Illinois New Teacher Collaborative

Andrews, S. P, Gilbert, L. S., & Martin, E. P. (2006). The first years of teaching: Disparities in perceptions of support. Action in Teacher Education, 28, 4-13.

Recommended for program organizers, mentors, administrators, teacher educators, and beginning teachers

Empirical Research: Qualitative Survey. Study sought to answer 1)”What types of support do beginning teachers value, and what do they actually receive” and 2)”What types of support do administrators believe are provided for the beginning teachers in their schools?” (p. 1). Researchers found “discrepancies between the strategies provided for new teachers and those they valued, as well as disparities between administrator and teacher reports” (p. 1).

Key Ideas
Results were based on surveys completed by beginning teachers, administrators, and mentor teachers.
New teachers valued opportunities to collaborate with and learn from their peers. While a low percentage of beginning teachers reported having such opportunities to collaborate, a high percentage of administrators reported providing beginning teachers with opportunities to collaborate. According to the authors, “Collaboration with veteran teachers has been cited by a number of researchers as strongly contributing to the success and retention of new teachers, and a lack of this opportunity has been reported in the literature as a reason for leaving the profession” (p. 9).
High percentages of beginning teachers and administrators reported the mentoring process as valuable.
Beginning teachers, administrators, and mentor teachers were asked about the following 12 support strategies (listed in order of perceived value): 1) assigning mentors to new teachers; 2) holding a special orientation session for new teachers before the school year begins; 3) providing new teachers with special publications (handbooks, guides, other materials); 4) holding special professional development sessions for new teachers during the school year; 5) having informal meetings of groups of new teachers for peer support; 6) providing new teachers with co-planning time with other teachers; 7) giving new teachers the opportunity to observe other teachers; 8) providing new teachers with constructive feedback based on non-evaluative classroom observations; 9) reducing new teachers’ non-teaching duties (lunchroom, bus, etc.); 10) assigning new teachers to smaller classes; 11) limiting the number of different class preparations assigned to new teachers; and 12) scheduling field trips that give new teachers an opportunity to learn about the school district and available resources (p. 9).
“Discrepancies between administrator responses and teacher responses may indicate a problem related to perceptions” (p. 10). For example, while administrators may feel as though informal opportunities are provided for beginning teachers to observe veteran teachers, beginning teachers may not perceive that to be the case. The researchers recommend that more open dialogue occur between administrators and beginning teachers.
The researchers indicated that non-evaluative feedback is useful for beginning teachers.