This project has received a further year of funding (2011-2012) from the purchase agreement with the Ministry of Education, to follow up on the group of teachers who were part of the original research project.

The first study (2005-2008) followed a sample of 57 promising new primary and secondary teachers from their third to seventh years of teaching in order to illuminate their experiences as they progressed from newly fully registered to experienced teacher status. 

We chose to focus on this period because:

• provisionally registered teachers have been, and are currently the focus of other studies
• this is the period when teachers typically make critical decisions about their careers such as whether to stay in teaching, to advance up the career ladder, or to continue with professional learning; and 
• research demonstrates that teachers play a critical role in students' enjoyment and engagement in school, and their success as learners, so it matters how well teachers are prepared, mentored and supported as early career teachers.

Apart from those teachers who were overseas or left teaching, we interviewed each teacher twice in 2005, once in 2006, and held one-day workshops for teachers in 2007. Teachers also completed surveys in 2005 and 2008.

We asked them to reflect on:

• the reasons they decided to become teachers
• their expectations and experiences in their programmes of initial teacher education
• the support and challenges they experienced in their provisional registration period 
• the opportunities they had to develop greater expertise as teachers
• the types of workplace cultures that supported their on-going learning
• the opportunities they had to contribute to the development of their colleagues
• the factors that kept them in their schools (and the reasons that they left)

In Term One 2008:

• 31 teachers were still teaching full-time in New Zealand schools
• 12 were teaching overseas
• 7 were on maternity leave
• 7 had left classroom teaching (all are in teaching-related fields)

In the latest stage of the research, we want to learn what this special group of teachers is doing now, how many are still teaching and what sustains their on-going enthusiasm for teaching and learning. We are also interested in how they contribute to the professional learning of other teachers. Teachers completed an online survey in 2011, followed by phone interviews. We have produced a newsletter with the findings and are continuing to do more analysis of the interviews.

Newsletters:

TipTop April 2012 [235KB PDF]
TipTop Aug 2007 [40kb pdf]
TipTop June 2006 [107kb pdf]
TipTop Sept 2005 [284kb pdf]

Funded by the Purchase Agreement with the Ministry of Education