Changing Schools, Changing Teachers: Novice Teacher Experience and Development in Highly Organized Schools

• In Event: Early Career Teachers' Experiences of Professional Development and Implications for Retention

Abstract

This study examines the intersection of school organization and novice teacher development to explore how they experienced highly organized schools and impacts on teacher beliefs and practices. Study of two novice teachers transitioning into and out of highly organized schools, in this case, No Excuses style charter schools, indicated that past experiences in schools and congruence with existing beliefs framed how novices understood these environments as enabling or coercive. However, regardless of congruence, highly organized schools changed teachers' instruction and views of the profession more so than less organized settings. Implications for how elements of highly organized schools enable and change teacher practice and beliefs in the short and long term, as well as across school contexts, are discussed.

Author

• William Waychunas, Bradley University