Abstract:

The findings of this paper aim to address the transition that beginner teachers undergo by tapping into the lived experience of North-West University (NWU) beginner teachers through a longitudinal study tracking a group of B.Ed. students at a South African University.

Students in Initial teaching education (ITE) programmes face several transitions during their preparation to become qualified and effective teachers. These transitions occur from school learners to university students, from university students to student teachers during Work Integrated Learning (WIL) sessions, and, finally, from students to full-time beginner teachers. These transitions are characterised by excitement, challenges, and a varying sense of reality shock. Each of these transitions is accompanied by a period of liminality before the actual transition, and after the threshold of the transition has been crossed during induction. These periods of liminality are characterised by temporality and the time limit thereof, a change in professional identity before and after the liminal period, particular curricula and customs that need to be mastered before moving on, as well as by a clear indication that a transition and induction will follow.

According to the Apprenticeship of Observation (Lortie 1975), students spend years of formal teaching observing good and bad teaching and develop deep-seated ideas on delivering content, classroom management and other facets of pedagogy in the process. This means that beginner teachers have observed many styles of teaching during their own time at school, as well as during WIL experiences that seem to play an important role in the way they construct and reconstruct their beliefs and practices and how they conceptualise good teaching (Smagorinsky & Barnes 2014). Prospective teachers thus have initial ideas about what it means to be a good teacher, what content ought to be taught, how it ought to be taught, and the kind of classroom ethos they would like to create.

The longitudinal study commenced during their first year of study and into their first two years of being employed as beginner teachers. The study included ten first-year B.Ed. students from the NWU (Potchefstroom Campus) who had Life Orientation as a mayor subject in the Senior and Further Education and Training Phases. Qualitative data was collected through semi-structured interviews that prompted individual narratives and personal reflections from the students. The semi-structured interviews were designed to create individual and collective unfolding stories. The students represented a diverse group of ethnic and language backgrounds.

Analysis of their narratives and experiences provided insight into the way they have anticipated, lived through, and reflected upon their various transitions. It is also important to note that the COVID-19 pandemic happened during this study and it also part of the lived experiences.

The findings of this study will be used to help student teachers increase their understanding of the transitions they will experience, identify the determinants of successful transitions in ITE, as well as the challenges and needs of pre-service and beginner teachers. It can also create opportunities towards reducing the impact of reality shock once they start teaching by bridging the gap between theory and practice and contribute to our understanding and knowledge regarding the complete cycle of teacher training.

Keywords:

Transition, initial teacher training, pre-service teacher, beginner teacher.