Glegg, Anna Kia Polly; (2024) Heroism, complexity and core tensions: An appreciative exploration of schools as teacher learning environments within the Teach First Training Programme. Doctoral thesis (Ed.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

This thesis examines teacher learning during the first year of Teach First’s Training Programme, a two-year employment-based route (EBR) into teaching in England. Arguing that EBRs differ materially from fee-funded, HEI-led routes, I explore teachers’ learning experiences within the principal context of the Training Programme: the employing school. My research adopts an ‘appreciative stance’, derived from Appreciative Inquiry and reflecting my commitment to engendering positive outcomes for teachers and pupils. I interviewed eleven ‘trainees’ coming to the end of the Training Programme, inviting them to tell me the story of how you learned to teach. I analysed participants’ stories using thematic analysis within a qualitative methodology, and literature on teacher learning and workplace learning. Seven analytical themes illuminate how: the design of the Training Programme shapes trainees’ learning; trainees experience learning to teach as professional learning; and trainees’ learning is personal and relational. From this analysis I develop concepts of the ‘heroic programme’ and ‘heroic trainee’ within initial teacher preparation, considering affordances and constraints of the Training Programme for trainee learning. I propose that Teach First pay regard to three ‘core tensions’ within the Training Programme’s design which act to shape, and often limit, the quality of trainees’ learning in their placement schools: that expectations and conceptual frameworks of the Training Programme’s three partners are not consistently well-aligned; that being employed in a ‘teacher’ role increases the challenge of recognising and fostering trainees’ ‘learner’ identity; and that trainees’ early responsibility outweighs their competence. Finally, I offer ways that this proposal might be operationalised by Teach First and by school-based mentors. This research extends understanding of new teachers’ learning experiences on the Training Programme, with pertinent implications for policy and practice around EBRs, including the Training Programme, at a time of substantial change in teacher education in England and internationally.

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