In the research program “Mentoring and Counselling” VIA UC, Denmark, one of the research projects has been a research project called: Newly Qualified Teachers´ Possibilities to get Foothold in a Lifelong Career

As part of the project we examined: How and to what extent are newly qualified teachers in Denmark supported during the first three years of their professional life?  The examination had form of a survey investigation and focus group interviews of newly qualified teachers´ work conditions from a teacher perspective. The survey was composed and based on a review of the findings within international research about the subject, Talis report, Report from Danish Evaluation Institute, the focus group interviews and an evaluation of graduated teachers from a teacher education perspective.

The examination inquired into the first employment, into challenges, initiatives including mentor arrangements, general support and assistance and into external initiatives (e.g. initiated by the municipality, teacher union to the newly qualified teachers), that the newly qualified teachers met the first years. Through the 1142 respondents, representative in terms of school size, type of school, geographical location, the results showed, that practice meet the teachers very differently.

The examination shows that much more than 50% of the newly qualified teachers are not offered supportive initiatives in the induction period. Initiatives, that we from the research know contribute to professional development, development of self-efficacy and foothold as teacher in the job.

In the examination, we have asked questions about mentoring, because mentor support in particular is considered to be important in the international research literature about induction programs and in that way to get foothold in the job. It should be noted if the mentoring was supported by the school management, and was structured and formalized. In addition, we have examined if the mentor had a kind of course or education to be mentor.

How practice meet newly qualified teachers seems to be very different depending on if the newly qualified teachers had a mentor at all, and depending on if mentor had a kind of education in mentoring.

Further it´s interesting that it looks like that teachers offered an educated mentor in addition experienced significant higher level of initiatives and sparring in their teams, among other resource persons and from the school in general with regard to professional support.

Design: Between 2017 and 2020, 71 beginning teachers (with <5 years of experience) and 195 experienced teachers (with ≥5 years of experience) were observed by a specially trained fellow teacher. Based on these observations, the zone of proximal development of these teachers has been traced. Subsequently, they were advised not to practice skills that are (far) out of their reach, but rather to practice the skills that they just didn't show, but that are within their reach. A 2^nd observation was after approximately 25 weeks.

Observation instrument: The observations were carried out with the ICALT observation scale (International Comparative Analysis of Learning and Teaching). The items of the scale are based on numerous studies into the effectiveness of teacher behavior for student performance. This scale fulfils the desiderata (unidimensionality, local stochastic independence and parallel item characteristic curves) of a dichotomous Rasch scale, and has predictive value for involvement of students (cf. Van de Grift, Houtveen, Van den Hurk, & Terpstra (2019). Below we present a picture of the steep stairway from the easiest to the most difficult item.

Observer training: The observers received two half-day training sessions. The 1^st training included an explanation of the theoretical, empirical and practical background of the observation tool, an explanation of the scoring procedures, and some practice with observing two videotaped lessons. After the presentation of the consensus results from the 1^st video, discussions were organized between observers who disagreed on one or more items. Observers, who met with the 2^nd video, the requirements of consistency, pass/fail agreement and interregional agreement, were invited to observe for this project. During the 2^nd training, the observers learned to diagnose the zone of proximal development of the observed teacher. During this 2^nd training, insight was also provided into the score patterns that should prompt a request for a second observation or perhaps a different observer. It was also explained to the observers that they should determine the zone of proximal development together with the observed and that they should ask the observed whether the lesson was sufficiently representative of their daily teaching and whether they had sufficient opportunity to demonstrate during the lesson 'what they have to offer'. If not, a second observation should be performed.

Results: Table 1 shows the average scores of beginning and experienced teachers during the 1^st and 2^nd observation. At the 1^st observation, the average beginning teacher scored 1.41 and the average experienced teacher 2.05. That is a significant difference with an effect size of .43. About a ½ year later, after coaching in their zone of proximal development, the average beginning teacher scored 2.13, a growth of an effect size of .42. The average beginner is now at the same level as the average experienced teacher was during the 1^st observation. However, the experienced teachers grew also. Six months after coaching, their average scores have grown with an effect size of .60.

The concerns we have about the beginning teacher are not for the average beginning teacher. Rather, the problem is that more than 18% of beginners still have problems with basic skills like: good classroom management and clear explanation of the subject matter. In this project we succeeded in ½ a year in almost halving the % beginners with problems with these basic skills.

The first years of the teaching profession and their importance in teachers’ professional development have received much attention in several countries. Studies have shown that beginning teachers can find the first years of their careers difficult and stressful: As newly qualified professionals, beginning teachers are bound by the responsibilities and requirements of the profession, although, at the same time, the first years still include lots of learning and practicing.

Both research and educational policy documents have emphasized the importance of induction for beginning teachers. Indeed, many countries have integrated induction programs as part of continuous teacher education. In order to provide meaningful and goal-oriented support, it is essential to know what support needs new teachers have at the beginning of their careers. These support needs are largely time- and context-specific and can change, among other things, as the requirements of the profession change.

This presentation addresses the support needs of newly qualified teachers. It focuses our studies that examined new teachers’ support needs from the perspectives of both Finnish beginning teachers and principals. In addition, different ways of organizing support and induction for newly qualified teachers are discussed.

One of the research groups at the teacher education started off with a national longitudinal experiment involving 72 schools and 338 beginning teachers, that revealed that the experimental group exhibited greater improvement in teaching skills compared to the control group. Workload reduction influenced the skill level negatively, and coaching and observing had a strong positive influence on the skill level in Year 3. We also revealed that induction arrangements had a positive impact on stress causes and stress outcomes. There was a slight positive effect on retention too. This resulted in a large scale implementation of induction which we monitored from 2014-2019. More than 3000 beginning teachers and 180 000 pupils were involved in the data collection. This study revealed that support in the classroom decreases negative emotions as well as tension over time. Our research aims were to reveal person- and context related factors influencing the support provided in the schools and how this translated to the development of effective teaching behaviour, retention and student engagement. The keynote will focus on (some) of these findings, on implications for practice and future research.

The quality of induction is based on what kind of support is provided. The local school community and its culture matter very much. New teachers need  an opportunity to share uncertainties and challenges as well as positive experience in teaching with their colleagues. School leaders play a very important role how this kind of professional community can be created and maintained. However,  in many cases,  more structured programmes and practices are needed. Many studies confirm that systematic induction needs also mentors. Research gives also evidence that quality of mentors is a key factor in induction. In Finland, we do not have national policy for induction, and it is depending on local education providers. Thus, mentor training can be implemented in different ways. The presentation will introduce studies how mentor training can be implemented and what are mentors’ perceptions about what is their role as mentors in induction and how they grow to that role.

The Norwegian parliament stated in 2017 that all new teachers in kindergarten, primary, secondary and upper secondary schools should participate in a mentoring program for newly qualified teachers (NQTs). The stakeholders in the educational field (the student teachers’ organisation, the teachers’ organisation, the school leaders’ organisation, the employers’ organisations’ and the teacher educations’ organisation) developed and signed an agreement based on the parliamentary resolution, which is a part of a national framework for mentoring NQTs in Norway. The stakeholders’ agreement consists of principles for mentoring and the stakeholder’s obligations for collaboration on implementing the principles. The framework for mentoring NQTs also consist of a web-based handbook and updated education for mentors (30ECT) based on the principles. I will present the most important stakeholders, the agreement and the national framework for mentoring NQTs. I will also present some of the results from an evaluation study of the implementation of the national framework on mentoring NQTs (Rambøll 2020).

This presentation outlines the background, development and present state of the actual concerning support for newly qualified teachers (NQT) and the teacher induction system in Sweden.

The emergence of a nationwide induction system to support NQTs was strengthened by the decision of the 1992 Congress of the National Union of Teachers in Sweden (Lärarnas Riksförbund) to work for teacher registration in Sweden. Teacher induction and mentoring were also regarded as associated issues. This was followed in 1995 by a national agreement between the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and the two teachers’ unions. One component in this agreement was that it gave new teach¬ers the right to be supported by a mentor and to participate in an induction programme. This can be regarded as the first milestone for NQT mentoring in Sweden.

Support for NQTs was high on the educational agenda in 2006 when an Official Investigation was launched, which in 2008 proposed a national mandatory induction system, with mentoring, a probationary year and the registration of teachers as central components (SOU, 2008:52). This was implemented in 2010-2011. However, the teacher registration issue led to several challenges that later occasioned changes in the legislation. Further, in the middle of 2014 principals’ evaluations of NQTs were scrapped and teacher registration was instead provided on graduation from teacher education. This meant that mentoring became less prioritized, even though there was still an obvious need for it. The presentation ends by concluding that since 2014 the issue of mentoring has largely been submerged by other ‘more important’ issues, even though the legislation for it is still in place.

References

SOU. (2008). Legitimation och skärpta behörighetsregler [Swedish Government Official Report 2008:52. Registration and stricter qualifying rules]. Stockholm: Ministry of Education and Research.

In 2010-2016, peer-group mentoring was developed as part of a national network, Osaava Verme, for developing mentoring practices for NQTs in Finland. All Finnish universities that provide teacher education (8) and all Finnish vocational teacher education colleges (5) have been involved in the network, coordinated by the Finnish Institute for Educational Research (FIER). In the period 2017-19, peer-group mentoring has continued to be developed as part of the national Teacher Education Development Programme. In this presentation, I will give a brief outline of peer-group mentoring and present some of the results from evaluations of the model (Heikkinen, Aho & Korhonen, 2015; Pennanen, Markkanen & Heikkinen, 2019). I will also present some of my own research findings on induction and mentoring (e.g. Aspfors, 2012; Aspfors & Fransson, 2015; Heikkinen, Wilkinson, Aspfors & Bristol, 2018; Kemmis, Heikkinen, Fransson, Aspfors & Edwards-Groves, 2014).

The induction programme for newly qualified teachers was launched in Estonia 2004 as the result of a combined effort from universities, schools and policymakers. This presentation will introduce the theoretical framework, the roles of different parties to the induction programme, and analyse the implementation process in order to find answers to the following questions: Firstly, what are the developments and challenges in the Estonian induction programme? Secondly, what are the perspectives for the induction programme in the future? The analysis demonstrate that close collaboration between different parties was required to achieve a successful implementation, but it seems that the main responsibility for implementation was left to the universities, who were seen as a party highly interested in the continuity of teacher education. Moreover, the implementation and quality of mentoring varies among the schools, which can be a challenging for new teachers. But the same time rather high autonomy of the schools allows design the support programme based on individual teacher.

Based on research evidence and the current situation in teacher education, the presentation will give a forward-looking view on how to support beginning teachers in Estonia.