Teachers' In-Service Career Patterns.
Abstract Schoolteaching is not a consensual profession with a single culture, but one segmented by different interest groups. An important dimension of the culture of these professional segments is their commitment to either a restricted or an extended professionality. Teachers’ relations to professionality can be clarified from their theory and practice of in‐service education and from the type of in‐service career upon which they embark. The form taken by teachers’ continuing education, the way teachers rank different types of in‐service course, how experience of in‐service education touches the professional work of schools ‐ these are factors that pattern teachers’ in‐service careers. Using data about teachers’ practices in these three areas, five career patterns are identified and a group of teachers representing each career pattern is selected. The teachers are described in terms of personal biographical and work characteristics. Their opinions about what makes in‐service education attractive to them...
The Political Implications of Defining Relevant INSET
Summary In this paper the author argues that the norm of relevance is central to teachers’ professional identities and therefore decisions about the form taken by INSET are crucial for professional autonomy. An important ingredient of the professional teachers’ conception of relevance is a notion of the practical. Ascribed factors like gender and age and situational factors like specialisation and seniority affect the orientations of different groups of teachers to relevance. At present teachers notions of relevant INSET are under attack from norms and values prescribed by interests outside the profession for the purpose of regulating the profession. This paper attempts to clarify teachers notions of relevant INSET and contrast these with other views of relevance.
THE SELF CONCEPTS OF GIRLS IN THE CONTEXT OF A DISADVANTAGING ENVIRONMENT
Abstract This paper sets out to examine the hypothesis that, given the context of a disadvantaging environment, the self concepts of less disadvantaged girls would be more negative than those of their more disadvantaged peers. The hypothesis was tested by comparing the self concepts of girls with different degrees of disadvantage using several different measures of disadvantage. The findings suggested that the school's strong support of the most disadvantaged girls produced a ‘Hawthorne’ effect in which these girls developed positive feelings towards themselves. The less disadvantaged girl did not respond in this way. Feeling greater relative deprivation and frustration, and receiving less support from school, she was more likely to develop a negative self image. Where the self image of the less disadvantaged girl was positive, there was strong evidence to suggest that this was linked to status achieved in an alternative prestige system that was anti establishment in nature.