STORIES OF RESILIENCEExploring resilience amongst part-time trainee teachers in the Netherlands

A presentation by Barbara Roosken

Fontys Hogescholen Tilburg, the Netherlands

EARLY CAREER TEACHERS

The profession that eats its young. The first year is extremely hectic and

generally the most difficult in a teacher’s career.

This study serves to extract the voice of the novice teacher and describe his or her specific experiences in a unique context.

EXPLORE THE INTERPLAY AMONG PERSONAL AND CONTEXTUAL FACTORS THAT OPERATE IN THE FIRST YEARS AS A PART-TIME TRAINEE TEACHER TO PROMOTE ECT RESILIENCE  

The research aims to  

1. TO GAIN INSIGHT INTO THE FACTORS THAT ALLOW THREE COHORTS OF ECTS TO GROW AS TEACHERS RATHER THAN JUST SURVIVE;

2. TO PRODUCE KNOWLEDGE THAT CAN SUPPORT ECTS’ PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT;

3. TO GAIN INSIGHT INTO HOW THE QUALITY OF TEACHER EDUCATION COULD BE IMPROVED. 

The objectives therefore are:

TRANSITION PROCESS

RESEARCH QUESTIONS 1. WHAT KINDS OF EXPERIENCES CONTRIBUTE TO CHANGES IN ECTS’ RESILIENCE?

2. WHAT KINDS OF STRATEGIES CONTRIBUTE TO CHANGES IN ECTS’ RESILIENCE?

3. WHAT PERSONAL AND CONTEXTUAL FACTORS CONTRIBUTE TO CHANGES IN ECTS’ RESILIENCE?

The research will focus on personal and contextual factors that enhance teachers’ resilience.

These factors will be further subdivided into five domains, following a study by Johnson et al. (2012) on Australian teachers.

The first three domains deal with contextual factors: policies & practices, teachers’ work, school culture and the final two domains deal with personal factors: relationships and teacher identity.

Within this research these domains provide a framework for the exploration of how the resilience of ECTs can be supported and enhanced.

FRAMEWORK

Resilience is taken to mean

“the process of, capacity for, or outcome of successful adaptation despite challenging or threatening circumstances” (Masten et al., 1990: 425)

Participants

Cohort 1 are four pre-course students, new to teaching.

Cohort 2 are four part-time ECTs who have had at least three traineeships, this means in total about 100 hours of teaching.

Cohort 3 are long term undergraduates who are often quite experienced teachers as they have taught for longer periods during the past five to ten years and all of them have had paid jobs for the larger part of their studies.

DATA COLLECTED CONSISTS OF:

Semi structured interviews conducted after school to gain an understanding of the individuals (Seidman, 2006);

A response to a written prompt on a critical incident;

line-drawings Relational maps developed by each ECTs for

each year of the research to better understand changing personal and contextual factors.

WHY INTERVIEWS?

To be able to fully understand ECTs’ teaching experiences and learn more about their answers to my questions

+ get full range and depth of information, develop relationship with ECTs, flexible- Can take much time, can be hard to analyze and compare

WHY CASE STUDIES?

To be able to fully understand and depict ECTs’ teaching experiences and conduct comprehensive examination through cross comparison of cases

+ fully depict ECTs’ experience and powerful means to portray programme to outsiders

- time-consuming to collect and describe, represents depth of information, rather than breadth

INTERVIEW QUESTIONS:

  First name, age, background, previous schooling Draw a line of your career experiences. Can you give me a brief overview of your

teaching career? Can you tell me about a few of the most

stressful incidents you have experienced? Is there anything you are particularly proud of? What are your main sources of support? Who do

you talk to? What advice would you give a teacher who

would like to apply to teach at this school?

PRELIMINARY FINDINGS 1. What kinds of experiences contribute to changes in ECTs’ resilience?

* Emphasizing the importance of relationship building

“ My colleagues gave me lots of ideas of how I should start my first sessions with the pupils. ”

* Importance of professional experience

“ The 10 week traineeship prepared me more than anything else.”

PRELIMINARY FINDINGS 2. What kinds of strategies contribute to changes in ECTs’ resilience?

* The need to make connections “ Even though I did a lot of things at the uni, I never made any connections with how it would be if I were to teach certain topics. * Sharing knowledge and experience “To be able to talk to my surpervisor and colleagues on a regular basis was extremely helpful.”

PRELIMINARY FINDINGS 3. What personal and contextual factors contribute to changes in ECTs’ resilience?

Themes:

* over commitment  “I had some issues in my private life, which meant that more time went into that.”

* balance between stress and enjoyment difficult to maintain

“There was no support system in place because there was a high turnover rate at my school, which meant I was on my own right from the start.”

A MODEL OF EARLY CAREER TEACHER RESILIENCE, MANSFIELD ET AL., 2014: 550.

(Beijaard et al., 1999)

Example of a relational map

REFERENCES

Beltman, S., (2011) Mansfield C., Price A. Thriving not just surviving: A review of research on teacher resilience. Educational Research Review, 6 (3) (2011), 185-207.

Britzman, D.P., (2003) Practice makes practice, a critical study of learning to teach, New York: State University of New York.Darling-Hammond, L., & Bransford, J. (Eds.) (2005) Preparing

teachers for a changing world. What teachers should learn and be able to do. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.Mansfield, C.F., Beltman, S., Price, A. & McConney, A. (2012)

‘Don’t sweat the small stuff: Understanding teacher resilience at the chalkface’, Teaching and Teacher Education, 28, 357-367. Tripp, D., (2012) Critical Incidents in Teaching, Developing

Professional Judgement, New York: Routledge.  

Q&A

FUTURE DIRECTIONS

Many questions remain unansweredIs having a support system more important than having individual skills?Exploration of actual experiencesLongitudinal studies with more EFL teachers and then focussing on different points in time throughout the academic yearsClarification of the role of gender in

the process (via quantitative research)

For further information or discussion, contact:

Barbara Rooskenb.roosken@fontys.nl