Entering the field: beginning teachers’ positioning experiences of the staffroom

ABSTRACT

Little is known about beginning teachers’ political positioning experiences of the staffroom. This paper employs Bourdieu's conceptual tools of field, habitus and capital to explore beginning health and physical education teachers’ positioning experiences and learning in staffrooms, the place in which teachers spend the majority of their non-teaching school time. From an Australian context, we present beginning (or emerging) teachers’ stories from one rural general staffroom and one urban departmental staffroom. Using the narratives we reflect upon how their positioning in the politics of the staffroom as beginning teachers presented significant challenges including negotiating the professional micropolitics, negotiating capital and negotiating opportunities and risks for reflection and change in contrasting social spaces.

KEYWORDS:

• Beginning teacher
• staffroom
• micropolitics
• capital
• field
• habitus

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge Routledge for granting permission to republish the narratives used here. Versions of these narratives were first published by two of the authors in Christensen and Rossi (2015)

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Within international and national literature the notion of staffroom as a particular site, location, space and place within the school is quite slippery (see e.g. Ball, 1987; Gewirtz, 2002; lisahunter et al., 2011; Rossi & lisahunter, 2012; Rossi, Sirna, & Tinning, 2008; Sirna et al., 2008, 2010). For the purpose of this paper the term staffroom refers to the office space, which is co-inhabited by teachers, the staffroom may or may not be a subject department office.

2 In this paper the terms physical education and health and physical education are used interchangeably. In Australia the subject area is called health and physical education; however, the term physical education is more common internationally. In general the literature on physical education teachers relates to health and physical education teachers.

3 This project was funded by the Australian Research Council in the form of a three-year Discovery Grant and explored beginning teacher workplace learning in staffrooms.

4 At the time of this research, secondary schooling in the State of Australia in which this study was conducted is typically Years 8–12 with students commencing Year 8 in the year they turn 13 years of age.

5 In the State of Australia in which this study was conducted a HOD is a lead or head teacher of a subject area or department. For example HOD of HPE.

6 Versions of these narratives were first published by two of the authors in Christensen and Rossi (2015).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council [grant number: DP0878502].