Navigating Initial Teacher Training

Becoming a Teacher

Andrew J Hobson, Angi Malderez, Louise Tracey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317723912
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Behavioural Management

Are you considering or already training to become a teacher?

Do you want to know more about the variety of types of training on offer?

Do you need reassurance that you are on the right path?

Or would you just like to see how others cope with their teacher training?

If so, this lively book, built on the experience of thousands of people just like you, is exactly what you need. Written by experts with backgrounds in teaching, supporting teacher learning and researching teacher training, and based on a major study of nearly 5,000 beginner teachers, it provides an authentic insight into what lies ahead when becoming a teacher.

The book, which incorporates extensive conversations with large numbers of student and newly qualified teachers, will also serve as the ideal course companion when undertaking your Initial Teacher Training programme. It includes practical ideas and strategies for coping with various aspects of life as a student teacher, for example, dealing with pupil behaviour, building and managing relationships with mentors and other teachers in schools, and finding and obtaining a first teaching post.

Section 1

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Thinking about training to be a teacher

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Chapter 1

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‘I just fancied the challenge’

Is teaching for you?

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Introduction

Before deciding whether or not to become a teacher, or indeed before deciding whether or not to follow any particular employment path, it is important that you consider your decision carefully, that you have a good insight into what the job entails, and that you have thought about how well you as an individual might be suited to the job, or to different variations of the job, such as (in the case of teaching) whether to work in a primary or a secondary school. This chapter will help you to decide whether or not teaching might be for you, or, if you have already decided to become a teacher, will allow you to reflect on that decision, by providing insights into the thinking and reasoning of a large number of people who have previously made the decision to undertake a teacher training (ITT) course.

In this chapter we discuss the kinds of questions that it will be helpful for you to think about, and we also describe how the people in our research study reasoned about each question. Before that though, we want to say that the main thing our research revealed was that, for each individual, the reasons behind the decision to train as a teacher were unique personal combinations of factors. So, for example, if you read later in this chapter that the majority of people in our study gave reason X as part of their motivation for training to be teacher, and reason X does not seem to be true for you, this does not necessarily mean that you are not suited to teaching. It will still be helpful to reflect on the reasons given by the people in our study to help you think about yourself and your own decision about whether or not to train to become a teacher. More generally, it will be valuable for you to consider your responses, and the strength of your responses, to each of the following important questions:

• How much do you want or need to change your current situation?

• How attractive is teaching to you and why?

• Do you have reservations about teaching as a career and, if so, how ‘big’ or important are they to you?

• How confident are you that you will make an effective teacher?

The first two questions that it might be helpful for you to think about are both connected to your motivation for undertaking teacher training. We start with the question relating to how, to what extent and why your current situation is ‘pushing’ you into making a change, before considering what might be ‘pulling’ you towards training as a teacher. If you can identify a number of ‘pull’, or both ‘push’ and ‘pull’, reasons for yourself, then you are likely to have the kind of robust motivation that will help you through the demands of your training and beyond. The next question we discuss relates to reservations you may have about teaching. Thinking these through carefully and comparing them with your motivation can be a useful reality check.

Finally, although we would say that teachers are ‘made’ (given sufficient time, appropriate circumstances and support) rather than ‘born’, it will be helpful, in making the initial decision about whether or not to train as a teacher, to assess whether you already have some of what it takes to be a teacher. This will require that you think carefully about yourself – your personality, your likes and dislikes, and what you have already learnt -and whether this might mean that (with training) you could be an effective teacher. (You might even ask other people who know you what they think about all this.) Thinking about these issues might also be advantageous for other reasons. First, if you conclude that you do already possess some relevant knowledge and/or skills to be a teacher then this can be a confidence-booster, and realistic confidence will be helpful for both your learning and your teaching should you make the decision to undertake an ITT programme. Second, having an understanding of what you bring to your learning teaching journey (and of what you need to learn during that journey) may help you decide what type of training may be most suited to you (see Chapter 2). Third, thinking all of this through is useful preparation for the interview you would probably need to undergo in order to secure a place on an ITT course.

How much do you want or need to change your current situation?

For some readers, perhaps those of you who have just finished or are about to complete your A-levels or an undergraduate degree, this question may not seem so appropriate, as you may have completed one phase of study/ life and may be considering whether you will undertake a further period of study or enter the world of work. Undertaking an ITT course is a method of combining these two considerations, although, as we will see in Chapter 2, some ITT programmes tend to place more emphasis on study whereas others place more emphasis on work (and learning ‘on the job’).

Some readers will already have entered the world of work but will be considering a change of career. You may be in the position of some of the participants in our research study who, having had various occupations, decided for various reasons that it was time for a change and, partly because of the variety of ways to train as a teacher that now exist (see Chapter 2), were able to take the decision to train as teachers.

So what kinds of reasons might prompt people to want to change from one career to teaching? Some of the reasons given by participants in our study related to dissatisfaction with aspects of their current jobs. These included:

• not enjoying their jobs, or feeling unhappy and/or stressed in their work;

• feeling that their work was not sufficiently rewarding or challenging;

• feeling that they had insufficient job security or promotion prospects;

• not getting on very well with or having much in common with work colleagues;

• feeling that aspects of their current employment they particularly enjoyed would be more prominent in a teaching career.

These various reasons are illustrated in the following quotations from some of the student teachers that we talked to:

[A]fter all those previous years of getting nowhere, and I was getting really stressed out that I wasn't feeling useful, not having a profession as such, you know… not belonging in a way.

(Female, 20–24, primary)¹

I came to a point where scientific research is great but you're always working on short-term contracts and there's very little opportunity for career progression so I was looking around for a new career.

(Female, 40–44, secondary)

I got into manufacturing and stores management… I worked on despatch and assembly. The thing that kept me actually interested in the job was that I used to train people on PCs and general things. That was the only thing that kept me there.

(Male, 30–34, primary)

Finally, many trainees indicated in their responses to our survey and in the interviews that they were influenced by a range of practical or pragmatic reasons, including whether or not being a teacher would fit in with their personal circumstances or family lives, to which we return shortly.

[L]ast year I only had two days' holiday together because if I wasn't there nobody would do my job. And also I'd decided that if I did want to have a family then being in the car at seven o'clock every day to drive into [City], and law is not a family-friendly business anyway, was not really what I wanted to do.

(Female, 25–29, secondary)

I–ve got three young children so family and work/life balance was a big issue and really that was more important than money… I'd earn a bit less but I'd get a good [work/life] balance on that.

(Male, 30–34, primary)

And I've got children, so every way I looked at it teaching suited me… then when you look at the career progression possibilities, the hours that you work, how close to home you can work, the holidays that you get, with having children of my own, great, everything fitted.

(Male, 35–39, primary)

If you have definitely decided that you need to change your current circumstances, and that training as a teacher is one of your options, then you need to consider carefully the second of our two main ‘motivation’ questions, to which we now turn.

How attractive is teaching to you and why?

If you have this book in your hands and have read this far, something is making you think that teaching might be a good choice of career for you. Before you read on, you might like to make a list of all the things about teaching that makes it attractive to you as a career choice to compare with the responses of the student teachers in our study.

In our survey we asked almost 5,000 student teachers to what extent (if at all) they were attracted to undertaking an ITT programme by a wide range of possible reasons. In Table 1.1 we list the 12 factors which attracted the highest numbers of survey respondents. As you can see, the biggest single response was ‘helping young people to learn’, which 98 per cent of all respondents said had attracted them to teaching, and over three-quarters (78 per cent) said had ‘strongly attracted’ them. This, together with some of the other considerations, such as wanting to give something back to the community or wanting to teach pupils better than you had been taught yourself, might be referred to as an altruistic motive for becoming a teacher. And in our interviews we did come across many trainees who were attracted to teaching because they wanted to ‘make a difference’, such as the trainee whom we quote below:

It's nice to be part of people's growing up. I look back at my teachers and I still remember the ones that I loved at primary school. I remember the impact they made on my life… I'd like to be able to give that to children, that sort of enjoyment and the amount of pleasure I got out of it… I'd love to think that fifteen years down the line somebody would say that about me.

(Female, 30ȁ334, primary)

Some of the considerations which attracted many people to teaching are factors t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Section 1 Thinking about training to be a teacher
• Section 2 Being a student teacher
• Section 3 Moving beyond initial teacher training and looking ahead
• Conclusion: ‘Ditching the student teacher tag’
• Appendix: How we learned about student teachers' experiences
• Glossary
• Notes
• References
• Index