How does newly qualified teachers’ collegial network foster their feedback-seeking behaviour and job satisfaction?

ABSTRACT

This study goes beyond the classic paradigm that newly qualified teachers (NQTs) are in need of formal support in order to cope with the challenges they face during the early stages of their teaching career. The focus of this survey study with 443 NQTs in Flanders, Belgium is whether NSTs’ proactive seeking of feedback from the principal and from their colleagues acts as a mediator between the characteristics of their collegial network and NQTs’ job satisfaction. The results reveal that seeking feedback from the principal and colleagues mediates the relation between knowing other colleagues’ areas of expertise and valuing that expertise in the collegial network, on the one hand, and job satisfaction, on the other. More specifically, seeking feedback from the principal was more strongly related to NQTs’ job satisfaction than seeking feedback from colleagues. Remarkably, psychological safety was only related to seeking feedback from colleagues. No relationship was found between psychological safety and seeking feedback from the principal. The study concludes with suggestions on how to support the professional development of NQTs.

KEYWORDS:

• Newly qualified teachers (NQTs)
• collegial network
• feedback
• principal
• colleagues
• job satisfaction

Acknowledgments

This research was financially supported by a PWO grant from Odisee University of Applied Sciences, Aalst, Belgium.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. According to Aspfors (2012), the distinctions between the various concepts related to the early stage of the teaching career, such as new teacher or newly qualified teacher (e.g., UK) and beginning or novice teacher (e.g., Australia) are fine ones. In this study, we use the term newly qualified teachers (NQTs) to refer to teachers who recently became qualified and have the same responsibilities as their experienced colleagues (Aspfors, 2012).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Steven Vanmol

Steven Vanmol is head of the Teacher Education department of Odisee, University of Applied Sciences in Aalst (Belgium). He developed MyCompass (www.mycompass.be), a personalised e-portfolio that supports students and (starting) employees with realizing their professional dreams.

Sanne De Vos

Sanne De Vos (MSc.) is lecturer and researcher in Teacher Education, at Odisee, University of Applied Sciences (Belgium). She coordinated a project about newly qualified teachers from 2015 to 2018, which also resulted in this publication and she was co-editor of the book ‘Start to teach’ (Garant). Another research interest of Sanne is child participation.

Simon Beausaert

Simon Beausaert is an Associate Professor at Maastricht University. His research focuses on how to support workplace learning and on fostering students’ transition from higher education to the workplace. He coordinates the Learning and Development in Organizations MSc., Maastricht University, as well as the school’s Learning Academy, responsible for supporting teachers’ professional development.

Johan De Wilde

Johan de Wilde works at Odisee University of Applied sciences (Belgium) as teacher trainer, coordinator of MyCompass, a coaching and lifelong learning project and as education development & professionalization officer. He’s currently the president of VELOV, the Flemish association of teacher trainers.