Encounters of the first kind

This paper will discuss the analysis of the first stages of data gathering in an ethnographic research project designed to investigate the changing perspectives of beginning teachers. In November, 1986, four graduands of a B. Ed. programme of preparation for secondary teachers were interviewed. Follow-up interviews and classroom observations were conducted in February, 1987 in their third week of practice — three in state co-educational high schools and one in a private all-girls’ school. The investigation focused on the young teachers’ perspectives on teaching; on the origins of those perspectives; on their perceptions of the institutional contexts of their particular schools; and on their reactions to the world of practice. Beginning analysis suggests mixed patterns of stability and instability in teachers’ perspectives in practice, and mixed patterns of acceptance of and resistance to the institutional and systemic contexts in which these young teachers found themselves.