teachers (Giddens) • reciprocal as new teachers are dependent on their pupils for a sense of professional purpose / acceptance as a teacher… … so, ‘reciprocal ontological security’? • teacher-pupil interdependence develops to a ‘pure relationship’ (Giddens) - depends on mutual trust. • mutuality and interdependence is fundamental to the new teachers’ experience / identity formation - and transcends the meeting of a professional ‘standard’.

27. The place of self? • ‘relational self’ - conveys agency and purpose in a self that is intrinsically dependent on pupils and colleagues and others for its emergence and expression (Hoveid and Hoveid from Schibbye) • ‘biographicity’ - the capacity that people have that could not be taught by experts … their uniqueness as a resource for building new relationships (Alheit and Dausien) • self can never be a self-sufficient construct … placed radical emphasis on particularity and situatedness … abstract questions about selfhood only pursued as specific questions about location (Bakhtin)

28. … and self again Self under self, a pile of selves I stand Threaded on time and with metaphysic hand Lift the farm like a lid and see Farm within farm, and in the centre, me. (from ‘Summer Farm’ by Norman MacCaig) EPLwebsite http://www.strath.ac.uk/curricularstudies/eplproject/