A framework for supporting early career teacher resilience

1. A framework for supporting early career teacher resilience

2. The ‘Problems’ of ECTs Well documented: • Inadequacies of pre-service education; • Classroom demands overwhelm ECTs. High levels of ECT attrition. What other ‘problems’ do ECTs experience? What ‘solutions’ are often suggested?

3. Commonly Proposed ‘Solutions’ • Fragmented, uncoordinated, simplistic; • Reactive focus on ‘problem behaviours’ & deficits; • Construct ECTs as lacking agency & competence; and • Fail to acknowledge the complexity of ECTs’ contexts. Need to re-think the issues using the notion of ‘teacher resilience’.

5. Resilience • Most commonly conceived as a personal trait that enables individuals to ‘bounce back’ in difficult times. • Frequently used to simplify the quite complex ways in which people respond to adverse circumstances. • In contrast, we wished to problematise this taken-for-granted view of resilience. By using a socio-cultural and critical approach we challenged the implicit assumption that resilience primarily resides within individuals.

6. Resilience • ‘Resilience’ is a metaphor that expresses, in one word, teachers’ capacity to draw on their individual, collective and institutional resources to cope with the demands and challenges of their profession. • Enables us to better understand how the dynamic and complex interplay between individual, relational and contextual conditions affects teachers’ sense of empowerment and agency.

7. Resilience • Critically resilient teachers understand the ways in which social, cultural and political influences impact on their professional and personal lives. They use that understanding to generate new possibilities for action, grounded in a spirit of hope, optimism and agency. • Resilience implies action; critical resilience implies action to promote social justice, teacher empowerment, teacher capabilities, and teacher well-being.

8. Aims • Apply a ‘critical resilience’ theoretical framework to the study of the complex lives of early career teachers. • Identify the range of circumstances that put early career teachers ‘at risk’ of leaving the profession. • Better understand the dynamic and complex interplay among individual, relational and contextual conditions that operate over time to promote teacher resilience. • Identify specific policies, practices and resources that best promote early career teacher resilience.

9. Conditions • Focus on what ‘conditions’ promote early career teacher well being • Practices • Circumstances • Situations • Processes • Events

10. Methodology • Participants: • 60 elementary & high school ECTs and a member of their leadership team across South & Western Australia • Data collection: • 2 semi-structured interviews with ECTs • 1 semi-structured interview with leader • All interviews were audio-recorded & transcribed • Thematic analysis

13. Participants Table 1: Demographic characteristics of participants (n=60)

14. Locations

15. Development of a Framework of ‘supportive conditions’ • Lots of reading, discussing and coding of 1,800 pages of transcript • Identified many factors that • threaten teachers’ well being • promote teachers’ well being • Focussed on the positive practices, circumstances, situations, processes, and eventsthat were linked to positive outcomes for our early career teachers • Distilled 18 ‘conditions’ that we group within 5 themes

16. Development of a Framework of ‘supportive conditions’ • Systems’ ‘policies and practices’ refers to the officially mandated statements, guidelines, values and prescriptions that impact on beginning teacher wellbeing. • 3 conditions • ‘Teachers’ work’ refers to the complex range of practices, knowledge, relationships and ethical considerations that comprise the role of the teacher. • 4 conditions • ‘School culture’ refers to the values, beliefs, norms, assumptions, behaviours and relationships that characterise the daily rituals of school life. • 4 conditions

17. Development of a Framework of ‘supportive conditions’ • ‘Relationships’ refers to the social networks, human connections and sense of belongingness that early career teachers need to successfully adapt to the demands of their profession. • 4 conditions • ‘Teacher identity’ refers to the development of ‘self-understanding’ that enables novice teachers to maintain a coherent sense of personal identity while learning what it means to ‘be a teacher’ in different contexts and at different times. • 3 conditions

19. Expanding the Framework Johnson, B., Down, B., Le Cornu, R., Peters, J., Sullivan, A. M., Pearce, J., & Hunter, J. (2012). Early career teachers: Stories of resilience. Adelaide, South Australia: University of South Australia. Each of the 18 conditions in the Framework are elaborated and include: • A ‘story’ based on the experiences of an early career teacher that demonstrates the relevance and salience of the condition • A short commentary on the ‘story’ that links the local experiences of the new teacher to bigger ideas • A list of possible, practical actions that stakeholders, school leaders, teachers, and early career teachers could initiate to promote resilience

20. Expanding the Framework Johnson, B., Down, B., Le Cornu, R., Peters, J., Sullivan, A. M., Pearce, J., & Hunter, J. (2012). Early career teachers: Stories of resilience. Adelaide, South Australia: University of South Australia. • Quotes from our early career teachers and school leaders that illustrate the importance and power of the condition • Quotes from the literature that add meaning to the discussion • A counter list of practices that constrain resilience to show what not to do when new teachers are appointed • A series of critical questions for reflection and further conversations

21. Further work New book: Moving beyond blame: socio-cultural and critical approaches to early career teacher resilience. Routledge: Teacher Quality and School Development Series, edited by Chris Day and Ann Lieberman.

22. Contacts bruce.johnson@unisa.edu.au anna.sullivan@unisa.edu.au www.ectr.edu.au