Influences on Teachers’ Capacities to Build and Sustain Professional Capital

• In Event: Professional Capital: A New Agenda to Transform Teaching in Every School

Abstract

PURPOSES
This paper is based on a three year national study of 300 teachers in 100 English primary and secondary schools. Its purpose was to understand the work and lives of teachers working in different school contexts and in different phases of their careers and to investigate associations between these, their relational effectiveness (as they perceived it) and relative effectiveness (as measured by pupils’ progress and attainment in tests and examinations).

PERSPECTIVE
The research was informed by a critical review of the international literature on educational policy, teachers’ careers, professional identity, workplace conditions and cultures and leadership. From this, a perspective was developed which sought to examine the relative strength of interaction between these, their influence on and management by teachers, influences of other ( e.g. personal) factors on teachers’ ability to manage these successfully and pupil progress and measurable attainment over time.

METHODS
The research adopted a mixed methods design, beginning with a scoping questionnaire to all teachers in schools in seven regions which were demographically and socio-economically representative of England. Respondents were asked to volunteer to participate in the fieldwork phase. The final selection was made on the basis of a number of filters e.g. phase of career, school sector and socio-economic context and gender.

DATA SOURCES
A twin track quantitative and qualitative approach was then implemented. Each year for 3 years, teachers and administrators were interviewed three times and tests were administered to the class of pupils they taught at the start and end of each year. The results of the quantitative and qualitative findings were synthesized.

RESULTS
Six professional life phases were identified. The large majority (74%) of the 300 teachers in each of these phases (Day et al., 2007) reported a continued commitment. Self-efficacy, commitment, a positive, stable sense of professional identity and the quality of work place support were key factors in teachers’ relational and relative effectiveness.

SIGNIFICANCE of STUDY
The study found that teachers in later professional life phases were more likely to be less committed than those in the early and middle phases. It was statistically more likely, also, that pupils of teachers in the later phases of their careers (24+ years of experience) achieved at or below expectations than those of pupils in the early and middle phases. The middle professional life phase, especially, described by some as being populated by ‘the most overlooked group in the entire teaching profession’ (Hargreaves and Fullan, 2012: 72), marked a key watershed in teachers’ work lives, especially in relation to their social and decisional capital, defined recently as ’the capital that professionals acquire and accumulate through structured and unstructured experience, practice, and reflection- capital that enables them to make wise judgments in circumstances where there is no fixed rule or piece of incontrovertible evidence to guide them’ (Hargreaves and Fullan, 2012: 93-94).

Author

• Christopher W. Day, University of Nottingham