Early career language teachers’ use of professional standards : a case study of factors impacting decisional capital

Saunders, Sherryl Anne

Early career language teachers’ use of professional standards : a case study of factors impacting decisional capital

Saunders, Sherryl Anne

Permalink

Publication Type:: Thesis
Issue Date:: 2025

Open Access

Copyright Clearance Process

Recently Added
In Progress
Open Access

This item is open access.

Adobe PDF

Download thesisAdobe PDF (17.94 MB)

View statistics

Full metadata record

Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	Saunders, Sherryl Anne
dc.date.accessioned	2025-05-29T03:43:39Z
dc.date.available	2025-05-29T03:43:39Z
dc.date.issued	2025
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10453/187556
dc.description	University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.	en_US.UTF-8
dc.description.abstract	Supporting early career language teacher growth makes a vital contribution towards renewal and sustainability of the teaching profession. Engaging with professional standards is a required component of every early career language teacher’s professional life. Early career teacher experience of engagement with standards is variable. Further, the concepts of teacher practice embodied in a professional standards document is variable. Exploration of connections between concepts of teacher practice in standards and use of the standards by early career language teachers and those who support them is lacking. This descriptive case study uses Habermas’ critical theory into worthwhile knowledges to examine interview, focus group and questionnaire data from 5 early career language teachers and 4 school-based leaders across 5 schools. Findings show professional standards construct worthwhile knowledge about teacher practice as having requisite instrumental knowledge and ability to apply it predictably and reliably. However, teachers construct worthwhile knowledge about teacher practice as engaging in collaborative and reflective practice with colleagues. Despite system overtures about using professional standards to support teacher growth, this was not a feature of teachers’ lifeworld. Teachers use professional standards to meet systemic compliance and control needs, but not for any further expanded purpose. The limited role of professional standards in supporting development of early career language teacher practice results from the differing concepts of worthwhile knowledge embodied in the standards and held by teachers. The original focus was to explore the relationships between professional standards, use of professional standards by early career language teachers and their developing professionalism. The focus has moved to a closer examination of their professionalism, exploring concepts of professional capital (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012), with focus on decisional capital and early career language teachers’ capacity to engage in meaningful decision-making in their contexts. Findings of this research conclude that the use of generic, managerially regulated professional standards has seen a ‘standardisation’ in the teaching profession and has resulted in early career language teachers having a narrower understanding of their work. Further, the mutual obligation between schools (as systems) and teachers for developing high-quality teacher practice is not equitably balanced. The power of schools to compel teacher participation in generic professional activity obfuscates the need for early career language teacher engagement in discipline-specific professional activity at appropriate points in time.	en_US.UTF-8
dc.format	Thesis (PhD)
dc.language.iso	en_US	en_US.UTF-8
dc.relation	https://opus.lib.uts.edu.au/bitstream/10453/187556/1/thesis.pdf
dc.rights	info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
dc.rights	The author owns the copyright in this thesis including all reproduction and reuse rights for the work. The work may not be altered without the permission of the copyright owner. Attribution is essential when quoting or paraphrasing from this thesis.
dc.rights	© 2025 Sherryl Anne Saunders
dc.rights	au.edu.uts.lib/cph
dc.title	Early career language teachers’ use of professional standards : a case study of factors impacting decisional capital	en_US.UTF-8
dc.type	Thesis
utslib.copyright.status	open_access	*

Abstract:

Supporting early career language teacher growth makes a vital contribution towards renewal and sustainability of the teaching profession. Engaging with professional standards is a required component of every early career language teacher’s professional life. Early career teacher experience of engagement with standards is variable. Further, the concepts of teacher practice embodied in a professional standards document is variable. Exploration of connections between concepts of teacher practice in standards and use of the standards by early career language teachers and those who support them is lacking. This descriptive case study uses Habermas’ critical theory into worthwhile knowledges to examine interview, focus group and questionnaire data from 5 early career language teachers and 4 school-based leaders across 5 schools. Findings show professional standards construct worthwhile knowledge about teacher practice as having requisite instrumental knowledge and ability to apply it predictably and reliably. However, teachers construct worthwhile knowledge about teacher practice as engaging in collaborative and reflective practice with colleagues. Despite system overtures about using professional standards to support teacher growth, this was not a feature of teachers’ lifeworld. Teachers use professional standards to meet systemic compliance and control needs, but not for any further expanded purpose. The limited role of professional standards in supporting development of early career language teacher practice results from the differing concepts of worthwhile knowledge embodied in the standards and held by teachers. The original focus was to explore the relationships between professional standards, use of professional standards by early career language teachers and their developing professionalism. The focus has moved to a closer examination of their professionalism, exploring concepts of professional capital (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012), with focus on decisional capital and early career language teachers’ capacity to engage in meaningful decision-making in their contexts. Findings of this research conclude that the use of generic, managerially regulated professional standards has seen a ‘standardisation’ in the teaching profession and has resulted in early career language teachers having a narrower understanding of their work. Further, the mutual obligation between schools (as systems) and teachers for developing high-quality teacher practice is not equitably balanced. The power of schools to compel teacher participation in generic professional activity obfuscates the need for early career language teacher engagement in discipline-specific professional activity at appropriate points in time.

Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:

http://hdl.handle.net/10453/187556