School work environment and its impact on the professional competence of newly qualified teachers

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1 Journal of In-Service Education ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: School work environment and its impact on the professional competence of newly qualified teachers Jianqiang Wu To cite this article: Jianqiang Wu (1998) School work environment and its impact on the professional competence of newly qualified teachers, Journal of In-Service Education, 24:2, , DOI: / To link to this article: Published online: 19 Dec Submit your article to this journal Article views: 2388 View related articles Citing articles: 7 View citing articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at Download by: [ ] Date: 28 December 2017, At: 03:36

2 THE SCHOOL WORK ENVIRONMENT AND NQTS Journal of In-service Education, Vol. 24, No. 2, 1998 School Work Environment and Its Impact on the Professional Competence of Newly Qualified Teachers JIANQIANG WU University College Worcester, United Kingdom, & Shandong Teachers University, China ABSTRACT The nature of the relationship between the work environment and people working in it has become a significant issue for educational research. This paper is based upon the outcomes of investigations made in a number of secondary schools in England and Wales in which a Work Environment Scale and follow-up interviews were used. It contains a snapshot of the British way of portraying the secondary school work environment, provides a perspective of its impact on the professional competence of newly qualified teachers (NQTs) and offers a comparison of NQTs and more experienced teachers perceptions about the work environments of their workplaces. The interaction between NQTs and their work environments is considered in order to give ideas about what is happening in these schools when NQTs start their professional careers and how their professional competence might be promoted. An outline of the Work Environment Scale is presented with a special emphasis on its application in educational settings and its implications for educational policy on teacher professional development are explored. Introduction The professional development of NQTs in a particular school work environment is seen by many researchers (Taylor & Dale, 1971; Dalin, 1994; Geva-May & Dori 1995; Simco, 1995) as being of great importance to the school improvement process. Recent years have witnessed a veritable explosion of interest in NQTs competence and by implication the schools in which they work. Increasing attention has been paid to the development of NQTs competence in the particular context of the debate about school work environment. The relationship between NQTs competence and the impact of their work environment has become a significant issue for educational research in the area of school improvement, given that the 213

3 JIANQIANG WU experience of NQTs in their first year of their career is in many ways more crucial than the first years of practically any other careers, mainly because the nature differs from that in many other professions (Taylor & Dale, 1971, p. 1). To survey British teachers perceptions about the relationship between school work environment and NTQs competence, the author made a series of investigations into the ways in which school work environment influences the professional development of teachers with an emphasis on NQTs. A Work Environment Scale (WES) was used as the questionnaire to measure what teachers felt about the work environments of their schools. Then 20 teachers were interviewed at four schools in the Midlands area to further portray secondary school work environment in Britain and its impact on NQTs professional competence. Although the information this paper offers cannot be seen as being representative of what is taking place in all British secondary schools, it is intended to illustrate key issues arising during this study and to provide a series of insights into the situation in which NQTs start their professional life, apply their knowledge and skills to practical teaching and begin to develop their professional competence under the influence of school work environment. Methodology People are profoundly affected by the social settings in which they are involved. In recognition of this fact, much research has been undertaken over the past 20 years to conceptualise and assess work environments and their determinants and impacts on individuals. To this end, researchers have developed a number of measuring instruments and procedures to identify the most salient aspects of work environments. The Work Environment Scale (WES) is one of them. Work environment is also labelled by researchers as work climate or organisational climate and refers to the concept of environmental quality perceived by people concerned. Deer (1980) suggests that the word climate when used in a meteorological sense refers to the average daily weather conditions over a period of time. In the organisational sense, it refers to the norm or average of the perceptions which individuals have of their daily work environments. In this paper, work environment and work climate are used to refer to the same notion. The WES is one of the social climate scales developed and introduced by Professor Moos, an American researcher, in As its name suggests, the WES was designed for application in any work milieu as an instrument to provide a means of describing and measuring workplace social environment. It also enables contrast to be made between the views of more and less experienced workers. A number of educational researchers, Sork (1985), De Piano & McClure (1987) and Fisher & Fraser (1991), who have used it in their research, argue that the WES can be used to plan and monitor changes in 214

4 THE SCHOOL WORK ENVIRONMENT AND NQTS school work settings, evaluate the impact of intervention programmes and promote school improvement. They believe that the WES has been assessed both in terms of its reliability and effectiveness. Its noteworthy features include its face validity for use in school environments only with minimal modifications (Fraser et al, 1988). Educational researchers internationally have devoted substantial attention to investigations involving students perceptions of classroom-level environments but in contrast research on teachers perceptions of school-level environments has received scant attention. However, over the past 15 years, there have been some attempts to use the WES to assess teachers perceptions of the work environment of their schools in order to identify specific issues within the teaching profession. Fisher & Fraser (1991) argue that the WES measures distinct aspects of school environments. In order to be of practical value, the WES aims to identify the key issues of any work environment which can be prioritised and organised into three major dimensions, namely: (a) Relationship Dimensions, (b) Personal Growth Dimensions and (c) System Maintenance and Change Dimensions. The WES is then further divided into 10 subscales as shown in Table I. Moos (1986) argues that these three dimensions of the WES affect important outcomes for both organisations and their employees. His research (1991) shows clearly that in a workplace where co-workers and supervisors have supportive relationships, employees tend to be satisfied with their jobs, have good morale and are generally well motivated. Further strong goal orientation tends to encourage job performance and commitment. When this is combined with cohesive relationships at work it helps to counter the negative impact of highly demanding, constrained work settings. In this study, a slightly modified version of the WES was completed by a sample of 270 teaching staff in 21 secondary schools in England and Wales. This sample provided a representative coverage of senior school managers, experienced teachers and NQTs, of male and female teachers, of schools in both city and rural areas. The data gathered from the responses identify the differences in understanding school work environments between NQTs and experienced teachers and highlight salient interactional effects between the WES subscales. Then 20 teachers were interviewed at four of the 21 schools where the questionnaires had been conducted. The interviewees at each school included the headteacher or the deputy, three experienced teachers (including heads of departments and NQT mentors) and one NQT. The interviews were focused on a wide range of issues, varying from discovering people s understanding of the term school work environment and professional competence of NQTs, to identifying the particular situations in which NQTs start their profession. 215

5 JIANQIANG WU (a) Relationship dimensions 1. Involvement (I) 2. Peer cohesion (PC) 3. Supervisor support (SS) (b) Personal growth dimensions 4. Autonomy (A) 5. Task orientation (TO) 6. Work pressure (WP) (c) System maintenance and system change dimensions 7. Clarity (C) 8. Managerial control (Ctl) 9. Innovation (Inn) 10. Physical comfort (Com) the extent to which employees are concerned about and committed to their job how much employees are friendly and supportive of one another the extent to which management is supportive of employees and encourages employees to be supportive of one another how much employees are encouraged to be self-sufficient and to make their own decisions the emphasis on good planning, efficiency, and getting the job done the degree to which high work demands and time pressure dominate the job millieu whether employees know what to expect in their daily routines and how explicitly rules and policies are communicated how much management uses rules and procedures to keep employees under control the emphasis on variety, change, and new approaches the extent to which the physical surroundings contribute to a pleasant work environment Table I. The WES dimensions and subscales. Source: Moos (1994). In an attempt to provide an informative and convincing account of the operation and management of British schools in terms of the ways in which school work environment influences NQTs professional competence, these interviews focus on school work environment in Britain and its possible impact on the professional development of British NQTs. They were used to elucidate various themes from the WES surveys and seek to outline the views and feelings of professionals working in British secondary schools about the topic of the study. The Findings from the WES Surveys Figure 1 is the WES profile for the British teacher sample, which depicts the work environment of the sample of secondary schools in Britain. Figure 1 shows that the respondents report moderate emphasis on the first two subscales of the Relationship Dimensions. Their involvement and peer cohesion are above average. However, their score on the supervisor 216

6 THE SCHOOL WORK ENVIRONMENT AND NQTS support is well below average. The term supervisor support means the support given to teachers from senior managers. On the Personal Growth Dimensions, autonomy has a below average score while task orientation and work pressure are very well above, especially the score on work pressure. On the System Maintenance and Change Dimensions, their clarity of expectations for them, management control and innovation are somewhat above average while physical comfort is below average. 65mm Figure 1. The WES profile for the British teachers in the sample. Of the 270 British respondents, 237 were experienced teachers including headteachers, deputy heads, heads of departments and NQTs mentors, and 33 were NQTs. Figure 2 presents a comparison of their WES profiles. In the eyes of both British experienced teachers and NQTs, they had a work environment characterised by high work pressures and low level supervisor support. However, experienced teachers had an even stronger emphasis on these two subscales. Both experienced teachers and NQTs are rated moderately with regard to involvement, peer cohesion, task orientation, clarity of expectations, management control and innovation which, however, are somewhat above average, with NQTs scores slightly higher. Experienced teachers scores on autonomy and physical comfort are below average while NQTs scores on these subscales are both above. The WES surveys administered in Britain indicated high commitment of teachers to their work, moderate cohesion among teaching staff, but with extraordinarily strong pressure to keep up with the never-ending workload. Most of the respondents felt that new approaches to tasks were encouraged at their schools and perceived their work environment as efficient and well organised. They believed that they got clear ideas as to expectations about school rules and procedures. There was a moderate degree of control over teachers so that they had a degree of innovation. Pleasant surroundings were not characteristic of their work settings. However, what is most noticeable is that the respondents, especially 217

7 JIANQIANG WU experienced teachers, believed that they had extremely little support from their senior managers. 65mm Figure 2. The WES profile for British experienced teachers and NQTs. Involvement and peer cohesion are two important influences in determining how far and in what ways NQTs get integrated into a school s work environment. British NQTs showed a high degree of commitment to their new career. They were generally satisfied with the help from their experienced colleagues. They felt that the rules and regulations of their schools were not very strict and there was little control over their activities but some innovation. Discussions on the Information from the Interviews All the people interviewed showed a strong interest in the effectiveness of NQTs transition from their initial teacher training to their teaching positions. They had an awareness of what the term school work environment means and recognised that each school has a particular work environment with emphasis on specific aspects. Through these descriptions, ideas can be obtained about how a schools operate and in what way it sets its values, attitudes and beliefs: We are a friendly and welcoming school committed to high standards of achievements, behaviour and discipline. We provide opportunities for participation, responsibility and leadership. Our staff contribute to the development of the school by offering outstanding excellence in education and devotion to their students. Our pupils contribute to the life of the school by representing their year and undertaking perfect duties. 218

8 THE SCHOOL WORK ENVIRONMENT AND NQTS Schools try to provide a work environment in which individuals can be satisfied. The interviewees believe that is the basis for school successes: The mission of the school is to provide a work environment where each individual can fulfill their own purposes and where staff and students can work together for success. It has always been that individuals themselves have their own personal satisfaction and that provides the basis for school successes. Most interviewees believe that school work environment is diversified in Britain. However, what is in common is that school work has been greatly influenced by the changes in education in recent years, which have brought about tremendous pressures on teachers and greatly raised the expectations of schools. NQTs start their profession in this situation: Teachers have been under more and more pressures over the last few years. Since we had the planning of the national curriculum, we have seemed to have a lot of changes. These pressures have brought about great influence over many aspects of school work environment. For instance, because of the national curriculum, there is an enormous amount of paper work, huge volume of paper work. That certainly means that staff are more tired, more stressed. They have more work to do. The genuine perception now is that pressures have markedly increased. That affects everyone in the school. Inter-personal relations are regarded by the interviewees as a crucial component of school work environment. There is an indication that the relationship between staff members is generally supportive. However, most interviewees argue that there is a definite gap between the senior management and other staff. This is confirmed in the information from the WES surveys, in which the scores on supervisor support are very low. It is noticed that on this aspect and some others, senior managers have different views from other staff: usually managers see them in much more positive terms: (A teacher): Most of the teaching staff here are really friendly and supportive. They are understanding and co-operative as well. However, I would say there is a definite gap between the senior management and the staff, not necessarily on an individual basis. This gap, I believe, exists in all schools. We may be able to relate to the members of senior management but I think there is a definite move to make the senior management team a team apart from the rest of the staff. (A school manager): I think the senior management is trying to support the teaching staff. I don t know if people always see that because working in different groups and areas, we have different 219

9 JIANQIANG WU responsibilities but not because we don t relate to them. Perhaps they see more often we are not supportive. Sometimes we know confidential information that we cannot tell people. So they think there might be a reason why the senior management has done this or that. NQTs are in a position where they have to face a number of challenges. These challenges are there not only due to the pressures teachers usually have but also due to the nature of school work. They need a set of competencies to meet these challenge: Teaching is really challenging. It is not an easy job. There are always high expectations of teachers. You have to have something to teach, you have to plan your lessons and manage the classroom, you have discipline problems to cope with. In addition, you have to meet parents, you have to work with the community and you have to work with the media. Today you have to solve a problem and another problem comes up tomorrow. There is no end. To reach the requirement for competence is also challenging and NQTs have to face all these challenges from the day they start their work. Many interviewees argue that NQTs professional competence includes two major aspects: first, they should have a good subject knowledge and apply it well to teaching situations; secondly, they are expected to learn classroom management: As a teacher, not necessarily an NQT but any person, you have to have something to teach your students and organise and control the classes properly. These are the two most important competencies. First of all, obviously we look at their subject knowledge and subject application. Have they got the knowledge of different teaching styles? Can they spot where one teaching style is appropriate and the other is not? After that, we look for basic classroom management and discipline skills. Can NQTs go into a classroom and post what is happening there, organise it properly and efficiently so that things can be controlled and safe? That is the main basic competence. These points of view are in line with those competences defined by the Department for Education and Employment (DfEE, 1997a,b) while it approved the requirements for all courses of initial teacher training (ITT) and new qualified teacher status (QTS) standards. To reach the requirements for these competencies, NQTs need to acquire a number of qualities, such as commitment to outstanding excellence in education, devotion to their students, enthusiasm for their work, ability to cope with pressures, being good at learning from others, and working in a team: 220

10 THE SCHOOL WORK ENVIRONMENT AND NQTS Most of all, I would be looking for the kind of qualities, which to a certain degree I believe are very important for NQTs to develop their competences. Some of these are innate qualities and some need to be learned in practice or training. Somebody can come along, can expect what happens in the classroom and can motivate the students. The kind of extras are the understanding of school work environment, a wide picture of what education is about, what schooling is about and how your school fits into its local facility. The quality of an NQT in terms of the subject specialisms and the ability to teach effectively is the most important thing. Without that you have got nothing. That broad picture of understanding and willingness to contribute to be an active member of that school is at top gear straight away. You want someone who is willing to get in there and wants to take part in all aspects of school life. That willingness is crucial. Many of the people interviewed agree that school work environment is an influential factor which affects the competence of NQTs. They believe that the subject competence of NQTs is mainly gained in their initial teacher training but their other competencies come with experience and practice. It seems obvious that school work environment exerts much influence over NQTs classroom management and other competencies: NQTs have jut got their subject competencies in their teacher education but haven t got enough classroom skills and other competencies. They come to the school and will be soon involved in what we are doing. Our values, attitudes, ways of working and ways of communication will impress them in one way or another and certainly will influence their attitudes towards their work. It is important, according to some interviewees, for NQTs to feel comfortable with the values and attitudes of the school. If they were not able to work in a school with a good feeling, it would be difficult for them to well develop their competence and perhaps would have to give up the job: I personally think the staff here have good values and attitudes and their values and attitudes are getting better and better. The vague thing you say about is the ethos of the school or the feeling in the school. If I worked in the school with a very bad feeling, I would certainly not be able to stand up to that and would give up that job. If an NQT was not able to enjoy life here, he would not be able to develop his competence. Some interviewees stress the importance of NQTs adaptation to school work environment. They argue that it is not good enough for NQTs just to know something about their school. They have to fit in as soon as they can and make their input into it: 221

11 JIANQIANG WU I think it is a very valuable point that you want your NQTs quickly imbibe your work environment and subscribe to it. It is not enough for them just to know it. They have got to be part of it and be developing it, because school work environment is made up of the people at the school. It is not a piece of paper that you read and throw away. It is the sum total of all the people who are there, hopefully with the common vision pulling in the same direction. What you want of an NQT is somebody who comes along, subscribes to that work environment and makes some input into it, actually contributes to its development, not just simply receives it. An interviewee raises a set of issues on how NQTs are influenced by school work environment. First, they will face new systems, new values and new attitudes. Secondly, they will have to meet the new expectations and requirements of the school: School work environment affects NQTs in many ways. They will have to work in the new systems. The values and attitudes of the staff may be new to them as well. The school s expectations and requirements of staff are also something they need to know. A school has its particular work environment and NQTs need to come to understand what it is like because it does affect you. For example, if an NQTs doesn t know what the school expects of its staff, he would certainly have difficulties meeting the school s requirements. An NQT might come from a university where self-care is stressed but there is an emphasis on team spirit at the school. He will soon find the differences and have to integrate into the values and attitudes of the school. Assuming that they are competent at teaching they need to have their competence meet the requirements of the school. It is in this context that the importance of the support from the senior management and experienced teachers should be seen. Although the WES surveys indicate a low degree of supervisor support, the interviews provide the evidence that each of the four schools had established a set of support networks, NQT induction programmes and professional development systems: In terms of helping NQTs, this school is a very good school. There is a lot of support from the senior management and the heads of departments. NQTs have their professional mentors and subject mentors. I am a professional mentor for NQTs. I give them advice on dealing with their difficulties at the school. We have a programme of training and mentoring so that NQTs are not feeling they are running by themselves. They work with a team at the school. Appreciating that every school has its particular culture which influences the competence of NQTs, and that NQTs face some challenges when they 222

12 THE SCHOOL WORK ENVIRONMENT AND NQTS first come to schools, some interviewees confirm that NQTs have a lot of individual support: We have some support programmes for NQTs which are sorted out carefully between whatever practical things they need to know and visionary things that we feel they can aspire to. So they do have obviously a lot of personal support and individual support through their heads of departments. Then they have their whole training programme support as well. One of the effective practices to help NQTs is the exchanges of lesson observations between NQTs and experienced teachers. This has been used as a major means to monitor and improve NQTs competence and proved to be welcomed by both sides: NQTs are arranged to observe other teachers lessons. We also observe their lessons. Usually it is an observation of the mixture of their subject knowledge, classroom organisation, teaching skills, use of teaching language and pupils discipline. In addition, we look at the relationship between NQTs and pupils, the pace of the lessons and variety within the lesson. Some interviewees emphasise that the most important support to NQTs is encouragement. This means concentrating on the positive whilst helping them to address their weaknesses: It is important to be encouraging, trying to ignore the negatives and concentrate on the positives. It is more the social perhaps rather than the practical teaching tips. It is more of making the person feel comfortable and have self-confidence. Some Tentative Conclusions The WES surveys and the follow-up interviews have helped to elicit teachers perceptions of the work environment of their schools and provided an insight into its impact on NQTs professional development. The respondents feel that NQTs are required to be well involved in their teaching. There are induction programmes which are intended to help them into the particular work environment of their schools. School rules and policies are explained to NQTs explicitly. The interaction between NQTs and the work environment of their schools takes place on the basis of individual conditions found in different schools. Adequate evidence has turned up that school work environment is an immensely important factor affecting NQTs professional development. They are expected to develop their competence in the context of the particular work environment of their schools and are under the influence of the values, attitudes and beliefs of the senior management, experienced teachers and the learning performance of students. This impact permeates the initial period and possibly a longer period 223

13 JIANQIANG WU throughout NQTs career life, and affects their ways of working and styles of teaching. The outcomes of both the WES surveys and interviews reveal a number of perspectives which are not found in other empirical work. While the content and practice of British initial teacher education has been widely debated and studied, and school work environment has become a hot issue for educational research, there is little written on the link between NQTs professional development and the impact of school work environment on it. Therefore, the information collected from this study is of specific significance to NQTs professional development in Britain and may have implications for developing NQTs competence in other countries. However, the findings demonstrate that almost all the respondents both to the questionnaire and interviews have strong feelings about the huge work pressures they have to cope with and the little support they have from the senior management. It can be seen that high work pressures and inadequate supervisor support are two of the defining features of secondary school work environment in Britain, although some interviewees believe they have received some degree of support. Given these findings, the importance of reducing teachers work pressures and seeking more effective support from school management should be given priority in order to promote the effectiveness of NQTs transition. Also given the heavy work load all teachers undertake, considerations should be given to the possibility of establishing a national norm in terms of relief to help NQTs to maintain their professional development in schools. This would undoubtedly help school management to take more responsibility for NQTs professional development. It is important that NQTs have a supportive work environment in order to transfer and build upon the knowledge, skills and attitudes obtained from initial training to their first year of teaching. Continuing Professional Development must become the norm alongside teaching, not an activity to be filled in when and if the pressure of the job allows. Correspondence Jianqiang Wu, School of Education, University College Worcester, Henwick Grove, Worcester WR2 6AJ, United Kingdom. References Dalin, P., Aynono, T., Biazen, A., Dibaba, B., Jahan, M., Miles, M. & Rojas, C. (1994) How Schools Improve: an international report. London: Cassell. De Piano, L. G. & McClure, L. E. (1987) The training of principals for School Advisory Council leadership, Journal of Community Psychology, 15, pp

14 THE SCHOOL WORK ENVIRONMENT AND NQTS Deer, C. E. (1980) Measuring organisational climate in secondary schools, Australian Journal of Education, 24, pp Department for Education and Employment (1997a) New requirments for all courses of initial teacher training: a letter to providers of ITT and the TTA. London: DfEE. Department for Education and Employment (1997b) A letter from the Secretary of State for Education on publishing the White Paper Excellence in Schools. London: DfEE. Fisher, C. & Fraser, B. (1991) Validity and use of school environment instruments, Journal of Classroom Interaction, 26(2), pp Fraser, B. J., Docker, J. G. & Fisher, D. L. (1988) Assessing and improving school climate, Evaluation and Research in Education, 2, pp Geva-May, I. & Dori, Y. (1995) analysis of an induction model, British Journal of In-service Education, 22, pp Moos, R. H. (1974) The Social Climate Scale: an overview. Palo Alto: Consulting Psychologist Press. Moos, R. H. (1986) Work as a human context, in M. Pallack & R. Perloff (Eds) Psychology and Work: productivity, change, and employment, Vol. 5, Master Lecture Series (9-15). Washington, DC: American Psychology Association. Moos, R. H. (1991) Understanding and improving work cliamtes, in J. Jones, B. Steffy & D. Bray (Eds) Applying Psychology in Business: the handbook for managers and human resource professionals. Lexington: D. C. Health. Moos, R. H. (1994) Work Environment Scale Manual, 3rd edn. Palo Alto: Consulting Psychologist Press. Simco, N. (1995) Professional profiling and development in the induction year, British Journal of In-service Education, 21, pp Sork, J. L. (1985) An investigation of the attitudinal effects of quality circle participation on teachers in an educating setting, Dissertation Abstract International, 45, 576A. Taylor, J. K. & Dale, I. R. (1971) A Survey of Teachers in their First Year of Service. Bristol: University of Bristol Press. 225