Early Career English Teachers In Action

The first few years of teaching are critical to the professional development of effective English teachers. In these crucial years, new teachers establish their identities, learn the ins and outs of the curriculum, acclimate to unfamiliar communities, and cope with student behaviors that they never expected. All of this can be daunting for novice teachers. This book can help. The stories within are written by English teachers in the early stages of their careers. In their carefully crafted narratives, teachers offer practical strategies, professional insights, and a wealth of tips for surviving the first years in the classroom. The narratives are grouped into thematic chapters with brief introductions of key terms, helpful learning activities, and provocative discussion questions, all intended to foster critical conversation about beginning a career teaching English. In a time when many teachers leave the profession too soon, Early Career English Teachers in Action gives voice to those who have decided to stay. More importantly, this book validates teacher narratives as a powerful way of understanding what happens inside of the classroom—a way that provides more authentic evidence of learning than standardized test scores will ever supply.

The role of men in early childhood education and care is crucial for the future of all children growing up in a gender sensitive world. Achieving greater diversity and gender balance in the workforce has proved a challenging goal, despite concerted efforts on the part of individuals, institutions, and governments around the world. Many men remain reluctant to enter the profession, and once they choose this work many leave. This book explores how men in the field make their career decisions to remain in or leave the profession. Taking a broad international perspective and exploring the role of gender in these career decisions, contributors from around the globe unpack how gender concepts influence men’s career trajectories. Through their collaborative research, the team of 17 gender and early childhood researchers investigate various critical and relevant factors such as professionalisation, workplace environment, leadership, day to day interactions in the workplace, societal considerations, internal motivations, agency, masculinities, and critical moments in career decision making. Using cultural, racial, ethnic, and social class lenses to examine men’s career decisions over their professional lives, the contributors’ unique approach uncovers the complexity of the issue and offers evidence-based recommendations for policy both on national and local levels. These include practical suggestions to directors and managers who care about achieving a gender-mixed workforce. Accessible and enlightening, this is a unique resource for scholars, policymakers, and any others in the education community who support boosting the inclusion of men in early childhood education.

This volume examines the agency of second/foreign language teachers in diverse geographical contexts and in both K-12 and adult education. It offers new understandings and conceptualizations of second/foreign language teacher agency through a variety of types of empirical data. It also demonstrates the use of different methodologies or analytic tools to study the multidimensional, dynamic and complex nature of second/foreign language teacher agency. The chapters draw on a range of theories and approaches to language teacher agency (including ecological theory, positioning theory, complexity theory and actor-network theory) that expand our understanding of the concept, while at the same time presenting various analytic approaches such as discourse studies and narrative inquiry. The chapters also analyze the connection of agency to other relevant topics, such as teacher identity, emotions, positioning and autonomy.

In recent years, the process of learning to be a teacher- and particularly the transition from student to teacher- has attracted the attention of many educational researchers trying to gain deeper insights into the nature of learning to teach and to provide effective teacher education programs. These teacher education programs need to be constantly revitalized so that preservice teachers become actively engaged in building new knowledge, challenging their existing beliefs, and striving to attain realistic goals and motivations that enhance their personal and professional learning. Preservice teachers’ reasons for becoming teachers and their motivations to teach can be considered as one of the crucial factors determining the success of educating qualified teachers because qualified teachers presumably will be the ones who engage deeply in their preservice education and their subsequent professional lives.

Resisting Educational Inequality examines poverty, social exclusion and vulnerability in educational contexts at a time of rising inequality and when policy research suggests that such issues are being ignored or distorted within neoliberal logics. In this volume, leading scholars from Australia and across the UK examine these issues through three main focus areas: Mapping the damage: what are our explanations for the persistent nature of educational inequality? Resources for hope: what do we know about how educational engagement and success can be improved in schools serving vulnerable communities? Sustaining hope: how might we reframe research, policy and practice in the future? Using a range of theories and methodologies, including empirical and theory-building work as well as policy critique, this book opens innovative areas of thinking about the social issues surrounding educational practice and policy. By exploring different explanations and approaches to school change and considering how research, policy and practice might be reframed, this book moves systematically and insightfully through damage towards hope. In combining pedagogy, policy and experience, Resisting Educational Inequality will be a valuable resource for all researchers and students, policymakers and education practitioners.

The International Handbook of Research in Children's Literacy, Learning and Culture presents an authoritative distillation of current global knowledge related to the field of primary years literacy studies. Features chapters that conceptualize, interpret, and synthesize relevant research Critically reviews past and current research in order to influence future directions in the field of literacy Offers literacy scholars an international perspective that recognizes and anticipates increasing diversity in literacy practices and cultures

Teacher quality is widely reputed to be the key determinant of educational success for students. Teachers at the beginning of their career need support and guidance in providing a sustained, high quality experience for their learners. The role of continuing professional development (CPD) is crucial in honing and refining the knowledge, understanding and skills of teachers. Effective CPD can also provide teachers with the self-efficacy needed, particularly when they start teaching, to stay in the profession. With teacher shortages reported across the globe, and up to one third of teachers in England leaving the profession by their fifth year in teaching, CPD is an attractive solution to retain teachers. The Department for Education have established a mandatory CPD framework for all early career teachers (ECTs) teaching in schools in England – The Early Career Framework (ECF). Tanya Ovenden-Hope (Editor) brings together insights from those most closely connected to the ECF; the training providers, school leaders and academics involved in understanding the efficacy of professional development and learning in schools. Ovenden-Hope offers an historical record of the ECF, showing where it came from, what it offers now for schools and early career teachers (ECTs) and the challenges and opportunities for development in the future.

The Impact of PDS Partnerships in Challenging Times is the follow up to Doing PDS: Stories and Strategies from Successful Clinically Rich Practice (2018). The first book included stories that described our experiences across more than twenty-five years of PDS partnerships. We sought to examine and chronicle the innovative ways we negotiate school-university collaboration while explaining the development of the SUNY Buffalo State PDS consortium. This second volume strives to explore the impact of our endeavors individually at each school/community site and collectively as an entire consortium to point to the important ways that school-university partnership contributes to all stakeholders and where we might do better. SUNY Buffalo State’s PDS roots go back to 1991 with one local school partner. Today this school-university partnership consortium connects with over 100 schools with approximately 45 signed agreements each semester in Western New York, nationally, and internationally. The SUNY Buffalo State PDS consortium is grounded in three frameworks for clinically rich practice: (a) the National Association for Professional Development Schools Nine Essentials (Brindley, Field, & Lesson, 2008); (b) CAEP Standards for Excellence in Educator Preparation, Standard 2 (http://caepnet.org/standards/standard-2, 2018); and (c) the Buffalo State Teacher Education Unit Conceptual Framework (https://epp.buffalostate.edu/conceptualframework, 2018). Through specific examples, each chapter utilizes a case study approach to describe the nature of various partnerships situated in research with a focus on the impact of the partnership. The chapters are intentionally succinct to provide a focused look at a particular partnership activity as each contributes to the larger goals of the entire consortium. Every chapter follows a similar structure – defining a challenge identified by the members of the consortium, a review of the relevant literature, an explanation of how the school/community liaison team responded to the challenge and the data gathered to determine impact, an “impact at a glance” chart to report the findings, and an identification of the necessary next steps in the project.