Standards or communities of practice? Competing models of workplace learning and development

Abstract

Drawing on interview data derived from two case studies of teachers in their first year in the profession, this article examines the difficulties that confront new teachers as they move from a Postgraduate Certificate in Education course into their first teaching post. It questions the value of those discursive practices, promulgated by the Teacher Training Agency through Qualifying to teach, that construct teaching as a set of discrete competences or standards, and argues that Lave and Wenger's (1991) concepts of legitimate peripheral participation and communities of practice are useful tools with which to analyse the sociocultural complexity of the new teachers' experiences.

Notes

1. TTA Initial Teacher Training Research and Development Awards (2003): To investigate the development of English teachers' professional knowledge in the early years of teaching.

2. Names of schools, teachers and school students have been changed.

3. Edwards and Protheroe (2003) observe, in discussing the evidence from their study of 125 student teachers on two training programmes: ‘it would seem that student teachers, operating in relative isolation as quasi teachers, are more likely to close down on complexity than independently seek it when interpreting classroom life’ (p. 231).

4. At the time when this research was being conducted, John Yandell split his time between teaching on the PGCE course at the Institute of Education and working as a language support teacher in the school where Jude was teaching: hence his knowledge of Maria's background.

5. Particularly interesting here is the analysis of online discussion groups within the Master of Teaching course at the Institute of Education: see Pachler and Daly (2004).