Normalising newness: Towards a model for facilitating the transition of newly qualified teachers

Abstract

This article focuses on the need to support the transition of newly qualified teachers into the workplace. In the first part of the article, we draw on post-structuralist theory and teacher education research on professional identity, to describe and analyse participants’ experiences of praxis shock as they confront the realities of the classroom, as well as the limiting effects of dominant school discourses on the development of their professional identities. In part two, we describe the contextually-based model that we have developed with the goal of normalising the experience of being a new teacher; building resilience and facilitating the growth of a learning community in the form of a network of agentic, experienced teachers and stakeholders who share good practice and mentor new teachers.