We're Just Like the Beginning Teachers We Study: Letters and Reflections on Our First Year as Beginning Professors

ABSTRACT

This article transcends our current research focus on the development, socialization, and induction of beginning teachers to the world of classrooms and schools. We examine the contents and pressures associated with our own inductions into the university professoriate. In many ways, as new professors, we have relived elements of our own first years as teachers in elementary and secondary schools, both through our own experiences as neophytes in the world of higher education and, vicariously, through the experiences of those we study. Though the contexts and roles associated with working in postsecondary institutions are vastly different from those in the elementary and secondary schools and classrooms of the beginning teachers we study, the similarities to our experiences as neophytes are striking.

Since we work at institutions over 200 miles apart, our ongoing correspondence about the dilemmas, frustrations, and joys concerning our transition to the professoriate has recorded our stories. We have revisited our letters. Presenting portions of the letters in chronological order to make elements of our transition experiences clear, we highlight the link between our research with beginning teachers and our experiences associated with newfound practices and responsibilities in tertiary education. In so doing, we raise issues and pose questions related to the professoriate and beginning professors' career-long development.