Conference Agenda

Introduction, research question, and theoretical framework

To meet the future needs for educated teachers it is essential that newly qualified teachers (NQTs) start and remain in their profession. Since 2017 teacher education in Norway for primary and secondary school has been reformed to a master’s degree, and NQTs graduate with both a specialization in three to four subjects, and a research and development competence (R&D). This change has created both an opportunity and a need to analyze how to support, apply and develop NQTs competence as they transition from students to working life. All the Nordic countries—including Estonia and except for Denmark—offer a five-year master’s level teacher education, consequently, the ambitions and results of this paper reach beyond the borders of Norway.

Regarding support of NQTs, a lack of mentoring is highlighted as a reason why teachers leave their profession (Ingersoll & Strong, 2011), and Thomas et al. (2019) argue that “high quality” collegial support is necessary for both job satisfaction and motivation to teach. In turn, three key factors have been described as necessary to support NQTs: skilled and educated mentors, a variety of learning activities, and contextual factors like professional development, collaboration, and teacher education (Helleve & Ulvik, 2019; Schaefer et al., 2012; Wang et al., 2008). Mentoring is however a contested concept, and Kemmis et al. (2014) outline three main archetypes of mentoring: as supervision, as support, and as collaborative self-development. However, empirical research indicates that induction practices are unpredictable concerning what kind of support and collaboration NQTs can expect (Antonsen et al., 2022), which adds to the findings that there is no clear patterns in the organization and implementation of mentoring in Norway (Rambøll, 2021). These ambiguities indicate a need for clearer principles and guidelines for mentoring, similar to how Finland has embraced collaborative self-development through their practice of “Peer-Group Mentoring” (Pennanen et al., 2020; Tynjälä et al., 2021).

Considering the necessity of mentoring practices that supports, apply, and develops NQTs competence, this paper analyzes key documents regarding Norwegian national guidelines and principles for mentoring NQTs. These key documents provide insight into the political intentions for what kind of profession and practice a new teacher is envisioned to be inducted into, and what the mentoring process entails.

Therefore, this paper’s research question is: How do the documents that comprise the overarching national guidelines and principles for mentoring articulate that schools should support NQTs with a master’s degree?

To analyze the issues outlined above, I will apply the theory of practice architecture as an analytical lens (Mahon et al., 2017), which allows me to assess and understand social realities that are subject to a professional practice.

The theory of practice architecture describes that practices are social, situated and that they are shaped by arrangements (Mahon et al., 2017). There are three mutually influencing arrangements that exist simultaneously in a professional practice (Mahon et al., 2017, s. 9-10): Cultural-discursive arrangements, which describes the space for expressions in a practice (the prevalent language and discourses), which either constrain or enable what’s relevant or fitting to say (sayings). Material-economic arrangements that deal with the resources that shape practice by determining what, when, how, or by whom something is constrained or allowed to be done (doings). Finally, social-political arrangements, which shape how individuals within the practice relate to each other (familial and professional relationships, hierarchies, etc.) and non-human objects (rules, norms, etc.), which shape relationships in a practice.

Summarized, NQTs will encounter practice architectures which will define through their three arrangements which sayings, doings and relatings enable or constrain mentoring that support, apply and develop their subject-specialization and R&D-competence.

Educational quality largely depends on the availability of qualified teachers; consequently, teacher turnover is an important concern internationally (Hanushek et al., 2016). The induction phase – the transition from teacher education into the job – is particularly challenging and vulnerable for teacher attrition (Feiman-Nemser, 2001; Kelchtermans, 2017). The case of Vietnam is no exception. In fact, certain distinctive features of the education system may further intensify this, such as existing rigid policies and malpractices in teacher recruitment (Tran & Huynh, 2019), as well as the fact that the Ministry of Education and Training has the ultimate control on “macro-level planning” (Le, 2015). However, empirical research on the issues of teacher induction and retention in Vietnam remains scarce (Tran, 2021). This project seeks to address the research gap by analyzing the experiences of Vietnamese early career teachers (ECTs), with a focus on Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) teachers, as the outcome of the meaningful interactions between individual ECTs and the dynamic organizational contexts of the schools.

The project builds upon Kelchtermans’ research on teacher induction and ECTs’ needs for support, which calls for moving beyond the “deficit thinking” that depicts ECTs as “lacking essential professional competencies” and “formally qualified, but not yet fully capable” (Kelchtermans, 2019). In addition to the theoretical stance providing an alternative perspective on ECTs’ capabilities and potentials, this research explicitly includes the school’s geographical location as a relevant dimension in the working conditions of ECTs, thus further joining the growing volume of research on the impacts of schools’ physical locations on teacher education and professional development (see e.g. Roberts & Fuqua, 2021; White & Downey, 2021). The professional challenges for ECTs are not only related to the “what” and “how” questions, but are also influenced by the “where”. We will specifically study the impacts of starting one’s career in the remote, mountainous areas of Vietnam, where ongoing inequities in education, a serious shortage of qualified teachers, and a high rate of teacher attrition have been observed (Giacchino-Baker, 2007; World Bank, 2019). Similar to the situation in Australia (White & Kline, 2012) and European countries (Fargas-Marlet & Bagley, 2022), it is challenging to attract, recruit, and retain qualified teachers in understaffed rural, remote regions of Vietnam. Furthermore, it is noteworthy that once assigned to such areas teachers are seldomly permitted to transfer or relocate (Hamano, 2008).

This research, therefore, aims to explore and share the voices of ECTs in these demanding teaching conditions as compared to their counterparts in urban areas. Apart from the geographical perspective, the study’s theoretical framework builds on the concept of teachers’ personal interpretative framework (Kelchtermans, 2009), including their self-understanding and subjective educational theory underlying their professional judgement and agency, and the micro-political perspective (Kelchtermans & Ballet, 2002). As such our study strives towards offering a holistic depiction of the fundamental factors within ECTs’ induction period, the interrelation of these factors, and the context of the school as an organization, with an emphasis on geographical diversity of the schools’ locations (and tentatively cultural and multi-lingual diversities from local ethnic minorities). These objectives lead to the following research questions in the context of Vietnam:

1. How do the experiences of early career TESOL teachers affect their professional self-understanding and subjective educational theory?
2. How do the micropolitics in the school as an organization affect early career TESOL teachers’ experiences?
3. In what way does the geographical location of the school affect early career TESOL teachers’ experiences?
4. What are the critical elements in early career TESOL teachers’ experiences of their induction phase that are to be acknowledged and included in the design for effective support programs?

This presentation reports on an ongoing cross-national PhD research project. The research used an exploratory mixed methods survey design to explore the opportunities for practice available to student teachers in English language pre-service teacher education programmes in Algeria, Finland, Ireland and Scotland. To this end, the study draws on Grossman et al.’s (2009) framework of pedagogies of practice. More specifically, it focuses on Grossman et al.’s ‘approximations of practice’. It also aims to explore how the teaching practice component of pre-service teacher education programmes is organised in the four countries and to identify student teachers’ and teacher educators’ attitudes towards the practice compoent. The present research was guided by three research questions:

• What are students teachers' and teacher educators’ attitudes towards different approximations of practice, and authentic practice, to facilitate student teacher’s professional development?’
• In what ways are teacher education programmes in Ireland, Finland, Scotland and Algeria framing the practice component of language teacher education?
• What possible learnings/adaptations can be made from Irish, Finish and Scottish’s English language teacher education to the Algerian teaching practice design?

The study explores eight approximations of practice: examining English language learners’ work; examining state, national or local curriculum; examining videos of classroom teaching; micro-teaching; roleplays; coached rehearsals; one-to-one simulations of practice and virtual simulations of practice. Based on an extended review of the literature on approximations of practice, these were the most commonly cited approximations of practice used across different contexts.

Research findings suggest that teacher quality is considered one of the main salient determiners of student success (Rivkin et al., 2005, p.449; Darling-Hammond, 2000, p.33) and the success of any educational system (Barber and Mourshed 2007, p.15). As a result, the content and curriculum of pre-service teacher education programmes in many countries are constantly being scrutinised to deliver competent graduates who are well capable of facing the realities of the twenty-first century classrooms.

The importance of practice has been widely acknowledged in teacher education literature. Research highlights that it is seen as hugely significant by student teachers, teacher educators and teachers as well as by policy makers (Tabachnick, and Zeichner 1984; Hall et al, 2018). This growing recognition of the importance of teaching practice has inspired many teacher education providers to revise their teacher preparation policies through extending teaching practice opportunities and strengthening theory-practice links (Darling-Hammond et al., 2017, p. 22). However, despite the wide agreement on the teaching practice effectiveness in developing classroom ready teachers (Batten et al. 1991), the teaching practice is not standardised, and the quality of student teachers’ experience during teaching practice can be effected by many factors (i.e. the length of the teaching practice, feedback, supervision …etc) (Ball & Cohen, 1999; Darling-Hammond et al. 2005). Some researchers also argue that not all student teachers’ experiences during school-based teaching practice are productive or positive (Feiman-Nemser and Buchmann 1985; and Turney et al. 1982).

The implementation of approximations of practice in teacher education programmes, or what Grossman et al. (2009) have defined as ‘opportunities for novices to engage in practices that are more or less proximal to the practice of a profession’ (p. 2058), has the potential of contributing to the development of student teachers (Grossman et al, 2009) hence advocating their incorporation in the teacher education curricula (Ghousseini & Herbst, 2016). However, there appears to be very scant literature on their implementation and benefits in English language teacher education and more specifically on student teachers’ and teacher educators’ attitudes towards them. This paper seeks to address this gap by reporting on the results of a cross-national research as part of an ongoing PhD project.