Great expectations: An analysis of the induction of new teachers

The novice stage of professional development, usually marked by clerkships, internships, residencies and apprenticeships, has been traditionally ignored by the teaching profession where novice teachers are given the same responsibilities as thirty-year veterans (Huling-Austin, 1989). Recently, however, the profession has addressed the problem of supporting teachers in their first year by mandating the implementation of Induction Programs in many states. The accumulated literature on induction of the last ten years describes and evaluates the effectiveness of these programs. What this literature reveals is that the profession has come to expect that induction will not only address the problems of the first year of teaching but will in fact turn new teachers into good teachers in that first year (Huling-Austin, 1990). These are indeed great expectations. In this dissertation, theories of induction are juxtaposed with practice and implementation. The process of induction is analyzed as it is proposed in the literature, while at the same time the experience of induction is examined as it is implemented in one school district. The findings show that while the literature on induction describes the common, widely-held goals of most programs (Huling-Austin, 1986), the school district in the study had goals for induction that were, in implementation, actually site-specific. The data also show that although most induction programs reflect the work of Veenman (1984) concerning the needs of new teachers, in the induction program described here new teachers were found to have needs that were quite different from those described by Veenman. This dissertation argues that the great expectations the profession holds for induction are, in some critical areas, not great enough. While induction affords unquestionable benefits for the professionalization and socialization of the new teacher, it is limited in some ways by these very expectations. We do not expect induction to challenge or attempt to change the basic professional structure of, or attitude to, the first year of teaching. Our great expectations of induction should, in fact, be greater