European Journal of Teacher Education Vol. 27, No.

3, October 2004

Starting points: student teachers reasons for becoming teachers and their preconceptions of what this will mean
Mike Youngera*, Sue Brindleya, David Peddera and Hazel Haggerb
a

University of Cambridge Faculty of Education, UK; bUniversity of Oxford, UK

This article focuses upon the developing professionalism and emergent thinking of 36 secondary trainee teachers, in terms of their motivation to teach, their early beliefs about teaching and the teachinglearning process and their views of themselves as trainee teachers. It analyses their perspectives on how they expect to learn to become teachers and how these perspectives match with their early experiences on their training courses. Discussion of these starting points of beginning teachers reveals some understanding of models of outstanding classroom practice, but equally a relatively unsophisticated analysis of the essential characteristics of this practice. The challenge for teacher educators is to frame courses in such a way that beginning teachers are provided with the contexts and the methodologies whereby they can reect upon their own preconceptions and rene their own understandings as to how they themselves learn as teachers, to enable them to facilitate the learning of pupils and to full their own clearly articulated aspirations to become quality teachers. Cet article se focalise sur les changements du professionnalisme et des ide es de 36 professeurs stagiaires de secondaire. Il regarde pourquoi ils veulent enseigner, et leur croyance to t au sujet de lenseignement et de lenseignement - apprentissage. Il conside ` re e galement leurs propres vues deux-me mes comme professeurs stagiaires. Il analyse comment ils comptent apprendre a ` devenir des professeurs, et comment ces espe rances sassortissent avec leurs premie ` res expe riences sur leurs cours de formation. La discussion des vues de ces professeurs stagiaires sugge ` re quils aient les mode ` les clairs de la pratique en matie ` re exceptionnelle de salle de classe. Mais ils ont e galement une compre hension pluto t simple des vraies caracte ristiques de cette pratique. Le de pour des e ducateurs de professeur doit concevoir les cours qui fournissent a ` des professeurs stagiaires les contextes et les me thodologies pour les aider a ` se ree ter sur leurs propres pre conceptions. En me me temps, ils ont besoin daide pour clarier leurs propres comprehensions quant a ` la fac on dont ils apprennent comme professeurs. Ceci les aidera a ` soutenir les e tudiants apprenant mieux, et a ` re pondre a ` leurs propres aspirations claires pour devenir de tre ` s bons professeurs. *Corresponding author. University of Cambridge Faculty of Education, Homerton Site, Hills Road, Cambridge CB2 2PH, UK. Email: mry20@cam.ac.uk ISSN 0261-9768 (print); ISSN 1469-5928 (online)/04/030245-20 2004 Association for Teacher Education in Europe DOI: 10.1080/0261976042000290787

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nderungen im Professionalismus und in den Ideen von Dieser Artikel konzentriert sich auf die A 36 Sekunda rauszubildendlehrern. Er erwa gt, warum sie unterrichten wollen, und ihre fru he Glauben u ber den Unterricht und den Unterricht - Lernproze. Er u berlegt auch ihre eigenen Ansichten von sich selbst als Auszubildendlehrer. Er analysiert, wie sie erwarten, Lehrer werden zu lernen und wie diese Erwartungen mit ihren fru hen Erfahrungen auf ihren Ausbildungskursen zusammenpassen. Diskussion u ber die Ansichten dieser Auszubildendlehrer schla gt vor, da sie klare Modelle der hervorragenden Klassenzimmerpraxis haben. Aber sie haben auch ein ziemlich einfaches Versta ndnis der wirklichen Eigenschaften dieser Praxis. Die Herausforderung fu r Lehrererzieher ist Kurse zu entwerfen, die Auszubildendlehrer mit den Kontexten und der Methodik versehen, um ihnen zu helfen, u ber ihre eigenen vorgefaten Meinungen nachzudenken. Gleichzeitig beno tigen sie Hilfe, ihr eigenes Versta ndnis davon zu kla ren, wie sie als Lehrer lernen. Dies hilft ihnen, die Studenten besser zu stu tzen und ihren eigenen klaren Aspirationen zu treffen, um sehr gute Lehrer zu werden. Este art culo se enfoca sobre los cambios en el profesionalismo y las ideas de 36 profesores secundarios del aprendiz. Mira porque desean ensen ar, y su creencia temprana sobre la ensen anza y la ensen anza - proceso de aprendizaje. Tambie n considera sus propias opiniones de s mismos l ana como profesores del aprendiz. E lisis co mo esperan aprender hacer profesores, y co mo estas expectativas emparejan con sus experiencias tempranas en sus cursos de aprendizaje. La discusio n de las opiniones estos profesores del aprendiz sugiere que tengan modelos claros de la pra ctica excepcional de la sala de clase. Pero tambie n tienen una comprensio n algo simple de las caracter sticas verdaderas de esta pra ctica. El desa o para los educadores del profesor es disen ar los cursos que proveen de profesores del aprendiz los contextos y las metodolog as para ayudarles a reejar sobre sus propias preconcepciones. En el mismo tiempo, necesitan ayuda claricar su propio entendimiento en cuanto a co mo aprenden como profesores. Esto les ayudara a apoyar a los estudiantes que aprenden mejor, y a resolver sus propias aspiraciones claras para sentir bien a profesores muy buenos.

Introduction Fundamental changes in teacher education in England in the closing years of the 20th century saw not only the prescriptive and detailed denition of competences (Department for Education, 1992) and standards (DfEE, 1998) which trainees had to exhibit before gaining Qualied Teacher Status (QTS), but also the requirement that those gaining QTS identied, in their Career Entry Prole, their own strengths and targets to inform individualized professional development programmes during their induction year of teaching. Developing the expertise of beginning teachers, supporting them through their induction year and providing opportunities for structured professional development has thus been formalized as part of the political agenda, one way in which successive governments have attempted to raise standards of teaching and learning in secondary schools nationwide and to enhance the notion of teaching as a valued career. The DEBT project (Developing the Expertise of Beginning Teachers) was set up to explore the experiences of secondary Post-graduate Certicate in Education (PGCE) trainees [and subsequently newly qualied teachers (NQTs)] within this emerging context, to identify over a 3 year period the development of skills, attributes and characteristics of a number of NQTs and to focus upon their transition, in the rst 2 years of qualication, from trainee to qualied teacher. Many commentators have focused upon this experience of learning to teach (Calderhead & Shorrock, 1997; Brownlee et al., 1998; Oberski et al., 1999; Drever & Cope,

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1999; Wood, 2000), about what it means to make this transition from novice to more experienced teacher (Zeichner, 1999), reecting upon the changing belief systems, values and skills which emerge and are shaped as those who are new to the profession experience this process afresh (Calderhead & Robson, 1991; Desforges, 1995). Within this context, the DEBT project focused upon the developing professionalism and emergent thinking of 36 secondary trainees, 12 in each of the three core subjects (English, mathematics and science), in their training year in the PGCE partnership schemes operated by Oxford and Cambridge universities. The methodology employed has been described in more detail in Burn et al. (2000), but in essence data collection for the project involved lming trainees teaching on three occasions spaced through the training year, with subsequent interviews which focused on each of the specic lessons. The concern of this paper, however, is with the professional starting points of these beginning teachers; the evidence is drawn from initial interviews with each of the trainee teachers, which took place about 6 weeks into their PGCE training, before they had experienced any substantial teaching. These interviews were analysed and coded, to a common schemata, by three experienced members of the research team. An initial verication exercise, which compared each members analysis of a sample of the same six interviews, yielded a verication index of 0.94, indicating a high level of reliability and common interpretation between interviewers. A similar verication exercise, at the conclusion of the coding, conrmed a consistency of interpretation between interviewers throughout the coding process. In our discussion of these interviews we focus upon the personal antecedents and the sources and nature of the motivation to teach of the beginning teachers, the nature of their understandings of the profession they were embarking upon, their views of teachers and the teachinglearning process and how they envisage the professional learning process they will go through themselves as they learn to become a teacher. Coming to terms with teaching: why teach? Studies on teacher recruitment and retention in the UK, partly in response to the apparent crisis in teacher supply experienced throughout the 1990s and the early years of the 21st century, focused attention upon a wide variety of factors which either attracted or alienated potential recruits and those already in training (Reid & Caudwell, 1997; Reid & Thornton, 2000; Whitehead & Postlethwaite, 2000; Chambers et al., 2001; Haydn et al., 2001; Moran et al., 2001; Edmonds et al., 2002; Thornton et al., 2002). Consensual conclusions from these studies have suggested that trainee teachers are attracted to the profession largely for intrinsic reasons (related) to the profession itself and to personal fullment (Edmonds et al., 2002, p. 9) and that trainees were led into teaching by the positive experiences of schools, classrooms and teachers (Thornton et al., 2002, p. 41) which they had encountered during the course of their own education. Within the DEBT research, signicantly perhaps within the context of secondary

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schooling, the intrinsic reasons identied by Edmonds et al. were centrally linked to trainees desire to continue to work with their subject. Indeed, our research revealed that 88% of the trainees identied subject as a major factor in their decision to follow a PGCE course. However, this apparent homogeneity of response carries with it a complexity of constructions of subject and teaching. For some trainees it was the perceived intrinsic value of the subject itself, and the opportunity to continue working within the subject area, which drew them to teaching:
I love the subject (mathematics). I think its fascinating I also think its such a beautiful subject. There is so much symmetry and pattern and everything else that a lot of people miss because they see it as copying out of textbooks and doing boring questions. But there is so much to it and I just love it and nd it a really fascinating subject.

For others, however, an additional dimension to the love of the subject was the desire to share their own enthusiasm and pleasure in the area with others, to communicate ways of seeing the world through different lenses:
Ive just always loved reading and if I can foster that same sort of love in other people, children, that will be great. Thats the appeal of science, how everything works, and to communicate that with children, to develop that fascination in them, develop it with them, that I nd pleasurable. I think that so many people nd chemistry extremely difcult I go on thinking, yes, it is difcult, but look at this, this is really interesting, you just learn this little bit and it all makes sense suddenly and I just thought that if I can get other people to see that, it would be so much easier for them.

It has been suggested that many trainees make the decision to teach as a result of their own positive experiences at school (Thornton et al., 2002). We concur with this; about one-third of our trainees explained their motivation to teach as stemming from their own positive schooling experiences. For many other trainees (around 40%) the motivation to teach was rooted in their own previous teaching experiences, some trainees citing TEFL backgrounds, some industry, where their role had been in training adults, but most frequently experiences teaching children, either as a volunteer worker overseas or through work experiences gained at university:
Because I didnt speak Romanian when I went out there, taught a lesson on the present tense to a group of seven year olds. The proper Romanian teacher didnt think theyd know it: they knew it perfectly well the next day, because somehow Id managed to put it across to them . I grew up in Kenya and after my A levels I went home for the summer. During that time there was a girl doing her Kenyan equivalent of A levels. She needed some help and I offered to tutor her. It turned out that she knew absolutely nothing so I spent three months taking her right back to basics. It was just so rewarding for me to see her condence growing. After that I decided that was what I wanted to do. I wanted to teach. A lot of my work has been spent training adults, so that really motivated me. I just

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found it so rewarding. I used to teach sport to children as well. Its so fantastic to see the light bulb come on.

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Alongside this ran the parallel interest in working with children:

It was whilst I was learning about Piaget and the way children think I started to think this is fascinating and I would love to work with children and see them go through this process. Its enjoyable imparting knowledge and working with kids, drawing the knowledge out and getting them to think.

For some, teaching was simply there at the right time for a career change, and pragmatism was the key factor, but even in the relatively small percentage (20%) that responded in this way, there emerged in the accounts something beyond teaching as a job:
I know certainly that those of us who already have their PhDs or Masters or have been working for a while feel extremely passionate about why we are doing this.

Passion is a further element which seemed to infuse much of the trainees thinking about teaching. What was striking in these accounts of their various journeys into teaching (mentioned by just over 30% of trainees) was the emotional commitment to teaching and the strongly idealistic version of teachers and teaching which at times was represented as a moral positioning:
I feel powerfully that everybody is deserving of equal chances to make their way in the world. You are inuencing a whole generation, generations of people and thats exciting.

It may be that this passion for teaching and learning, and its place in shaping society, is what served to buoy trainees up against a tide of discouragement from others which they reported encountering even before beginning the PGCE course. Eighty per cent of the trainees had been advised against becoming teachers and the advice had come from a variety of sources: friends, family and from the profession itself. One trainee described a science teacher at his own school as saying Dont go into teaching, its dreadful. Trainees responses to the negative and discouraging remarks they encountered are telling:
The very strange thing is that in a contrary way their reaction frightened me so much I thought Good grief. People really do need to do something about teaching. This isnt how it should be. I just would use the great moral argument Well yes, you may have lots of money but you hate sitting in the ofce whereas Ill be doing something that hopefully people will benet from . She [a teacher] said Cant you get a better paid job? I said I could get a better paid job, but I cant think of anything I can do that is more valuable.

The qualities the vast majority of trainees (over 80%) associated with inspirational teachers, that they were enthusiastic, encouraging, possessed strong inter-personal skills, generated condence in pupils (described by one trainee as a sort of faith in

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ability I didnt really have) and possessed energy (her drive to make sure that she got the best out of us was incredible), were also qualities that they were able to identify in themselves, albeit in embryo. Although, in mapping their own personal qualities against those of good teachers, trainees had achieved an identication of themselves with teaching which made it feel almost inevitable that they would become teachers,
I cant think of another profession that would be suited to me. People assume that Im kind of destined to do it anyway. Its been a slow train coming.

there is little evidence in our data to support the view of Britzman (1986) that trainees regard themselves as natural teachers or having been born to teach. Indeed, this somewhat idealized version of teachers and teaching that trainees describe makes it unsurprising that an anxiety that they will not be able to meet their own criteria for becoming a good teacher reected is in their own reservations about becoming a teacher, and that many of these concerns relate strongly to personal characteristics:
Ive found from being in the classroom that I actually feel daunted by the prospect of teaching something like two or three hundred pupils in a week. How much time can I actually give to each one? I thought I knew what the task was, and I didnt know really what the hurdles were. I did ten minutes with Year 7 and I thought Its going totally ne and I lost it completely. I forgot everybodys name and it was a mess it was awful.

Teaching as they know it (now): trainees beliefs about teaching Inuential images of teaching The early images of the types of teacher the student teachers wanted to become were shaped in important ways by their recall of experiences from their own schooling (Calderhead & Robson, 1991; Sugrve, 1997). Here their memories appeared to hinge on the person of a key teaching gure who had managed to inspire them and whom they perceived to have made a signicant difference to their learning.
The one teacher I remember from school, who was my main man, was an English teacher I had he brought the subject to life, he just came with all these new ideas . I had one specic physics teacher. He had worked at Harwell for many years, and he was a real scientist to me. He was a real physicist. He was intelligent sometimes in science you can learn things and think Whats the point? But he was actually saying what the point was of some of these things .

The characteristics of these key teachers from the past recalled by our trainee teachers varied, however, accounts tended to focus on issues related to the use of effective classroom instructional strategies and, in conjunction with these, the promotion of positive affect. In relation to effective instruction, over 80% of trainees mentioned factors such as planning, pace, coherence, the provision of meaningful

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learning opportunities, well-structured lessons and good discipline and class management:
You didnt have time to be naughty because her lessons were so fast paced and well planned. I think it is just because she was really organized and she knew exactly what we were going to do and it was always in a scheme, you know . Our new RE teacher came in and said Right, everybody get out your exercise books. But we dont have exercise books, this is RE but everything changed, she was actually very structured, rm but fair, and I ended up doing an A level in RE. So, classroom management and discipline.

Talking about the promotion of positive affect, trainees accounts ranged across a number of different aspects, including concern for pupils well-being, transmitting a love of subject through communicating to pupils a belief in their ability to succeed and taking pupils seriously as learners and young persons with serious views:
And I remember a teacher at my school used to say to us that he was in loco parentis and he always made a point of saying that and he did care a lot for each individual and what was going on and why we didnt turn up for form some days . I had a remarkable English teacher whose love for her subject captivated me .

In this nal example, affective issues are closely embedded within the effectiveness of the teachers instructional practice and their developed subject knowledge:
They were nice people who seemed to know the subject well in a depth which is far more than yours. And when you come up with questions, they can come up with sensible answers people who dont just dismiss your ideas.

In addition to their own schoolteachers, trainees were beginning to be inuenced in important ways by experienced teachers at their placement schools. These teachers were inuential models, acting as important formative inuences on the development of trainees emergent principles of good practice, although these inuences covered a wide range of aspects of teachers work. Some trainees expressed a sense of the positive inuence of teachers in rather general terms, expressing something akin to awe, and certainly showing a high degree of respect for certain key teachers:
Its quite interesting at the school Im in at the moment because the Head of Department I would say was brilliant . This is a science department that is doing everything it can to be good they have quite a lot of younger teachers who are superb many of them are just one or two years into teaching, and they are really breathtaking to watch . My mentor, for example, I really respect. I am impressed with his whole style.

Other trainees expressed the inuence of their experienced colleagues in ways that relate more specically to aspects of classroom practice, but the note of awe is still apparent in their accounts. This trainee talks about a teachers management of whole class discussion:
In our orientation weeks before we started here I saw an English lesson and I just thought, This teacher is fantastic. Shed got such enthusiasm, and shed got the whole

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of the class interacting. They all wanted to give answers, and she got everybody to take part. She was obviously such a good teacher .

Trainees views of teachers and teachinglearning processes So that we could elicit trainees understandings of teachinglearning processes we asked them what makes a good teacher, what makes a bad teacher and we also asked them to imagine themselves teaching what they thought would be a successful lesson. Commonly, over 80% of trainees spoke about good teachers in terms of their personal characteristics, particularly their condence, inter-personal skills and their commitment to pupil success. They also mentioned teachers enthusiasm and their encouragement of pupils as key. In addition to personal characteristics, they evaluated teachers as good or bad in terms of the extent to which they possessed effective classroom management skills, taught well-structured and well-prepared lessons and developed a good rapport with and respect for pupils. Bad teachers, in contrast, were typically characterized by their poor relationships with pupils, cynicism and disaffection, lack of enthusiasm and lack of classroom management skills and a lack of respect for those they taught. We saw that trainees accounts of good and bad teachers were expressive of strong emotional commitment and deep moral vision. The same moral tone attended their accounts of their own teaching of what they construed to be a successful lesson. Here they identied a range of features of the successful lesson and effective classroom practices that remained, unsurprisingly at this stage of their professional development, rather vague and unexplicated. Hence, effective classroom teachinglearning processes were typically characterized by the active involvement of the pupils, the use of group work and class discussion, clear lesson structure and direction and by variety and pace. This strongly moralistic construction offered by trainees, of teaching as a profession, is entirely consistent with their accounts of the qualities needed to become a good teacher. In fact, trainees went beyond the notion of good in their response to the question which asked them to describe the appropriate qualities and skills required by teachers. Instead they described inspirational teachers:
My English teacher calm, reserved, a great contrast to my history teachers I also found superb very inspired. inspires children to want to learn.

Trainees views of themselves as trainee teachers Trainees showed alert self-perceptions in terms of their own qualities and the strengths and weaknesses which they perceived themselves as bringing to the new professional world of schoolteaching. The strengths that trainees identied in relation to themselves tended to be concerned more with personal characteristics than with teaching skills; most notably they talked about enthusiasm, imagination and organizational qualities, but in generalized and decontextualized ways:

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Im patient, maybe, patient and enthusiastic . I think Im quite an organized person and erm, working you know, working under pressure, working quite intensively for long periods of time . I think Im imaginative. I think as an English teacher thats quite a good thing to have under your belt, imagination. Im quite good at improvising and thinking on my feet . Well, I have a good sense of humour. I tend to be quite light .

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Few trainees identied strengths in relation to their teaching skills. There were only two trainees who spoke positively about particular class management skills they apply in lessons, and these were speaking on the basis of previous teaching experience, such as VSO or TEFL. One trainee spoke about his classroom presence and his ability to deliver lessons. The other spoke about her ability to maintain pace and tension in a lesson. Positive remarks about lesson planning and preparation were few. Other strengths mentioned by the vast majority of trainees were in relation to their subject knowledge, their general experience of the world and their professionalism. In the main, when speaking positively about their subject knowledge they spoke about their condence and grounding in relation to their subject. Few trainees, however, went on to report ways in which they might use their subject knowledge to assist the learning of their pupils. In relation to their life experiences, trainees spoke positively about how they considered their life experiences to be linked to teaching. There appeared to be three kinds of experiences which were identied as being highly relevant to the work of teaching; some trainees talked about skills developed through being a parent (20%), others related skills they had developed in prior non-teaching contexts to that teaching (35%), whilst others described previous experience gained in different school and educational contexts (25%). Conversely, personal characteristics such as impatience, disorganization and lack of classroom presence were identied by trainees as potential weaknesses in relation to their teaching. In relation to their teaching context, they spoke about their shyness, intolerance and sense of panic; when talking about teaching skills, the majority of accounts related to aspects of classroom management and to lesson planning and preparation:
I could list a long list of my weaknesses. I can be very impatient, I do tend to open my mouth before I think, and I can be quite tactless. I have a tendency to panic from time to time, and its a bit difcult to admit that, especially when youre trying to become a teacher . A weakness? Im not sure that Ive got the kind of leadership qualities that Ill need to keep control. Just what do you do, how do you control a class of thirty individuals, and how do you make sure that they know youre in charge without being authoritarian and without shouting and all that sort of thing? and Ive noticed already that running practicals is a killer. I did the most simple experiment ever in my science class and I just couldnt keep it under control and I dont know why that was.

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As with classroom management, when trainees spoke about preparation and lesson planning they focused overwhelmingly on their shortcomings. Most of their weaknesses they perceived related to general organizational skills. They also discussed the challenges involved in developing their understanding of the National Curriculum, particularly in relation to the attainment targets, and taking account of these in their planning:
Stuff, denitely to do with assessment and planning and just to get my head round the National Curriculum is going to be at the root of everything you do, and remembering that everything you do has got to be tied to an Attainment Target . I think what will be another concern is the whole GCSE and A level syllabuses, and keeping to those syllabuses because they are so complicated and rigid as well. The fear that you wont have covered something for those children to sit exams. Its things like that that bother me, but it doesnt seem to bother teachers in the school.

Related to these curriculum issues, a large number of trainees (around 66%) saw themselves as having limitations in their subject knowledge:
My subject knowledge isnt as fantastic as it could be . But I still do feel very uncondent in the subject knowledge. I know that there are certain areas of my subject I am going to nd difcult, that I have problems with .

Others mentioned more specic aspects of their subject knowledge that they needed to develop:
I have to teach Macbeth in the spring. Ive never ever read Macbeth. Its on my list of things to read, which is getting longer and longer by the minute. Im going to have to go back to basics and learn grammar. Its not something I ever really remember doing at school. Im terrible at stats, awful at stats. I dont like the thought of going in as a maths teacher and not even knowing the rst thing about stats.

Trainees were also concerned about being able to explain difcult curricula concepts in ways that pupils would nd accessible and interesting:
The only difculty is breaking it down, as Im used to talking to highly technical and executive sorts of people. To try and explain from rst principles is completely new. Personally, I can use language quite well, but Im not quite sure how to break it down into what the pupils need to know.

Others were worried that they lacked the knowledge to be able to respond to pupils questions. Interestingly, though, one trainee reported positive outcomes for her teaching and her pupils learning arising from her having to relearn aspects of her subject:
I think there are denitely areas of my subject that perhaps I dont know as well as I should. You have to know things so well to teach them, and there are a lot of things that Ive forgotten over the years. I dont think theres so much of a problem, but I am going to have to really think about them. The good thing about that is that as I relearn

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them I can see where the kids would struggle with things, because Ill be having to learn them rather than just know them. But in a way its a bit worrying when I think that the kids could ask me any question and what if I dont know the answer? That might be a weakness.

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We will see in the next section that this concern of trainees about the range, detail and security of their subject knowledge was one source of worry and concern in the context of their learning to become teachers. Learning how to become a teacher (as they know it) Trainees discussions about how they might learn to teach and to become a teacher seemed understandably to be substantially inuenced either by their early course experiences or by their expectations. Thus, two of the dominant themes were of learning within the university context, discussed by 79% of respondents, and learning from observation (74%); the third dominant theme, learning through doing (76%), related to their expectations and the assumption of many of the trainees that this would be the main way in which they would learn. Learning within the university context Within the context of the university-based elements of the course, there was a clear understanding amongst trainees that it was the responsibility of subject studies lecturers to induct them into how to teach their subject, through sessions which offered practical guidance on classroom tactics, strategies and resources for different topics and types of lessons. Subject studies sessions were most valued when they were focused, tightly structured with an emphasis on teaching strategies which could be implemented in different contexts:
Well, I mean, subject studies is brilliant when we do things that are directly relevant to lessons and things like that.

It was their recognition of limitations in their subject knowledge which was the overriding concern of the trainees (mentioned by 50% of respondents). Although there was some uncertainty about whether the subject studies programmes should be responsible for enabling trainees to acquire the needed subject knowledge or whether the responsibility rested with the trainees themselves, there was explicit recognition that the trainees themselves would not possess the breadth of subject knowledge demanded by GCSE syllabi and by the National Curriculum:
One thing is just simply I would love to have at the snap of a nger if you picked a topic and an age group be able to tell you exactly what they needed to know. Id love to have that knowledge at my nger tips. That then opens up youre more condent in the classroom and you wouldnt mind if brighter or naturally curious students questioned you on things. Having the subject knowledge at my nger tips so I could very condently switch between topics, draw in ideas.

Other issues within subject studies, such as fundamental questions about the nature of childrens learning in the subject, and the more generic aspects of the university-

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based programmes were seen as interesting, thought-provoking, providing a breathing space for the exploration of ideas. It was clear, though, that trainees were as yet unable to make the connections between the various components of the course. This uncertainty, and an ambivalence about sessions which were not seen to be directly and immediately applicable to the classroom context, was clearly expressed by one student teacher:
Id rather have handy hints as to what I should be doing in school, rather than all this theory which would be great if Im planning on going into educational theory. But some of it has been very useful a lot of it is the issues you need to know. But there is almost a sense among a lot of people that it would be very easy to turn round and say, I just want someone to tell me what to do and tell me to go into a classroom and do that. Ive actually found some of the PDP lectures quite helpful well, not helpful but interesting .

Learning from observation This emphasis on immediacy, on the pragmatic, was reinforced by the importance which trainees gave to learning from their observation of the teaching of experienced teachers. Almost without exception, trainees were positive and enthusiastic about what they could learn from observing different teachers and different teaching styles. Some trainees had gained particular points, related, for example, to a strategy for teaching a particular topic or to the advantages to be gained from preparing a board plan of the lesson for the pupils in advance of the lesson. Most, however, spoke in more generalized terms, of
Watching other teachers, putting together all the bits that work, all the things that dont, I mean you have this idea of the kind of teacher you want to be, its just looking at ways of achieving that .

In marked contrast to the condence of this assertion, some trainees appeared to be growing in awareness that classroom observation might be a complex process, which needed to be systematically analysed and interpreted if their own learning was to be enhanced. To such trainees, increasing knowledge of the complexity of the dynamics within the classroom and their own initial experiences of actual teaching allowed observations to become more focused and directed, from a more informed viewpoint:
So although weve been doing quite a bit of observation, actually I think weve been working at quite a basic level. Until you know what its like to do it, you dont know what a teacher is achieving. You cant see it, it is so automatic.

At this stage of the course this growing awareness did not always help to clarify or make easier the process of learning to become a teacher. Indeed, some trainees were experiencing considerable difculties in developing their own professional identities on the basis of the variety of lessons and teachers they were observing, despite gaining useful practical ideas in the process:
Ive sat in on lots of lessons, Ive watched lots of people teach lots of different things to lots of different classes and it has been very interesting and I have picked up lots

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of little hints. But I havent had a chance to put any of them into practice, so Ill probably end up bending over backwards to put all of them into practice at the same time! There are so many different teachers that you want to model yourself on, its going to be quite hard to nd your own way.

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Learning through doing Learning through doing, through actively teaching pupils in the classroom, was the third dominant theme to emerge from our interviews. There was widespread enthusiasm for this general way of learning to teach, but, once again, the student teachers demonstrated different levels of analytical thinking about the processes that this would involve. For some it seemed that learning would occur automatically, almost through symbiosis, as a result of the student teacher engaging in the process of teaching:
The best way of learning is experience. I know I learn very well from experience I think a lot of it is practice, to tell the truth. A lot of it is practice. Its just actually doing, practice and practice and practice. (our emphasis)

Closely connected to this was the notion that trainees would learn from their own mistakes, through things going wrong or working out differently to that which they expected, or even occasionally from successful experiences in the classroom:
Well, its going to be priceless, getting initial experience with the children and learning what can go wrong.

You have just got to recognise when you have made a mistake, youve got to admit it to yourself and whichever way you remember the most and maybe write it down. Indeed, some were more sophisticated in their thinking, conceding that there were occasions on which it was difcult to tell what was and was not working in the classroom and problematizing the issue of successes and mistakes. For such trainees, learning from experience would come as a result of deliberate analysis and evaluation of their own teaching:
I think, for the rst few years at least, Ill just be constantly analysing my teaching, it will be easier to learn from my mistakes cos I will recognise when I have made a mistake and I dont want it. It makes me frightened that I might become set making the same mistakes. Youve got to work out what it is you did that made the lesson go so well or so badly.

Some gave hints of more elaborate ideas about what learning by doing might involve, for example, introducing theoretical considerations, ethical issues and progression in the kind of experiences from which one may learn. At the same time, these aspects were less well developed in our interviews; one student teacher did suggest that it was pretty mean on the pupils, that way of learning from mistakes. This relatively simple interpretation of the process of learning to be a teacher through practical experiences in the classroom was reinforced when trainees spoke

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of the role of feedback from experienced teachers. On the whole, they seemed to see this as a fairly straightforward process:
Actually standing up in front of a class, taking lessons and discussing it afterwards, seeing what happens, what works and what doesnt . The reason I did the PGCE year was because I wanted to be given exposure in schools, but in the nicest possible way, with people that are prepared to say, Well, that wasnt a very good lesson. I didnt feel you had the kids with you there. I didnt think they understood what you said. But not just being critical, but also being able to say, Ive got a suggestion; maybe next time you could do this.

Commentary In many senses what we see in these initial interviews is a perceptive and alert analysis of the nature of the classroom teachinglearning process and a clear appreciation of the qualities and skills of good teachers. Many trainees showed an astute and realistic understanding of their own strengths and weaknesses and how these might impinge upon and inuence their own evolution from trainee to teacher. Trainees exhibited strong ideals and had well-developed notions of the type of teacher they wanted to become, frequently linking this idealized model back to inuential individuals who had taught them in the past or whom they had already encountered in their placement school. Throughout, trainees articulated objectives for their own practice that were of the highest professional standards. Reasons for becoming a teacher In their rationalizations of their reasons for becoming teachers, there is a signicant mismatch between the aspirations and notions of our trainees and some of the current views of the Teacher Training Agency (TTA) and Department for Education and Skills (DfES). Some of the views espoused by the TTA suggest that teaching might be a career to be entered, left and re-entered at different times, and these are supported by DfES notions that the motive for entering the profession is salary, fast tracking of career and early promotion to positions of power outside the classroom. This is in direct contrast to the views expressed here by our trainees, which place emphasis on teachers making a valuable contribution to society and having certain essential qualities and attributes as role models, views which make implicit the notion of vocation and a moral imperative to make a positive and principled contribution to society. At this stage of their proposed career trainees construct their career choice not in terms of career progression (Reid & Caudwell, 1997) nor in terms of salary opportunities (Haydn et al., 2001), but in terms of intellectual challenge and a commitment to transforming opportunities for children, both in the classroom and in wider societal contexts. Trainees are strongly motivated towards a career in teaching and have sustained this despite strong discouragement both from within and outside the profession; in so doing, they frequently appear to draw on a strongly moralistic positioning in order to withstand this discouragement. Inevitably, this determination and the qualities and the expectations which these

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trainees bring to their training year pose a considerable challenge to teacher educators, in schools and in universities. Trainees idealism, their recent experiences, their established expertise and the extraordinarily high standards they are setting for themselves have to be capitalized upon and used by teacher educators in helping them to learn about the realities and complexities of teaching without losing that highly motivating idealism. Whatever the success of the TTA in attracting new sources of recruits into teaching and of establishing the exibility of the career rather than notions of a life-long profession, the governments primary concern in its handling of the education system should be to do nothing that might discourage such intelligent and committed people as these trainees from entering the profession. Trainees awareness of the need to learn These initial interviews also highlight the awareness of the trainees that they have much to learn if they are to achieve and to full the models to which they aspire. In their discussions of the limitations of their own subject knowledge, in their accounts of their limited grasp of aspects of the National Curriculum in their own subject and in their descriptions of classroom management challenges, trainees reveal the understanding that it will be an ongoing struggle for them to realize their ideals in practice. Of particular interest, too, is the awareness displayed by trainees in their accounts of the need to learn how to teach, of the need to develop a repertoire of skills and strategies to use in different contexts and of the need for self-discipline and ways to accommodate and manage stress if their own ideals are to be achieved. In their appreciation of the need to balance idealistic aspiration with practice there is close accord with Weinstein (1998), when she talks of teacher educators needing to help prospective teachers develop broader, more inclusive notions of caring and order, so that they can better understand the ways that positive inter-personal relationships and engaging well-orchestrated lessons contribute to order! These trainees seem to have an embryonic and developing experience of this at this early stage and it is both reassuring and challenging for teacher educators to know that there is, alongside these idealistic aspirations, this awareness of the need to learn so much. Trainees perspectives of teaching It is also clear, however, that trainees apparently tend not to recognize the complexity of some aspects of the task of teaching and, inevitably, do not appreciate the extent of some of the challenges which they face. Thus trainees accounts of effective classroom teachinglearning processes, for example, did not place a great deal of emphasis upon articulating how these processes might contribute to pupils learning. As we saw with their accounts of inuential models of teaching, this seems to suggest that at this early stage of their professional development trainees lack a framework within which to understand pupils learning and how their own classroom actions as teachers might inuence pupils progress. In these accounts the focus of trainees is more or less on themselves. Thus the location and importance of pupils in trainees thinking about classroom processes remains altogether unclear. As it is, these early

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accounts by trainees seem to reect, understandably enough, a rather formulaic way of thinking, a template or recipe to be applied in lessons irrespective of the context in which classroom teaching and learning might take place, including of course the characteristics of the pupils themselves. Some trainees thus had the tendency to make quick and simplistic judgements about learning to be a teacher on the basis of a supercial understanding of the complexities of the classroom situation and of the roles which teachers exercise in these situations. Other trainees, growing in awareness of these complexities, were as yet unable to analyse the interactions with sufcient clarity as to inuence their own practice or their own emerging professional identities. This lack of recognition of the complexity of aspects of the task of teaching is seen, too, in the ways in which trainees tend to focus on the kinds of things teachers knew or did or the kind of person a teacher was. There appeared to be a common tendency across trainees to talk about the practices of established teachers in terms of teaching style. This concept of style seems to reect trainees attempts to understand, within a single coherent framework, the diversity of the teaching they had observed. This undifferentiated view of style held and applied by trainees in their initial school settings does not as yet show understanding or appreciation of the sophisticated and exible pedagogies implemented by experienced practitioners or of the range of factors of which they must take account in their classroom decision-making. Similarly, trainees pressing concern with the security of their subject knowledge is entirely consistent with emphases articulated within the policy framework of Circular 4/98 and National Curriculum documents, both for the school curriculum and for ITT. It is nonetheless an oversimple view, conating subject knowledge with pedagogy and suggesting that to know the subject is sufcient to enable one to teach the subject. Once again, this perspective of teaching is hardly surprising, but it underestimates the nature of the challenge facing the trainees and their as yet underdeveloped awareness of the need for teaching strategies and methodologies which will promote learning. The responses of the trainees at this stage of their training encapsulate one of the fundamental challenges which exists for teacher educators. Trainees bring with them rich understandings, commitments and skills which give them a sure foundation for learning and for professional development and training. However, many trainees also have a restricted and somewhat narrow view of the complexity of the task of teaching pupils to learn and of the nature of classroom processes and interactions which support such learning. It is crucial, therefore, that teacher educators ensure that the professional training on offer maintains an appropriate balance between, on the one hand, making sure that trainees learn to understand and to deal effectively with the complexities of teaching and, on the other, building on and using the experiences and skills which they bring with them in order to do that. Trainees thinking about how they will learn to teach One nal theme emerges from these initial interviews with the trainees, and this concerns the area where trainees, as might be expected, have least understanding but

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where they most urgently need understanding; their thinking about how they themselves will learn to teach, an appreciation of the means and strategies by which their highly laudable aims and outcomes might be achieved in practice. In this sense trainees reveal a relatively unsophisticated analysis of the nature of the skilled professional practice of teaching. This is unremarkable in view of the restricted opportunities they have had at this stage of their training to develop the experiencebased scripts used by teachers, to work out how to proceed in particular lessons and how to respond appropriately to the demands of both individuals and the whole class. Without these scripts, however, trainees are left dependent upon xed notions of standards of good practice and desirable lesson outcomes, but limited knowledge of procedures and strategies and how they might acquire such strategies and use and modify them to meet their own standards in different classroom contexts. This is apparent, too, in trainees descriptions of self as a trainee teacher at the beginning of their training Although trainees had a lot to say about themselves, they were unable to relate what they knew about themselves to aspects of classroom practice. It was as if the worlds of their own personality and skills were entirely separate from what they saw as the practice of good teaching. Trainees might be able to identify their own strengths and skills, but frequently experienced difculties in articulating how they might translate a particular strength into concrete classroom practice. Trainees were often unclear, too, about how they felt they could learn most effectively by observing experienced and skilful teachers in action. Trainees acknowledged the value of observing a wide variety of lessons and teachers and working closely with mentors. Even as they grew in awareness of the complexities of the classroom situation, however, they remained unable to analyse the interactions with sufcient clarity to inuence their own practice or their own emerging professional identities. Few were yet able, through the process of observation, to clearly identify the kind of teachers they wanted to become or the strategies which they might use to achieve these aims; fewer still were able to conceptualize these strategies into a wider pedagogical framework. In essence, then, many trainees had only limited notions of how they were going to embark upon their own professional learning and the process of becoming a teacher. Whilst many had ideas about the type of teachers to which they aspired, they seemed less clear about how precisely they would learn from such experiences or about how they would analyse their experiences to develop their own professional skills and expertise as practitioners (Brown & Macintyre, 1993; Calderhead & Shorrock, 1997; Wood, 2000). Although observation and feedback from mentors and practising teachers was seen as valuable in a general sense, a good thing which is bound to be helpful, there was little appreciation of how trainees would effectively learn from these experiences. It was not that trainees had mistaken understandings about how the processes whereby they would learn successfully to teach, but that they lacked understandings which they needed in the immediate future. These ndings are very signicant because they should alert all teacher educators to the dangers of assuming that ways of learning to teach are obvious to all concerned; the responses of the trainees in

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these initial interviews suggest that this is not so. Why should these trainees automatically know how to learn to teach? A major and priority task in teacher education, traditionally and still widely neglected, must be that of helping these highly intelligent and committed trainee teachers to think and learn about what will be involved in learning as efciently as possible the diverse skills and understandings necessary for effective teaching. Concluding thoughts Trainees own thinking at the start of their teacher training shows a sophisticated grasp of the type of teachers they aspired to become, based upon their models of the outstanding teacher and the quality of the classroom practice they have experienced as pupils or observed as trainees. This discussion of these starting points of beginning teachers has revealed an idealism and a sense of moral commitment which inevitably leads, however, to a number of contradictions and tensions. Whilst the beginning teachers had clearly perceived and articulated the models of outstanding classroom practice to which they aspired, they showed in these initial interviews a relatively unsophisticated analysis of the essential characteristics of this practice and of the process of learning which they needed to undergo if they were to full these ambitions. Their thinking at this early stage of the course was, understandably enough, divorced from the context and specics of their own learning, The challenge for teacher educators is to frame teacher education courses in such a way that beginning teachers are provided with the contexts and the methodologies whereby they can reect upon their own preconceptions and rene their own understandings as to how they themselves learn as teachers, to enable them in turn to facilitate the learning of pupils and to full their own clearly articulated aspirations to become quality teachers. Notes on contribuors Mike Younger is Director of PGCE Courses at the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education, and a Fellow of Homerton College, Cambridge. He has written extensively on issues linked to initial teacher education and training, and on gender issues in secondary issues, and is currently Co-Director of a DfESsponsored project on raising boys achievements at school. Sue Brindley is Course Director for the secondary English PGCE course att eh University fo Cambridge Faculty of Education. She co-chairs, with Mike Younger, an MEd course for early career teachers Teachers as Researchers. She is currently researching into teachers, research and professionalism, and the acquisition and development of pedagogies in both traditional and online courses. David Pedder obtained his PhD in 2001 from the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge where he continues to work as a senior research associate. He has active research interests in learning processes and outcomes in classrooms, schools and networks. He has worked on studies of the professional learning of

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experienced and inexperienced teachers; the contribution of pupils voices to the development of classroom teaching and learning; the promotion of learning to learn in classrooms; schools and networks and the characteristics of schools as learning organisations. Hazel Hagger is Director of Graduate Studies ( Professional Courses) at the Department of Educational Studies at Oxford University. Her research interests are in mentoring, partnerships between schools and HEIs, and the nature, acquisition and development of teachers professional knowledge. Hazel is co-director - with Donald McIntyre of Cambridge University - of the DEBT (Developing Expertise of Beginning Teachers) Project. References
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