Mitigating the impact of COVID-19 disruption on the quality and retention of trainee and newly qualified secondary school teachers
Lead Research Organisation:
King's College London
Department Name: SSPP School Office
Abstract
This project documents the impact of the substantial changes and sustained disruption caused by COVID-19 to the development of trainee and new secondary school teachers and will produce a set of recommendations to enhance teacher quality and retention. Failure to respond now means that 60,000 teachers, working in secondary schools across the UK, will not have sufficient expertise and may rapidly leave the profession. A lack of expertise and high numbers of teachers leaving the profession will have a serious impact on the educational outcomes of young people who have already faced significant disadvantage through school closures and ongoing COVID-19-related disruption.
Even before the current global pandemic, the Department for Education recognised the need for teachers to receive sustained and integrated professional development opportunities across the first two years of teaching to improve the quality of support and therefore increase teacher quality and retention. This has been implemented in the newly established Initial Teacher Training Core Content Framework and the Early Career Framework.
New teachers have faced challenges to developing their teaching practice as schools have had to restrict the movement of teachers and student around classrooms and school sites to comply with COVID-19 safety requirements. Trainees have also been affected as they have had to predominantly access university education through online teaching and learning and have had reduced time in school placements due to the widespread closure of schools during March - July 2020 and September 2020 - March 2021.
Research findings will be generated through analysis of responses gathered from questionnaires and remote interviews with teachers, school leaders, and teacher education staff who are part of the teacher education network of King's College London (KCL). The project timeline includes interviews across 18 months so that teachers' experiences are captured during their year as a trainee and their first year working as a qualified teacher.
This project will provide rich understandings of the impacts of COVID-19 on teacher quality and retention that will have relevance for policy makers, school leaders and ITT providers across the UK. As such, this proposal seeks both to extend existing UKRI funded research into the social impacts of COVID-19 on education, as well as enhance current policy commitments to strengthen teacher quality and retention across the education sector. This will both alleviate the current challenges posed by the pandemic and ensure better preparedness for future extreme events.
Even before the current global pandemic, the Department for Education recognised the need for teachers to receive sustained and integrated professional development opportunities across the first two years of teaching to improve the quality of support and therefore increase teacher quality and retention. This has been implemented in the newly established Initial Teacher Training Core Content Framework and the Early Career Framework.
New teachers have faced challenges to developing their teaching practice as schools have had to restrict the movement of teachers and student around classrooms and school sites to comply with COVID-19 safety requirements. Trainees have also been affected as they have had to predominantly access university education through online teaching and learning and have had reduced time in school placements due to the widespread closure of schools during March - July 2020 and September 2020 - March 2021.
Research findings will be generated through analysis of responses gathered from questionnaires and remote interviews with teachers, school leaders, and teacher education staff who are part of the teacher education network of King's College London (KCL). The project timeline includes interviews across 18 months so that teachers' experiences are captured during their year as a trainee and their first year working as a qualified teacher.
This project will provide rich understandings of the impacts of COVID-19 on teacher quality and retention that will have relevance for policy makers, school leaders and ITT providers across the UK. As such, this proposal seeks both to extend existing UKRI funded research into the social impacts of COVID-19 on education, as well as enhance current policy commitments to strengthen teacher quality and retention across the education sector. This will both alleviate the current challenges posed by the pandemic and ensure better preparedness for future extreme events.
Organisations
Publications
Rushton E
(2022)
Reflecting on 'classroom readiness' in initial teacher education in a time of global pandemic from the perspectives of eight university providers from across England, UK
in Journal of Education for Teaching
Towers E
(2023)
The 'problem' of teacher quality: Exploring challenges and opportunities in developing teacher quality during the Covid-19 global pandemic in England
in Educational Review
Rushton, E.
(2023)
Collaborative identity development during a global pandemic: exploring teacher identity through the experiences of pre-service high school teachers in England
in European Journal of Teacher Education
Murtagh L;
(2023)
The role of teacher educator virtual communities of practice (VCoPs) in mobilising policy engagement: A case study of the Initial Teacher Training Market Review from England
in Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education
| Description | Key Findings Teacher Quality • Teachers and teacher education are often presented as 'problems' to be solved, with policy solutions that focus on ways to make teachers 'better' and improve teacher 'quality' by introducing prescriptive strategies. • We investigated the ways Covid-19-related changes to both the university and school-based facets of Initial Teacher Education (ITE) in England influence teacher quality student teachers and early career teachers in secondary schools. • Drawing on 34 interviews with school leaders, school mentors and ITE tutors, we critically explored the ways in which teacher quality was developed through key aspects of teachers' pedagogy and practice during the pandemic crisis when schools were closed and teaching moved online. • Our findings showed that the pandemic crisis has highlighted the different facets of teacher quality which arguably disrupt narrow and prescriptive understandings of what constitutes as 'quality' in policy terms. Although there were many instances of challenge in the development of new and student teachers, our data also shows how ITE tutors, school mentors and leaders responded creatively to the crisis. • Participants highlighted the opportunities afforded by the pandemic to develop diverse and innovative pedagogies and practice, enhance students' subject knowledge, as well as overcome some of the challenges in other areas of pedagogy and practice. • Furthermore, the study shows that teacher quality was not substantially reduced despite the challenges arising from the pandemic and concerns that pre-service teachers would not be ready and prepared for a career in the classroom. Classroom readiness • Participatory workshop involving eight university providers of ITE in England to examine continued and variable disrpution related to Covid-19 during the period September 2020 - June 2021. • The nature and implementation of school visits and the role of technology and digital pedagogies are key areas of change during the pandemic period whilst continuity in the value and strength of school and university partnerships remain. • The ways in which ideas of developing 'classroom readiness' have been informed and shaped through changes to teacher education brought about during the pandemic period have been considered. • We found that conceptualisations of classroom readiness need to be grounded in reflective professional learning in the context of collaborative professional communities so to enable pre-service teachers to become adaptable pastorally engaged subject specialists. Teacher identity • Drawing on 45 interviews with teachers in England, conducted during September 2020-June 2021 findings demonstrate that collaborative identity development was central for trainee teachers and occurred in a variety of spaces, communities and modes. • Collaborative identity development featured in how trainee teachers saw themselves making a positive contribution to society through education, and in strong subject connections. • Reflection that is collaborative, personalised, iterative and separate from notions of formal progression enables positive identity work. • Notions of identity are absent from international policy initiatives in ITE (Initial Teacher Education) and this case study provides insights for policy makers in England and beyond who aim to support teachers at the beginning of their career so that they are retained. |
| Exploitation Route | Schools and other providers of initial teacher education would be best placed to take forward the outcomes in their work with trainee teachers and early career teachers. Policymakers might also make use of the outcomes. |
| Sectors | Education |
| URL | https://www.kcl.ac.uk/research/sustaining-teacher-quality-and-retention-post-pandemic |
| Description | Although we do not have the evidence to make substantial claims around impact yet, given that the project has only recently been completed, there is some anecdotal evidence emerging that the guide we published for schools and launched in September 2021 along with the final findings and recommendations report published in July 2022 have had some influence on school induction of Early Career Teachers. The guide can be found here: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/ecs/assets/guide-for-schools-august2021.pdf The findings and recommendations paper can be found here: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/ecs/assets/projects/findings-and-recommendations-to-address-teacher-quality-and-enable-retention.pdf Further evidence of the use of the findings will, we hope, emerge over time. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2022 |
| Sector | Education |
| Impact Types | Policy & public services |
| Description | Dr Simon Gibbons contributed to an online event 'Advancing Teacher Training and Development', hosted by the Institute of Government and Public Policy. 20 January 2022. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | This was a conference to discuss developments in teacher education and training. I spoke as a panel member and drew extensively on the emerging project outcomes in my words. There were in excess of 50 delegates from across the teacher education sector. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://igpp.org.uk/event/Advancing-Teacher-Training-and-Development-2022 |
| Description | Keynote presentation of Phase 1 findings at King's College London Initial Teacher Education Partnership Conference, Dr Elizabeth Rushton and Dr Simon Gibbons, June 2021. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | The annual partnership conference at King's College London is an event to which all partner schools involved in our initial teacher education are invited. We presented a keynote talk at the event on the first phase of the project and emerging findings. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Presentation at Sheffield Institute of Education |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Presentation of research in order to support schools in supporting ECTs in the classroom. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Presentation of Phase 1 findings at British Education Research Association Annual Conference, Dr Elizabeth Rushton and Dr Simon Gibbons, September 2021. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | This was a presentation as part of a symposium at the 2021 BERA conference. We shared the emerging findings with other educators in the sector. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://www.bera.ac.uk/conference/bera-conference-2021 |
| Description | Presentation of reflections on phase 1 findings in the context of wider discussion with colleagues from other PGCE ITE programmes based in England as part of the Universities' Council for the Education of Teachers Annual Conference 2021, with Dr Elizabeth Rushton, Dr Simon Gibbons, Dr Claire Ball-Smith (University of York), Dr Lisa Murtagh (University of Manchester) and Dr Kate Ireland (Warwick University), November 2021. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | This was a workshop session we ran in collaboration with other Russell Group partners where we shared emerging findings from phase 1 of the project and discussed these in the wider context of the landscape of teacher education in the post-pandemic period. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://www.ucet.ac.uk/12859/ucet-annual-conference-2021 |
| Description | Roundtable event with stakeholders from across the education sector to share Phase 1 findings, hosted by Dr Rachel Hesketh, Dr Elizabeth Rushton and Dr Simon Gibbons, July 2021. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | This was a roundtable policy event coordinated by the King's Policy Institute. We invited policymakers, representatives of professional associations, representatives of interested groups and colleagues from a small number of schools to hear about emerging findings from the project and to contribute their thoughts and ideas on the outcomes emerging. A policy briefing paper was published in advance of the event. The URL for this is included below. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://www.kcl.ac.uk/ecs/assets/projects/policy-briefing-july-2021-rushton-et-al.pdf |
| Description | Workshop at King's College London Initial Teacher Education Partnership Conference, Dr Jane Jones and Dr Emma Towers, Should I stay or should I go? Factors affecting early career teacher retention', June 2021. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | This was a workshop session run by two members of the project team at the annual King's College London partnership conference. A group of 12 school colleagues participated in the event which focused on teacher retention, drawing on emerging findings from the project. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |