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Ingrid Helleve & Marit Ulvik
2006; Murray & Male, 2005). An interesting aspect of the Norwegian project New
Teachers in Norway is that it involves experienced teachers and teacher educators as
well as novice teachers in the learning process. This study is limited to investigating
novice teachers’ needs.
Context
The research was conducted by two teacher educators at the University of Bergen.
As a subgroup of the national project New Teachers in Norway, the local project
described in this study was conducted in the Bergen area and is called New Teachers
in Hordaland.
The participating novices were teaching different academic and vocational subjects
in secondary school. All had recently completed a one-year postgraduate teacher education
programme (PGCE). As part of the project, the new teachers were given a local
mentor in the school and met in a network with other new teachers about four times
per term for supervision and peer learning. Both the mentor and network meetings
were in addition to their ordinary jobs. Consequently, participation lacked continuity.
It should be noted that these informants are likely to represent a special group
of newly qualified teachers. They succeeded in finding employment despite strong
competition from other candidates, and they were regarded by the school management
as very competent candidates. They were all committed teachers who regarded
teaching as their primary choice of profession. Some of them had come into teaching
as a career change.
Nine schools participated in the network, and the informants were chosen from
three different schools that represented three kinds of upper secondary schools. One
was a very old and traditional school that taught academic courses only, whereas
the other two schools, one well-established, and one new, both offered academic as
well as vocational subjects. Five of the informants were chosen from the established
school, two from the traditional school and two from the new school. Only one of the
interviewees was male. The numbers and gender distribution correspond with the
numbers and gender distribution of the teaching staff in the three schools.
Methodology and analysis
The research instrument was a semi-structured interview conducted with each of the
nine novices at the end of the school year. The questions were designed to address
issues not sufficiently answered in Norwegian and European reports about how it
is to be a new teacher in upper secondary school and what kind of support teachers
need (Dahl et al. 2006; OECD 2005). The current study is part of a more extensive
research project of novice teachers, which includes a quantitative questionnaire. In the
interviews relevant to this study, selected questions from the quantitative questionnaire
were asked and followed by probing questions to gain a deeper understanding
of various aspects of how newly qualified teachers feel about their work. The teachers
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