Abstract
How beginner teachers (BTs) adapt to teaching practice can be decisive for their professional development. That is why gradual induction is important. However, increasingly neoliberal school cultures can negatively impact how BTs are inducted into the profession, which can negatively affect their professional development.
The purpose of this study is a critical reflection on the lived experiences of BTs in four schools in the Western Cape to establish what national policy directives require regarding the induction of BTs; how they experience induction; how it affects their professional development; and how they navigate in schools with increasingly neoliberal cultures without proper induction. The results of this study show that while neoliberal school cultures threaten the thorough integration of BTs and lead to increased stress and early exit from the profession, some BTs still manage to stay on track in school and carve out productive trajectories for themselves through unconventional methods.
This study used a qualitative approach to gain a deeper understanding of the lived experiences of BTs in neoliberal school environments. The data for the study, obtained through observations and semi-structured interviews, comes from the first author’s master’s thesis of 2023. Although this is a small-scale study, its value lies in the fact that it provides an insider’s perspective of the complexities between policy directives and BTs’ lived experiences of incorporation into practice amid neoliberal school cultures; how this affects such educators’ professional development; its impact on education delivery; as well as how BTs show agency in the absence of sufficient induction.
The starting year of a BT’s career is often considered a critical period in which adequate guidance is essential for a successful induction into education. The induction of BTs in schools can generally occur through orientation and mentorship. Orientation involves training that aims to teach BTs about their obligations in the school (Mestre, Stainer and Stainer 1997:447). The value of orientation lies in new workers feeling at home in their work environment (Ku and Kleiner 2000). Orientation in schools can take different forms; for example, the provision of information about the operation of the school (Gordon and Maxey 2000) or even just a walk through the school in order to become familiar with the physical location of buildings and the operation of facilities (Steiner 2004).
Mentoring involves showing how things work. The term mentor is still used to refer to an experienced person who guides and supports an inexperienced person (Mead, Campbell and Milan 1999). Several other context-based definitions of mentoring exist (see, for example, Wong 2004; Anderson and Shannon 1998; Grudnoff 2012; Kram 1985).
Recent research (Fisher-Ari, Kavanagh and Martin 2017; Makoa and Segalo 2021) shows that the induction of BTs has become even more important, in particular as school environments have become more and more neoliberal in the way they are managed, how these schools generally function and especially how people interact with each other in them. Neoliberal school environments are the effect of global and national ideological and policy-making processes based on the free market system, which now also drives changes in the South African education system, influencing the organisation and functioning of schools and the interactions of people in schools. The logic of the free market system, Shamir (2008) argues in Ball (2016:1047), serves as a basis for the universalisation of social relationships between people that affect the way people (educators in a school) interact with each other.
Neoliberal school cultures can have a negative impact on the way in which BTs are inducted into the profession due to an exaggerated focus on accountability, performance-drivenness and administrative overload (De Clercq 2008; Sayed and Kanjee 2013) that causes teachers to focus on their individual rather than communal success (Spreen and Vally 2006). This can complicate the induction of BTs. Neoliberal school contexts have become places where educators’ autonomy and professional judgement are limited and where the work environment is characterised by increased accountability and pressure to conform to standard practices. The state’s response to poor learner performance is, for example, to increase educators’ accountability by increasing the pace of teaching, regulating curriculum coverage and standardising assessment practices (Bertram, Mthiyane and Naidoo 2021; Shalem and Hoadley 2009; Spaull 2015).
Christie (2008:55–7), however, asserts that the purpose of education is not limited to a functional purpose because schools have a much wider purpose than merely preparing workers for the economy. Schools, she posits, have wider social functions, such as creating environments conducive to teaching and learning, nation-building, promoting citizenship, and imparting community values (Christie 2008). Neoliberal school environments’ exaggerated focus on outcomes thus often defeats schools’ broader social purpose.
This study is positioned in international, regional, and local debates in the literature on the induction of novice educators. While structures for the induction of BTs are in place internationally, such structures are less prominent in Africa. Despite having policies like the Personnel Administrative Measures (1998), South African Council for Educators (2000) and the National Teaching Induction (2020) in place that frame induction of BTs in South African schools, the implementation of these policies lacks as neoliberal practices start to dominate schools’ institutional cultures.
This research builds on the existing knowledge on novice teachers but focuses specifically on the hitherto unexplored area of BTs’ induction in school environments dominated by neoliberal practices. The study explores the policies pertaining to BTs, the challenges they experience in terms of induction, and BTs’ navigational practices in the absence of induction.
The data for the study was obtained from a master’s thesis completed in 2023 at Stellenbosch University (SU). The study followed a qualitative case study approach and used observations and semi-structured interviews to collect data to build an argument. The study draws on Stephen Ball’s (1993) concepts of policy as text and policy as discourse to describe the gap between policy design and policy implementation regarding BTs. Bourdieu’s (2004) theoretical concepts of field and capital are used to describe the positioning of BTs in the field of education as well as the unrecognised forms of capital that BTs possess that prevent them from being passive actors. Finally, the study employs Tarra Yosso’s (2005) theoretical concepts of community and cultural richness to describe BTs’ navigational practices in the absence of induction. Although small in scale, the value of this qualitative study lies in the fact that it brings a contentious phenomenon in schools to academic consciousness.
Keywords: experiences; induction; navigational practices; neoliberal school environments; novice teachers
Lees die volledige artikel in Afrikaans
Beginner-onderwysers se ervarings van induksie in neoliberale skoolomgewings: ’n gevallestudie