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Lifelong learning: a stratagem for new teachers.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

Educators have not fully defined the role of utilizing lifelong learning as a guiding principle. Furthermore, district-provided professional development is often deemed so inadequate that new teachers enter a profession where they, by necessity, must create their own professional growth opportunities. Novices are encouraged to examine their own lifelong learning quotient, initiate a dialog on the tenets of lifelong learning, and set a plan of action so that attitudes and skills associated with lifelong learning are furthered in themselves and inculcated in their students.

Introduction

Lifelong learning is at the heart of practice for novice teachers. Teachers in their first few years of experience ate particularly vulnerable to the challenges and pressures of developing effective teaching skills while attempting to contribute to the building and maintaining of a professional learning community. These factors ate also important to those who ate experienced in the classroom (Cain, 2001), but to the new teacher it may make the difference between staying in of leaving the profession (Ingersoll, 2002).

If, indeed, an effective teacher is "the most important factor in producing consistently high levels of student achievement (Alliance for Excellent Education, 2004; Fullan, 1999; Hanushek, Kain, & Rivkin, 2001), it is incumbent upon those in the profession to explore ways to strengthen the existing practices in schools designed to inculcate new teachers into effective practice and the culture of the school. According to the Alliance for Excellent Education (2004), fewer than one percent of teachers experience a "comprehensive" induction, one that includes "a package of supports, development, and standards-based assessments provided to beginning teachers during at least their first two years of full-time professional teaching" (p. 11). Novice teachers need high quality, sustained professional development at the beginning--and throughout--their careers. Unfortunately, only 12 to 27 percent of teachers in 2000 believed that the professional development provided by their districts actually improved their teaching (NCES, 2001).

If, then, existing venues for professional development are largely inadequate and are not serving the purposes for which they were intended, it behooves new teachers to actively and purposively seek to organize and involve themselves in self-directed growth endeavors to supplement district-designed offerings. This is an especially important factor if a novice is assigned to a more experienced mentor teacher who "may have been demoralized in the past, not only by seemingly endless educational changes, but by professional development perceived as irrelevant, ineffective, and unrelated to the rigors and responsibilities of everyday life in the classroom (Helterbran & Fennimore, 2004, p. 268).

It...

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