Section archive - Beginning Teachers

This article reports on 20 newly qualified secondary science teachers (NQSSTs) participating in a New Zealand study on teachers’ early professional learning. The focus of the study is how these new teachers were nurtured to become competent science teachers, confident of their ability to positively influence student learning.

This study aimed to understand how new teachers experienced and perceived mentored induction and understand what aspects facilitated or impeded their learning. The participants were eight new teachers selected from two high-poverty, low performing Pre-K through eighth-grade schools in a metropolitan Midwestern public school system. The results indicate that new teachers found coaching to be a source of support and a resource for learning, and the new teacher were returning the following year and stated that they looked forward to continued work with their coaches. This study highlights that though emotional support and direct advice is appreciated, new teachers valued instructionally oriented, collaborative educative coaching.

This article describes a study which explored the effectiveness's development of teachers in North Carolina public schools during their first five years in the classroom. The authors contrasted the beginning teachers' effectiveness with the effectiveness of teachers who stayed with that of those who left.

This study aimed to evaluate subject matter knowledge (SMK), pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), concerning chemical reactions for science teaching of beginning student teachers in Turkey. The results revealed that a high proportion of the student teachers were able to correctly apply the very basic concepts of Conservation of Mass and Conservation of Atoms. However, only one quarter of the students brought a sufficient understanding with them from secondary school to correctly answer the more difficult problems.