Introduction

Abstract

The work presented here explores the process by which a professional role in an education setting is developed and the central claim made here suggests that past educational experiences have a significant effect on this transition. This association will be explored, and ultimately confirmed, through a review of literature and the collection and analysis of individual narratives from ‘new education professionals’. Yet it also has origins within my own professional career. I entered the teaching profession in the 1980s with a ‘traditional’ cognitive/information processing based psychology degree. For 20 years, I used this theoretical background to help inform my professional judgements on pedagogy, management and staff development. Over the years, I grew despondent on the limited impact I appeared to have on pupil learning and became increasingly angry about the changes in education policy that sought to offer a centralised ‘standards’ approach. Consequently, I left the classroom and entered higher education, enthusiastic to pass on my experience and knowledge. My commitment for the new post soon morphed into bewilderment as the adults I was now teaching seemed to be displaying all the characteristics of the teenagers I had been teaching just six weeks earlier. I was faced with tantrums, feeble excuses for incomplete work, mysterious illness and the sequential ‘deaths’ of family members: all intended to explain non-attendance at school placements, teaching sessions and assignment submission deadlines along with the expectation that I would provide the fool proof template of ‘how to teach’. The theories from the likes of Piaget and Bandura offered little insight and I therefore began to reconstruct my understanding of the teaching and learning process.