Abstract
At a time when lifelong learning is understood to be of paramount importance globally, along with the ever-evolving pedagogical circumstances, advocacy for teachers’ professional learning has been on the rise. However, there is still some way to go before reaching a sound understanding of how teachers meaningfully engage in professional learning (p. 5), a gap which Larsen and Allen aim to address in this book.
The volume contains seven chapters. The first two chapters offer the background. Chapter 1 foregrounds the overwhelming demands and pressure encountered by those commencing in their teaching careers, such as out-of-field teaching contents, unfamiliar teaching contexts, theory-to-practice gaps, etc. The authors underline the significance of professional learning as a means of addressing these challenges and purport that the mandatory performative and evaluative teaching culture has questionable impact on teacher professional growth. It is thus essential to encourage beginning teachers to take up the identity of internally motivated professional learners.
Chapter 2 discusses the varied definitions of teacher professional learning in the academic as well as policy literature. The current shift in the concept of teacher learning attaches considerable importance to the proactive and transformational role of teachers. After systematically reviewing the relevant literature, the authors indicate that there is limited research on how first-year teachers can be assisted to develop their sense of identity as learners.
Chapter 3 justifies attribution theory, the theoretical framework for the empirical research in the book, which provides a nuanced perspective to investigate teachers’ attributions to a range of positive and negative teaching experiences and the subsequent impact of these attributions on their learner identity. It also elucidates in detail the chosen methods for data collection, analysis, and reporting of the research study, establishing reader trust in the authenticity of the work. The theoretical and methodological decisions outlined in this chapter inform the chapters that follow.
The following three chapters concentrate on research findings. The study in chapter 4 indicates that most of the first-year teachers take on a balanced attribution style which is characterized by multiple attributions of responsibility. That means these teachers recognize both themselves and others as causes responsible for their teaching outcomes and acknowledge the unpredictability of the teaching context as something out of their control. The authors claim that the balancing causality serves to protect teachers’ sense of self-efficacy and well-being while at the same time promote them to purposefully engage in professional learning to meet future uncertainty.
Chapter 5 turns to a group of first-year teachers who find it difficult to maintain their positive attitudes towards professional learning. These teachers perceive professional learning as unmanageable as they are overwhelmed by the increasing workloads. They consistently believe that they are at fault for the difficulties in their teaching. This confessional-like attribution puts a strain on them and potentially undermines their confidence. Furthermore, they feel that seeking assistance may expose themselves to adverse appraisal from others. The withdrawal from seeking support puts them at risk of failing to sustain or develop their commitment as professional learners.
Chapter 6 centers on another group of beginning teachers who tend to place the onus of responsibility on others for the problems in teaching practice. Through deflecting responsibility, those teachers are prone to overlook the value of professional learning. Without the internal motivation to develop their professional learner identity, they resort to engaging in professional learning purely as an act of compliance. That is, they learn mainly to fulfil the requirements set by the school and by the broader system. What's worse, contemporary standardization and accountability regimes that dominate teachers’ work lives exacerbate teachers’ negative attitudes towards professional learning.
The concluding chapter pulls the major findings together and identifies the areas in need of further research. It ends with discussion of implications for teachers, schools, policies, and future educational research in relation to teacher learning, highlighting the need to shift from prioritizing the mandating of professional learning to promoting teachers’ active participation in developing their professional learner identities.
Admittedly, there is some room for improvement in this book. The online survey instrument used in the study was an adaptation of the Causal Dimension Scale II (CDSII). Although CDSII has been accepted by many researchers as a good measure of attributions across various contexts, there is no report on the reliability and validity of the adapted version adopted in this study. In addition, it would be more valuable if the study tracked the changes in the participants’ professional learning since teacher learning is a dynamic process.
Professional learning is recognized as being particularly beneficial for teachers (Kooy and van Veen, 2011). This compelling book builds on this argument and seeks to offer important insights on how to better promote beginning teachers’ engagement with professional learning. It makes a great contribution to our understanding of early career teachers and their work. We are especially captivated by its research methodological part. Firstly, the sequential and explanatory mixed-method research design, integrating the strengths of both quantitative and qualitative methods, makes more rigorous inferences about research questions. Secondly, the participants are a diverse group of beginning teachers teaching across the full range of year levels and working in schools of varying size and geographic location, which guarantees the rich source of collected information. Thirdly, the composite narratives used for reporting the findings from interviews not only honor the original data collected but also protect the participants’ openness and honesty. Lastly, the questionnaire and interview questions of the study can be referred to by those who are interested in conducting similar research.
It needs to be noted that teacher learning has become a world-wide focus. Although this book is contextualized in Australia, the thought-provoking implications can appeal to other countries. We envision this book as an enlightening one that will engage a wide-ranging audience who are interested in teacher learning and teacher identity. Above all, We hope this book will bring teacher learning to light by acknowledging its centrality in teacher development.
