Search results for: Professional isolation

Isolation, organisational pressures, and role-related distress, can result in teachers, particularly early career teachers (ECTs), experiencing greater risk of burnout. For many ECTs, a lack of practical strategies for dealing with these conditions contributes to this. Using self-study methodology, this research unpacks why ECTs experience burnout, identifies adaptive strategies that experienced teachers use, and discusses the applicability of these practices for ECTs. Conversations between an ECT and three experienced teachers provided alternate lenses to apply reflective unpacking of adaptive strategies. The findings illustrate how the risk of burnout for ECTs is increased by challenging student behaviour, isolation, a lack of collegiality and engagement with professional networks, and being overloaded with responsibilities. The findings also suggest that being overworked is less of a contributing factor to burnout than feeling disconnected from one’s school, peers, and community. Adaptive strategies for alleviating the effects of burnout were explored and recommendations for practice presented.

This article presents the results of a recent qualitative study examining how P–12 teachers enact their visions of teaching for social justice through curricular and pedagogical practices that meet, and often exceed, local accountability mandates. The teachers in this study were able to effectively enact their social justice visions through ambitious, standards-based practice. Their curriculum was broad and deep, reflected best practices in teaching ELA, and prepared students to meet state and district accountability mandates. However, teachers also reported challenges imposed by restrictive curricular policies, resistance from students and colleagues, inadequate preparation and support, and insufficient resources.

The current article examines what both in-service and pre-service trainee teachers learn from their early experience of teaching in further education (FE) colleges in England. This article draws on data gathered between 2005 and 2009 from two separate projects. The studies on which this article is based, indicate that many trainee teachers in FE colleges, pre-service or in-service, encounter isolation, poor support and little guidance, however well they manage these conditions. However, the understanding of alienation employed in this article helps to highlight the importance of control and agency in teachers’ development.