Becoming an English Teacher: The Shaping of Everyday Professional Experiences in Early Career Teaching

This study examines the everyday work and development of nine early career English teachers in Victoria, Australia. In an education context characterised by standards-based reforms, the ethnographic accounts of these teachers illustrate ways they were working with, negotiating and resisting the imperatives of standardisation, accountability and oversight. Alongside standards-based approaches to teacher development based on decontextualised skills and knowledge, these accounts show that teacher development is also affective, ethical and inherently social. The study advocates for governments, universities and education systems to reconsider the developmental supports offered to beginning English teachers, including support for discipline-specific, ongoing and collaborative professional communities.