Trainee Teachers Emerging Concepts of Professionalism

In 2009 the General Teaching Council for England (GTCE, 2009) produced a revised professional Code of Conduct and Practice (CoCP), which set out the expectations of standards for the 540,000 registered teachers. The code outlines eight principles that are said to reflect the core values of the teaching profession. Included among these eight principles are traditional themes relating to standard areas of teacher professionalism; namely facilitating student achievement, reflective practice and team working. Also incorporated are more moral aspects of conduct such as demonstrating honesty and integrity, and promoting equality.The forty statements of the code set out the minimum professional competence expected of all teachers employed within English primary and secondary schools. Teachers in initial teacher training (ITT) are required to register with the GTCE within 28 days of the start of their teacher training, and as a consequence, are governed by the Code and are expected to satisfy its requirements.In this research the contents of this Code were used as a framework to explore trainee teachers’ views professional competence both for themselves, as beginning teachers, and for teachers in the profession as a whole. The individual statements of the Code were presented to a group of 231 trainee teachers at the very beginning of a one-year full-time graduate initial teacher education course in England. The trainee teachers were asked to make projected efficacy judgements about being able to fulfil the expectation of the statements once they had finished their training and had been appointed to their first teaching post. The trainees were asked to make similar efficacy judgements about how they thought the profession, as a whole, fulfilled the expectations of the statements. The trainees teachers’ efficacy judgements were subjected to exploratory factor analysis to form a model for the way in which they visualised the nature of professional competence associated with being a teacher.The results indicate that the trainee teachers perceive five broad areas in their model of professional competence and that they believe that they will wholly or substantially fulfil the expectations of the vast majority of the individual statements. Trainees rated their own projected professional self-efficacy much more highly than they rated the professional efficacy of teachers currently in the profession. The trainees’ projected self-efficacy was highest in relation to honesty, integrity and well-being of children, and lowest in relation to their relationships with teachers, parents and the wider school community. The trainees rated teachers relatively poorly in issues associated with consulting with parents and listening to pupils.