Abstract:
As teaching becomes more demanding and challenging, initial teacher education (ITE) programmes are increasingly criticised for not adequately preparing quality teachers. Thus, many countries are reforming their ITE programmes to include practitioner research (PR) as a key component of their curriculum and promote it as an important pathway to effective professional learning for novice teachers. However, there appears to be little empirical evidence to support the claim that PR is worthwhile for novice teachers’ professional learning. In particular, few studies have followed novice teachers from their ITE programme into their first-year teaching positions to investigate how PR influences professional learning.
This thesis investigated the effects of engaging 12 novice secondary teachers in PR during their ITE programme, focusing on how PR influenced their professional learning during their ITE programme and as first-year teachers. The study was framed within a qualitative interpretive paradigm using a longitudinal case study. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews conducted three times during participants’ inquiry course in their ITE programme, and 4 months into their first year of teaching. Participants’ research milestone reports were also collected for analysis. Data were analysed thematically.
The findings show that PR in the ITE programme developed the characteristics required for career-long professional learning. These characteristics included developing an inquiry mindset, taking agency, becoming flexible, responsive, creative problem solvers, and becoming scholarly, reflective teachers. The study also reveals how PR helped novice teachers acquire in-depth knowledge and practice of teaching and an understanding of the realities, complexities, and unpredictability of teaching. The findings highlight the role play PR played in developing novices understanding of their students and their learning.
The study highlighted certain conditions critical to the success of using PR for professional learning. It revealed that time constraints, personal factors, ITE and school contexts, ethical issues, and a lack of experience in PR itself influenced participants' use of PR. This longitudinal study provides important insights into how novice secondary teachers can learn to use PR as a process of professional learning in an authentic manner rather than see PR as just a project or assignment. PR facilitated novices understanding of teaching as needing to be focused on students’ learning rather than on themselves as teachers. This commitment to students’ learning became the centrepiece of the novices' professional work. They sustained their use of PR to help them expand their professional learning.