Scottish context

Unlike other parts of the United Kingdom, in Scotland there is only one route to qualify as a teacher for state schools, namely through a higher education programme of initial teacher education provided by eleven higher education institutions in Scotland. In the twentieth century there were concerns with the old system of teacher probation which did not guarantee any continuity of employment, in particular:

new teachers on broken employment learn a number of things. They learn to cope alone. They learn not to seek help. They learn that there is no infrastructure to support them. … They learn that they have to be pro-active to make anything happen. They learn to see themselves as classroom fodder. … [they may] become an unquestioning accommodator to the system in which they are employed. They learn, in short, how to survive in the short term within a rather technicist view of the job of teaching…. miss learning to manage the job in the long term and ... they therefore miss an important dimension of teaching as a professional task (^{Draper et al., 1997}, 292-3).

After ^{Draper et al.'s (1997}) research, a joint development, the Teacher Induction Project, was set up by the Scottish Executive Education Department (SEED) and the General Teaching Council for Scotland to consider the arrangements for new teachers and to draft a standard for new teachers (Standard for Full Registration) to meet by the end of the probation or induction period (^{Christie & O'Brien, 2005}). A report on the professional conditions for teachers led to a simplified career structure and a guaranteed induction year for all newly qualified teachers (Scottish Executive Education Department, 2001). (For the history of teacher probation before 2002 see ^{Shanks, 2020}). More recently the ^{Donaldson report (2011}) provided a series of recommendations relating to whole lifespan of teacher education from initial teacher education to teacher induction and career long professional learning but after some initial work on the recommendations many have not been implemented. ^{Hulme and Menter (2014}) reported how the proportion of permanent contracts for new teachers had significantly decreased and further concerns led to a Scottish parliamentary report which noted that teacher retention levels were in need of improvement (Scottish Parliament Education and Skills Committee, ²⁰¹⁷). In 2021 there have been increased calls to do more for newly qualified teachers in Scotland as many face unemployment after their induction year (^{Devlin, 2021}).

From the 2002 introduction of the Teacher Induction Scheme, all newly qualified teachers in Scotland who are eligible to live and work in Scotland, have been guaranteed a one-year teaching contract. For posts beyond the induction year, teachers have to apply for temporary or permanent posts or apply to become a supply teacher with a local authority. During the induction year in Scotland new teachers are provided with a number of supports to help them in their transition from student teacher to fully registered teacher:

In the Scottish induction scheme, there is a combination of the features identified as beneficial by ^{Bartlett and Johnson (2009}) in their research: New teachers are provided with a mentor in their field, management communication, reduced teaching, and they may have common planning time, new teacher seminars and they may have an assistant but this will depend on the pupils’ needs rather than the new teachers’ needs.

Once a teacher in Scotland has successfully achieved the Standard for Full Registration, they are treated the same as all other registered teachers and do not receive any extra support as a new teacher. While the teacher induction phase has been well-researched (see ^{Shanks, 2020}) there is limited research in Scotland on the second year of teaching. While covering teachers’ early careers, ^{Fenwick’s (2011}) study concentrated on new teachers’ professional learning in relation to the curriculum. The experience of early career teachers in the second year of teaching in Scotland is of particular interest to discover how the induction year helps in their transition from student teacher to qualified/ registered teacher and what extra support might help to reduce teacher attrition. This study will provide insights into how the teacher induction scheme and the early career teacher phase in Scotland could be improved. As teacher retention is a worldwide problem the study findings can point towards support that could be useful in other national contexts. ^{Kukla-Acevedo (2009}) referred to the need for further qualitative research in this area. The study sought to answer the following research question: What are new teachers’ experiences in their transition from teacher induction into their first year as a fully registered teacher in Scotland?

Job security

One of the interviewees mentioned that the difficulty of obtaining permanent employment after the induction year meant that ‘there is a feeling that they [induction year teachers] are cheap labour and then you get ditched after a year.’ A focus on their future career was found in the interview data during the analysis of the transcripts. While the interviewees had permanent, temporary or supply work they all mentioned future plans related to their teaching career. Teacher 1 said: ‘you do your year and you put everything into it and then there’s nothing at the end of it, is an issue at the moment.’ One teacher was already embarking on a course to be a Guidance Teacher (responsible for pupils’ pastoral care) which is a route to promotion in secondary (i.e., post-primary) schools while another teacher was enjoying being settled in one school with a permanent job so that they did not have ‘to learn a new school, new pupils as well’ (teacher 2). While teachers 1 and 2 had permanent posts in secondary schools, teachers 3 and 4 were working as supply teachers and one of them does not plan to stay as a supply teacher for much longer as they want to have a permanent position whether that is in teaching or another profession. She said: ‘I don’t want to be 30 and still looking for my first permanent full-time job’ (teacher 4) and was planning to look into other options if she hadn’t secured a permanent position by the end of that school year.

Teacher 2 had decided not to do a full-time job in her second year of teaching for family reasons. She said that because she was at one school doing supply work, she felt like a permanent teacher rather than a supply teacher. This teacher was surprised that ‘there’s no kind of formal showing you round, finding out where things are’, however she had decided to do this herself and was glad that she had done. She felt that as a supply teacher ‘you fall between two stools. You’re not …, it’s quite a, you know, and there’s no one really to…you don’t really have a line manager.’ She saw how different schools could be, expressed as ‘chalk and cheese’ because ‘each school you go to is so different and I think the large schools have a lot going for them.’ She preferred larger schools because there were more people to go to for help than in a much smaller school.

Teacher 3 moved from their induction year school to another school with a similar catchment area, but her new department was larger than the previous one. The differences she mentioned between the induction year and the first year as a fully registered teacher related to teaching the highest school qualification in her subject and doing the full spread and teaching every year at secondary school rather than repeating classes and covering fewer years, so she had the full spectrum.

When speaking about supply teaching, teacher 4 said ‘it was a long 80 minutes when you were sitting there just, you know, babysitting really’ so it was much more enjoyable when she was able to teach part of what the pupils were doing, for example in an ICT class. She spoke of the uncertainty of being a supply teacher:

being in different schools, even going to different departments, it kind of felt like that whole process of, what am I doing, what does everyone think of me … am I doing okay kind of thing, that kind of started up again for a while because, you know, you don’t know the people that you’re working with, you don’t know what their expectations are, how they work … what the school’s like and so on. (teacher 4)

Teacher 4 mentioned that when starting as a supply teacher ‘first of all it seemed odd not going to the same place every day’. When asked if they found a difference in how schools treated her as a supply teacher, teacher 4 said:

sometimes I was treated like a sort of alien species kind of thing, not by all staff … It was certainly not the case at X but some of the schools that I was in less often, even when I was in a [subject] department, it was very much, like well, who are you?

I think…I don’t know, I mean I guess it must be kind of trying when you’re getting new staff coming in all the time but at the end of the day we’re all there to do the same job and I just felt sometimes people were being obstructive. … it wasn’t the case all the time … and some people were very…you know, very welcoming and, you know, sort of saw supply staff as the sort of saviour kind of thing [laughs]… (teacher 4).

This teacher described the move to supply teaching as like being ‘in a million different places.’ While thinking back to her induction year experiences, she hoped to find a different experience with:

senior members of staff who impart the benefit of their knowledge without being patronising and without treating you like a second class citizen … it was okay to be new and that actually it was quite beneficial to be new and fresh and, you know, just out of the packet kind of thing and that actually you had something to offer and that you weren’t a…a burden to be borne. (teacher 4).

Teacher 1 spoke of how only when she was in a new school, did she realise that things were not so good where they first went as a new teacher:

then I came here and it’s just completely different, you know, it’s got a very strong head of department and a very strong PT [Principal Teacher] and the people that are in the department are very, everybody is happy and friendly and, you know, and they work really hard but they have, you know, they go out for dinner and we meet every lunch, I’ve never, I hardly went for a coffee in the staff room last year, I’m there every day and people meet at lunch time as well and it’s much more sociable and I think that makes a huge difference to how you enjoy your working day.

This highlights the ‘hit and miss’ of the induction year process and the allocation lottery for new teachers. However, teacher 1 thought that the difficulties she had encountered had made her ‘more resilient and it made me believe in myself in spite of things rather than because of things and coming here that gives me the confidence to try different things and the fact that I’m in an environment that’s supportive makes all the difference.’

Support from colleagues

Teacher 1 spoke of a better experience in their second year of teaching and receiving more feedback from her head of department:

and he was very, very positive about how it was all going, so I never had that last year and I think that’s just made me much more comfortable in, in what I’m doing and just getting on with it, but it, and I’ve learned, I’ve learned a lot from, from the people around me, …, the departmental meetings are a lot more structured … and I think that approach sort of fits quite well with me because it’s quite structured and organised and you don’t spend hours going round in circles on things, you know. (teacher 1)

One of the teachers had received useful support from a teacher in their school during their second year as a teacher, for example ‘I’ve discussed quite a lot with her, but more at an individual pupil level or sort of techniques for handling those that need more support’. This teacher had previous work experience and she recognised that this was advantageous:

it depends on what life experience you’ve had before, …, and what, how confident you are in yourself as to what, how you go about getting the support you need and I, like I said, I tend to have found likeminded people within school that I would … towards and they tend to be my age or older almost and I think that’s because I’ve worked before and I’ve been the young one and, so you get used to finding these people that, and it just happens, you know. (teacher 1)

Teacher 3 referred to being able to learn from her job-share partner and to the open plan of the school she was in and how that helped to gain confidence and support from colleagues:

it’s much easier to sort of get advice and ideas and to speak to other people because there’s a lot of people around and they’re all very willing to help and give you ideas, … you can just network much more easily if you like and talk to people, but the fact that it’s open plan is quite interesting because you can hear everything from the teachers, the fact that they are dealing with things as well whereas perhaps you wouldn’t … you might not tend to do it yourself but as I say it makes you feel that we’re all kind of in the same boat rather than feeling very isolated. So, I think it’s the lack of isolation that really nice about it. (teacher 3)

As in the initial study on the induction year, support from colleagues continued to be important into and throughout the first year as a fully registered teacher. The interviewees spoke of the help and support they received from their colleagues. One of the teachers had had a very difficult time in their induction year and when they went to courses with other induction year teachers, they had found it difficult:

I think the support networks are fine, it’s just that I felt I was…I didn’t feel able to make as much use of the meeting other people and the talking things out because I just felt that I was on a different planet to everyone else and so it wasn’t very useful to me because I just thought if people were sort of busy and getting on with things and … there was no one else in that situation. So, I think they just…they didn’t understand where I was coming from and I’d say that I just felt really isolated even though I had…I mean it was nice to get out of the school to sort of…kind of an element of normality if you like, but when things were going very badly it did actually make you feel even worse about it at the time. (teacher 3)

Learning from observation

For the professional learning of new teachers there is a marked difference between the first and second year after completing initial teacher education in Scotland. Induction year teachers have a reduced teaching load so that they can devote 20% of their time to professional learning, a mentor allocated to them and events organised for induction year teachers. Once the induction year is completed there is no ongoing support, nor is there a gradual reduction in support or a transition period from the induction year to the first year as a fully registered teacher.

The interviewees had to seek out their own mentoring opportunities post-induction. The interviewees referred to learning from observations and the difference between staff observing them teaching over the year when they were a fully registered teacher as compared to during their induction year which they had to be assessed in. For teacher 1 the observations by the headteacher and deputy headteachers and their head of department put their mind at rest rather than causing them to worry in advance. She had also been to observe her head of department teaching and this had made a very positive impression on her and she was now emulating his practice as described below:

was a real eye opener that he just would sort of get up and start this and he started talking about what had happened in Haiti and the news and then it lead onto all these other things that were what they were doing in class, but … I thought that was really clever to sort of structure it that way but it seemed completely unstructured, you know… (teacher 1).

The quotation above shows how useful observing colleagues during the early career phase of teaching can be. However, this is not as common a practice as might be expected. During the induction year with a reduced timetable of 80% teaching workload it is easier for the new teachers to find time to observe others. Teacher 2 had found it harder to find time to observe colleagues in their first year as a fully registered teacher with a full teaching workload:

I do think shadowing, observing classes is really good and I haven’t done any of that here, … [you] learn an awful lot from it I think … through talking to other people as well that you learn quite a bit how people go about tackling certain topics but you do find that you know less of what’s going on in the rest of the school. (teacher 2)

She had found a team-teaching session with a colleague very useful and said that she learnt from trial and error. She also found writing down things in a notebook very useful covering:

staff meetings, things when I’ve been talking with [the head of department] about how to teach certain things. …, and I find that, yeah, a really useful way of just writing things down to remind myself about different things and it’s a record in there so I can go back to it and just check the details as to what it was. So, …, yeah there’s a lot to be said for informal learning. (teacher 2)

One of the teachers understood that as well as learning from others they could also share their ideas with others:

I do think it is a kind of give and take, sometimes by, you know, sort of sharing your own ideas, you get … ideas from others and sometimes by seeing something happen or doing something yourself and thinking, oh that worked really well and that didn’t … think it’s kind of a building up and amending as you go process. … You just kind of have to play it by ear … because it’s so changeable by the nature of the job as well, you know, you’re working with people so people change so … you know, the learning and teaching has to as well. (teacher 4)

In some primary schools in Scotland the school is open plan with no dividing walls between the classes and thus lends itself to teachers observing each other which teacher 2 found useful.

Learning from pupils

For the new teachers, learning from pupils was important. This highlights how the new teachers had moved on from concerns about themselves and their teaching to concerns about their pupils (^{Fuller, 1969}). This also suggests more learner-centred pedagogical thinking on the part of the teachers. Teacher 1 said ‘I think, I said last year that you almost learn from the pupils and every class is different’ and teachers 3 and 4 had similar opinions:

I mean you learn from children because you sort of…you teach them something in a certain way and there’s always the ones who don’t get it and you have to think “Well okay what can I do to help this particular child” so you…all the time you’re kind of thinking “What can I use, what can I say or how can I tweak this to make it more um useful to them or more interesting to them”. (teacher 3)

changing schools, it’s made you aware, even more acutely aware of the fact that every class is different and every class is different on every day you have them [both laugh], …, you know, so you can learn from the pupils because, you know, not even so much the things they tell you but from things that they don’t tell you and … the way that they’re being…sometimes even the way they come into the room … indicates what the lesson is going to be like. Had a boy cartwheel into the room the other day which kind of indicated the way that that lesson was going to go. But it’s positive, you know, can sometimes be positive as well that if you see the kids coming in excited about something (teacher 4).

As can be seen above, those with supply positions were concerned about their job situation and for all the new teachers support from colleagues was very important. In terms of their learning, they spoke of learning from observation and learning from pupils with the latter showing how they had progressed from focusing on themselves to focusing on the pupils.