The Training We Receive Is Not Useful To Work”. Study About The Identity Of The Novice Teacher

Abstract

The paper we present is part of the research project called "The professional identity of teacher studies” which aims to analyse the training received by students in the faculties of education in the Autonomous Community of Andalusia, especially in the degrees of Chilhood and primary teacher education. To that effect, the influence of school period experience on teacher education is inquired. Also we study what kind of professional identity they are generating along this time and after five years of activity as teachers. We present the results of the third phase of the research, in which the training experience of teachers with no more than 5 years’ experience and their incorporation to the school activity was analysed, in the province of Malaga. The research is framed in narrative perspective through teachers histories of life. This perspective allows re-visiting the comprehension of training experience and the views of teachers of their job. These studies, as Hollingsworth and Sockett (1994) explains, arising from the orientation known as "research professor" connected with the revisions of Goodson (1981, 1995 and 1996), mainly disclosed widely (Ball and Goodson, 1985; Goodson and Walker, 1991; Goodson and Hargreaves, 1996; Goodson and Sikes, 2001) and occupy a place in educational research from the work of Clandinin and Connelly (1992, 1994, 1996, Connelly and Clandinin, 1990, 1994, 1995, 2000), McEwan, Egan (1998), Sikes (Packwood and Sikes, 1996; Sikes, Measor and Woods, 1985) and Hargreaves (1996, 1999). In the specific case of the beginner teacher identity, most analyses relate how teachers transit from novice to professional and how this process is carried out, revealing the conflict generated between the professional practice and the training. The teachers in our research dramatically manifested the low incidence of the academic education in college on their professional practice. The profession is learned, according to their voices, in schools, not in the university. The period of professionalism extends, such as Huberman (1993) says, about five years; in this sense, Lave and Wenger (1991) assert that in this term, the novice teacher builds not only the professional identity (through the following sources: knowledge students, learning to teach, discover the culture of their school, etc.); also, at the same time, the teachers of the school that a novel teacher belongs to, will redefine their identities, creating a process of identity construction, which according to Wenger (1998) is a shared construction through their participation in school life