Facilitating Newly Qualified Teachers' Growth as Collaborative Practitioners

A support group for newly qualified teachers (NQTs) was set up to facilitate collaborative practice and explore professional knowledge. The support group was monitored for a year and analyses found that a cooperative, rather than collaborative, group formed. Similarly, the NQTs (with one exception) experienced and enacted cooperation in their schools, which limited their opportunities to learn with teaching colleagues or to be recognised publicly as competent professionals. By the end of the year, most NQTs articulated knowledge of work practices that privileged isolation, privacy and individualism.