AARE-NZARE conference, Melbourne, November 29-December 2 1999

Paper no. LAN99269

Studies of the readiness to teach of beginning teachers indicate a range of areas in which these teachers feel nervous about beginning teaching, prior to beginning in their first teaching position (Housego 1994; Lang, 1996; Weinstein, 1988; Wilson, Ireton & Wood, 1997). Studies of the first year of teaching, across several decades, demonstrate that the reality shock of teaching is something that affects beginning teachers in a variety of ways (Battersby, 1981; Carre, 1993; Corcoran, 1981; Hanson & Herrington, 1976; Olson & Osborne, 1991; Pataniczek & Isaacson, 1981; Ryan, 1971; Veenman, 1984; Wideen, Mayer-Smith & Moon, 1998; Zeichner & Gore, 1976; Zeichner & Tabachnick, 1985; ). The literature on the stages of teacher development tells us that the 'survival' stage in teaching (Kagan, 1992; Katz, 1977; Reynolds, 1992) can last throughout the whole of the first year of teaching.

My own interest in this topic arises out of work undertaken earlier (Lang, 1996), which studied the feelings of preparedness to teach of beginning teacher graduates of the University of Waikato's primary pre-service teacher education programmes. During interviews for that research, once the participants had begun teaching, beginning teachers identified the struggles they had had in surviving their first year of teaching. Tiredness, stress on personal and family relationships, and the lack of balance in their lives between work, domestic responsibilities, and leisure activities were mentioned by many of the participants. As well, poor access to support structures and resources within their schools had placed stresses on these teachers and had exacerbated their struggles to survive as teachers. During interviews in the latter part of their first year of teaching, several teachers identified points in the year when things had begun to get a little easier, when they felt they were now 'getting on top' of some of the aspects of life as a teacher. That is, they were beginning to move beyond the survival stage.

This aspect of teaching - the survival process in the early part of one's career as a teacher - is one about which there is little research evidence in New Zealand. The School Support Service advisers, attached to the traditional providers of pre-service teacher education in New Zealand, coordinate induction programmes for beginning teachers in which a high proportion of new teachers participate. However there is little New Zealand data, other than anecdotal evidence, on which advisers can base planning for these programmes. The New Zealand Teacher Registration Board expects that all beginning teachers will have an induction programme within their schools, designed

to meet their individual needs. Knowledge about the survival process for beginning teachers (how long it takes to get to a point where teachers are feeling they are doing more than simply getting "...through the day in one piece" (Katz, 1997:7)) may assist both the School Support advisers and individual schools in designing their advice and guidance programmes.

The literature on teacher development suggests that there are at least four developmental stages through which teachers pass during their careers. The amount of time teachers spend in each of the stages may vary considerably, and this variance can be dependent upon a number of factors, including the teacher's own self concept and feelings of self efficacy; the context in which they begin teaching and continue to teach and the support provided in that context; and circumstances outside the school such as family and social factors.

The four stages of teacher development are variously described in the literature. Katz's descriptors are useful: survival, consolidation, renewal, and maturity (Katz, 1977). The first stage, survival, may continue beyond the first year of teaching for some, depending upon circumstances. For others it may be a few months. Others still, may even be beyond the survival stage right from their first day of teaching. The survival stage is the one in which teachers ask questions such as "Can I get through the day in one piece? Without losing a child? Can I make it until the end of the week - the next vacation? Can really do this kind of work day after day? Will I be accepted by my colleagues?" (Katz, 1997:7-8). During the survival phase there are many things on which beginning teachers rely to help them survive - from yoga and meditation through to dependence on alcohol; support from colleagues within the school to counselling from trained specialists. Partners and families are important, as are things like handy hints for time and resource management and getting through paper work and other tasks.

Whilst the literature identifies the survival phase in beginning teaching as almost an essential part of the process of learning to teach, it is also identified that some beginning teachers do not actually experience this phase, or go through it only fleetingly and are competent teachers from the very beginning of their careers.

Recent studies (Mansell, 1996; Harker, Gibbs, Ryan, Weir & Adams, 1998) indicate that the percentage of teachers leaving the New Zealand teaching workforce is significantly high. Mansell's study in particular, identifies that a high proportion of teachers leave the service within the first five years of their careers. Teacher shortages in New Zealand in the mid to late 1990s can be attributed in part to this teacher attrition. For beginning teachers, how they survive the first year, if they do, can be a significant factor in decisions about remaining in the profession.

This study is part of a larger, longitudinal research project which explores the experiences of beginning teacher graduates of the primary teacher education programmes at the University of Waikato. The aim of this study was to identify the following:

The purpose of this particular aspect of the project is to examine the process of beginning teaching by particularly studying the progress through survival to the consolidation phase, and will influence teaching in the University's courses, as well as the work of the University's School Support advisers in assisting with the induction of beginning teachers into the profession during their first two years of teaching.

It was not until the 1980s that the notion of mentoring, then already extant in business and government organisations, was adopted in education and began to be formalised. In New Zealand this was the case. The induction of beginning teachers prior to 1990 was an informal process within the school, with largely cursory checks of teacher competence being made by Department of Education inspectors near the end of a teacher's first year in the profession. Now, the New Zealand Teacher Registration Board requires that all beginning teachers have a programme of advice and guidance specifically tailored for them during their first two years teaching, and a 0.2 time allowance to support this induction process is provided in the first year of teaching. Even though formalised induction processes have been in place for some eighteen years, it would appear from conversation with advisers in the School Support Services, who coordinate beginning teacher induction programmes, that much of what comprises these induction programmes is based on trial and error and does not seem to be based on the research literature on the stages of teacher development.

This paper reports the responses of seven year one teachers, to a survey completed at the end of 1998, which for most of them was the end of their first year as teachers. Two of the participants began teaching half way through 1998. Four of the seven had undertaken an intensive thirteen month Primary Diploma of Teaching programme for graduates (Beth, Di, Paula and Rahera). The other three had completed a four year concurrent programme from which they graduated with the Primary Diploma of Teaching and a Bachelor of Education degree (Hilary, Kathie and Louise). The survey comprised three questions, as follows:

All but one of the seven identified that things began getting easier for them in the second half of the school year, that is after teaching for two terms of ten weeks each. Two of these were people who began teaching in term three of the four term school year. Paula's and Louise's responses were typical:

Louise talked about the stress of each day as well:

Kathie was the only one of the seven who had not found the earlier part of her year more stressful than the latter, saying "I have actually found the whole year easy (over all! I have had a few difficult times)." (Kathie, November 1998)

The teachers had had to survive a range of difficulties, from illness to being attacked by a child. Many of the stresses appeared to derive from the high expectations the teachers held of themselves, such as those mentioned by Paula above - the feeling that everything needed to be done in a day. Energy levels and the long hours of work were particularly noted. Rahera, who was teaching in a Maori language class, which was supposed to be total immersion in the language, had stresses unique to her situation. She wrote:

The most commonly mentioned factors that had helped these teachers survive their first year of teaching were:

Louise's comment summed up the first of these:

Beth, who was teaching part time in a much smaller school than Louise, also had positive things to say about planning and teaching together with another teacher. She also commented that it enabled her to combine the role of mother of a young child with that of teacher:

The significance of their tutor teacher was mentioned by five of the seven teachers - four of them because they had received great support, the fifth had had support, but felt in some instances she had been restricted by her tutor teacher at some times. Paula said

Louise had had a similar experience:

It is interesting that two of the participants did not mention tutor teachers at all, despite this being one of the prompters in the question about things that have helped them survive. These two mentioned other people and things that had helped - one could presume tutor teachers were not significant for them.

The uniqueness and special difficulties of Rahera's situation arose again in relation to her tutor teacher. Being one of only two Maori on the staff at her school meant potentially she had few if any colleagues who understood the particular difficulties of teaching in the immersion class. She said

Rahera also identified the need for support people who shared her cultural background and who were more likely to understand the nature of her job as an immersion teacher. More Maori teachers joined the staff later in the year and provided a support network.

Arguably the need to have support 'meetings' over and above the other meetings involved in school could place greater stress on Rahera and other teachers in her situation. More meetings mean less time for other things.

Keeping on top of the paper work is another factor that has enabled these teachers to survive. For some this had meant getting to school early so that they can get on with tasks without interruptions from colleagues, parents and children, and when they were fresh and able to concentrate. Both Paula and Kathie mentioned this. Paula said

Kathie's comments echo this:

Kathie even went as far as saying she aims to have work commitments completed two days before the set deadline and that ensures she finishes things on time without undue stress.

Sleep was important and was identified by four people - Di, Kathie, Louise and Paula. Louise combined this with advice about eating and being critical of yourself - the latter being something mentioned in several responses and described earlier in relation to those teachers who felt they needed to get everything done in a day. She put it like this:

Support from people other than tutor teachers was something also identified - often this support was from outside the school. Both Beth and Hilary mentioned their partners as key supports in their survival. Beth said "I wouldn't be where I am today if it weren't for the support on my partner! (Beth, November 1998). Hilary went further and described the help she had had from her partner, also a teacher, which she had needed because she did not receive the kind of help she needed from her school. She said she had been helped to survive by

Hilary had felt at odds with some of the values in her school and had needed moral support from outside to stay true to her beliefs. She also identified another beginning teacher colleague who got her through tough times, providing support from outside the school - she described this as

Paula talked about the need to communicate with others when there are difficulties, if a teacher is to survive. Her comment was

She also said to survive effectively as a teacher, she needed to remind herself that there were other more important things in life than her job. She said

There was a range of other support systems and survival techniques, which varied widely and which were related by these teachers in their responses.

For Louise, a key factor in her success as a beginning teacher was living with her parents. She said she had been helped by

Louise also mentioned that focussing on teaching alone and not taking on any outside activities had helped her, particularly in the first term. Having a reliable car also made a difference for Louise - "one less stress, especially if travelling some distance to work". She had also managed to find time to relax and do other things at the weekend. Louise had advice for other beginning teachers about using parent helpers to help them survive. She recognised parents can sometimes make stress for teachers, but she put it this way:

Louise also discussed her perception of how beginning teachers might fare in schools of different socio-economic decile rankings, saying she believes being in a middle ranked school is probably easier for a beginning teacher. She said

Both Beth and Rahera mentioned exercise as a means of aiding the survival process. Beth had kept fit, saying

Rahera, on the other hand, said "Next year I must organise myself into getting more exercise", recognising that exercise may have helped her with her particularly stressful situation.

Rahera also identified that having had children of her own may have made her better prepared for teaching and therefore more able to cope and survive. She said

Di attended a motivational course part way through the year and found the things she learned on the course helped her survive. She also said time to herself was important with a good book, and that she used television to numb her mind when stressed.

Hilary commented that an important factor in her survival was having a belief in herself, even though this had to be encouraged by others. This echoes the comments of Louise, reported earlier about not being too critical of yourself, and the recognition that it's all too easy for teachers to be highly critical of themselves.

All seven teachers were striving to do their best and in most cases had taken around six months to get beyond survival stage. When describing things they would have liked to have learned about prior to beginning teaching, so that survival could be easier, there was a range of responses, however there was very little commonality in the needs identified.

Beth had completed an intensive thirteen month pre-service programme for graduates and said

Beth did identify that she felt reading/language was a weakness area for her as a teacher, and that this was seen as one of the most important areas of the primary school curriculum. She had become stressed as a result , and said

Di was the teacher who had faced an attack by a child and as a result felt she would have liked to know more about how to handle such situations. She said she would have liked

Hilary's plea was for "an outline of what to expect - in terms of support in professional development etc." Hilary felt she had not been adequately supported in her school but was uncertain about how much support she should expect and how demanding she should be about insisting upon it.

Kathie's focus, in terms of her perceived needs, was on curriculum. Her list is as follows

In some ways, these are 'small' wishes, and given that Kathie is the teacher who identified she had not really felt herself to be in survival mode at all during her first year teaching, it could be that she has 'skipped' the survival stage completely and has been operating at the next level, which Katz (1977) refers to as the 'consolidation' stage. It may be that Kathie is now looking at refining her curriculum knowledge and even moving into some areas of specialisation or expertise.

Louise's list of things she would have liked to have had included in her university programme, and which she felt would have helped her survive, is longer:

Paula identified a short list of aspects of teaching she would have liked to have known about, and these differ in the main from those described thus far:

Rahera's needs were focussed on her role as a teacher in a total immersion Maori class:

This comment of Rahera's highlights the extra workload carried by teachers in total and partial immersion Maori language classes, in terms of the resources available, or rather not available to teachers and children, but also the fact that teachers in these classes are coming to terms with new vocabulary, often especially invented for terms in the various primary school curriculum areas. These words are not commonly known in conversational Maori - specialist education jargon terms are regularly being developed by the Maori Language Commission for terms such as mathematical concepts.

Rahera undertook the intensive pre-service programme for graduates and as such did not study second language acquisition and techniques for teaching in the Maori language. This puts her at a disadvantage in terms of preparation to teach in such settings, in comparison with her colleagues in the specialist four year rumaki [immersion] teacher education programme which specifically prepares teachers for work in the immersion context.

Amongst the above comments about teacher needs, the area of language-literacy education is the only one which is identified by more than one of the seven teachers, and this may be, as Beth says, because such a high level of importance is placed on it in schools, and it is also an area in which parents can be critical of teachers if they perceive classroom programmes to be inadequate.

The fact that there are no other common 'needs' appears to indicate that the teachers who did not have the particular needs that were identified by others of their colleagues must have learned about those things somewhere. All the needs listed are elements of the pre-service programmes at the University of Waikato, including their attendant practicum experiences. One could speculate that perhaps student teachers take in pre-service course content with lesser or greater emphases depending on their beliefs about themselves and what their future as teachers might be like. That is, perhaps some student teachers don't see the relevance of particular elements of their programmes or that they will need to apply particular theory or learning when they have a class of their own. Comments made by beginning teachers in other studies such as my earlier one (Lang, 1996) indicate that beginning teachers do recognise that perhaps they can't learn everything about their job whilst they are at university and that some things are learned 'on the job' once they begin teaching in their first year. Perhaps beginning teachers lose sight of the fact that in New Zealand the first two years of teaching, prior to full registration, are a continuation of their teacher preparation and that the reason they are assigned a tutor teacher is for that very purpose - the continuation of their preparation. Louise, for instance, cites a long list of needs, but also identifies that her tutor teacher support was only strong in term one of the school year - perhaps if this had continued throughout the year she might not have such a long list. Aspects of teaching such as detailed models for writing reports to parents about their children, as identified by Paula, are idiosyncratic to individual schools and are best handled by working alongside the tutor teacher (although a general introduction is included in the University programme). Paula undertook the intensive programme for graduates, which does not include the compulsory separate course on assessment, which students in the four year programme had undertaken. This aspect of teaching is covered in the intensive course in an integrated manner in the curriculum and professional practice courses. The fact that she had not undertaken the assessment course may however partially account for her feelings of uncertainty about writing reports.

Comments about ideas for curriculum and about which topics to teach in which order are interesting, as these aspects of classroom life are also idiosyncratic to individual schools' long term plans, to individual classrooms and to individual children or groups of children, and the emphasis in teacher education in new Zealand is that programmes in each curriculum area should be designed based on children's identified learning needs at the time. Another interpretation might be that Paula and Louise were seeking 'recipe type' answers to questions about teaching. The literature tells us that teachers seek such responses at times when they are uncomfortable about innovation or when they do not reflect on their teaching. Perhaps both these teachers were so busy with the demands of student teacher and then beginning teacher life, that they did not have time to stop and reflect. Perhaps they were teaching in environments where innovation was not actively encouraged, or where 'recipe' approaches for teaching were modelled by other teachers.

However the fact that beginning teachers have identified these needs for ideas about curriculum may mean we at the University of Waikato need to be more specific about aspects of teaching about which student teachers should inquire and have practice in during their practicum block work in schools.

The voices of these seven beginning teachers are significant voices. They are the voices of year one teachers facing the realities of being year one teachers, and these voices need to be heard. What they say can inform our understanding of what is needed in the design of high quality teacher education programmes and what it means to try and put into practice what is learned in such programmes - with all the attendant fears, stresses and successes. Any interpretation of these voices has to be tempered by what we already know about how neophyte teachers develop in their confidence and competence to teach.

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