The shape of trainees' learning

Imagine a living graph of a trainee's development through the PGCE year: what might it look like? There's no doubt that it would have its high points (that great lesson with Y8, the first day back in the university), its low points (Y9, just after changing schools, last lesson with that lovely Y10 group), its plateaux (after several weeks in school and towards the end of the year).

But in any group of trainees it is likely that their graphs would all look rather different.

To begin with they would start at different points. Some will come to the course with significant teaching experience, some will have worked with difficult youngsters on camp, others will be parents, some will have first class degrees in history, others will have been taught by inspirational teachers, some will have successfully pursued other careers. Whilst they will all – if we have done our selection right – be keen to learn and to become effective history teachers, what this will mean for each of them will vary.

They will have their own distinctive concerns and aspirations, their own philosophies of history and beliefs about why it is worth learning. They will have their own models of what makes an effective teacher, their own preferred ways of learning, and very different visions of what sort of history teacher they want to be. Some will be highly skilled in social interaction, others will find it hard to project themselves to a group of 30+. Some will know what it means to 'be professional', others will have yet to learn this. Given the diverse nature of all that they bring with them, it is not surprising that their learning 'curves' will look different. (link to unit 2).Whilst all will need to meet the Standards for the Award of Qualified Teacher Status, and any additional PGCE course requirements, their routes towards these will vary considerably.

There have been many research studies exploring the processes of learning to teach and several of these have suggested that there are clearly identifiable stages in this process. Possibly the most well known of these models was developed by Fuller and Bown (1975) who identified three stages: survival, mastery and then either routinisation and resistance to change or concern with the impact of change. These stages are linked to an initial concern for self, followed by a concern for tasks and situations and then, finally, a concern for students.

Other research though suggests that these simple models may not do justice to the complexity and diversity of trainees' development. Even the authors of one such model remind us that each student's learning is 'complex, erratic and in one sense unique to them as an individual' (Furlong and Maynard, 1995:70).

Whilst it seems likely that simple models are unlikely to capture the complexity and diversity of each individual's development, there are generalisations that we can make:

• Although beginners are undoubtedly concerned about their learners from the outset, they are often pre-occupied by themselves and their own performance in the early stages.
• Concerns about classroom management and control are often dominant.
• Fitting in and 'passing' are real pre-occupations and unless they are assured of their progress, taking risks in their teaching is very hard for trainees.
• There is likely to be a large gap between what trainees can think about to do with their teaching and what they can actually attend to in the classroom: just because their lesson does not go well, this does not mean that they didn't give it a great deal of very sophisticated thought.
• There are also likely to be large differences in the degrees of fluency in all they do in the classroom: they will progress at different rates in relation to different aspects of teaching.

Professional growth, then, like teaching itself, is complex and multidimensional: it involves change in knowledge, beliefs and skills. It involves learning about teaching, learning to teach and learning to be a teacher. The shape of it for any individual will be profoundly affected by the opportunities we offer but perhaps most of all by what that individual brings with them to our programme.