New teachers learning in rural and regional Australia

Abstract

This paper reports on a longitudinal ethnographic study of beginning primary school teachers in rural and regional Victoria, Australia. The study uses a conceptual framework of place and workplace learning to ask: How do new teachers learn to do their work and how do they learn about the places and communities in which they begin teaching? In this paper, we focus on data from the first year of the three-year longitudinal study, using a place-based survey and ethnographic interviews. We found that the space of the classroom was the dominant site of learning to become a teacher for the new teachers in this study. This learning was understood through the discourse of classroom management. Analysis of these storylines reveals the ways in which the community and classroom are not separate but intertwined, and the process of learning about their communities began through the children in their classes.

Keywords:

• beginning teachers
• classroom management
• place pedagogies
• rural and regional
• workplace learning

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the very detailed and helpful comments of the anonymous reviewers of this paper, which led to the final version that is published here. We also acknowledge the significant contribution that Miriam Potts has made as a Research Assistant working on the New Teachers Project. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the BERA Conference, Edinburgh, September 3–6, 2008.

Notes

1. For ethical reasons pseudonyms are used for the interview data presented in this paper.

2. ‘Koori’ refers to the self-identification of Aboriginal people in south eastern Australia.