Teacher Life Cycle
Teachers’ Professional Life Cycles
1 Introduction
The idea of teachers’ life cycles isn’t new. I first became familiar with it when reading Amy Tsui’s book on expertise in teaching. The notion that teachers pass through a career cycle matched my own experience, and it helped to provide a useful way of thinking about supervising teachers, since my particular concern was with this really important aspect of managing a language teaching organization (LTO). So, while this article is mostly about teachers’ professional life cycles, it also touches on the separate, but related notions of excellence and expertise in teaching, and on some implications for academic management.
2 Teachers Professional Life Cycles
For some years I’ve been training participants on the course leading to the International Diploma in Language Teaching Management (IDLTM). Most of them are at a mid-career stage, often working as an ADOS or DOS, in some cases as school directors, and a significant part of their present and future work involves the supervision of other people, in particular, of teachers. In our discussions, it soon becomes clear that managing the work of teachers involves a range of concerns well outside the remit of ‘academic management’, including motivation and reward systems. In short, managing teachers is a human resource management (HRM) issue, as well as a professional one.
It is also clear that there is an important link between HRM and professional concerns on the one hand, and teachers’ life cycles on the other. The life cycle concept itself is not, of course, a new one, the biological life cycle having already been extended to organizational and product life cycles – and to teachers. In all cases, the cycles involve notions of conception, growth and development, maturity and eventual decline or withdrawal.
Such a cycle is obvious in Fessler’s career cycle within a model for teachers’ professional growth and development (Fessler, 1985):
Pre-Service
Induction
Competency
1 Introduction
The idea of teachers’ life cycles isn’t new. I first became familiar with it when reading Amy Tsui’s book on expertise in teaching. The notion that teachers pass through a career cycle matched my own experience, and it helped to provide a useful way of thinking about supervising teachers, since my particular concern was with this really important aspect of managing a language teaching organization (LTO). So, while this article is mostly about teachers’ professional life cycles, it also touches on the separate, but related notions of excellence and expertise in teaching, and on some implications for academic management.
2 Teachers Professional Life Cycles
For some years I’ve been training participants on the course leading to the International Diploma in Language Teaching Management (IDLTM). Most of them are at a mid-career stage, often working as an ADOS or DOS, in some cases as school directors, and a significant part of their present and future work involves the supervision of other people, in particular, of teachers. In our discussions, it soon becomes clear that managing the work of teachers involves a range of concerns well outside the remit of ‘academic management’, including motivation and reward systems. In short, managing teachers is a human resource management (HRM) issue, as well as a professional one.
It is also clear that there is an important link between HRM and professional concerns on the one hand, and teachers’ life cycles on the other. The life cycle concept itself is not, of course, a new one, the biological life cycle having already been extended to organizational and product life cycles – and to teachers. In all cases, the cycles involve notions of conception, growth and development, maturity and eventual decline or withdrawal.
Such a cycle is obvious in Fessler’s career cycle within a model for teachers’ professional growth and development (Fessler, 1985):
Pre-Service
Induction
Competency
References: Fessler, R. (1985) A model for teacher professional growth and development’, in Burke, P. & Heideman, R. (Eds) Career-Long Teacher Education. Springfield, IL: Charles C Thomas. Hattie, John (2003) Teachers Make a Difference: What is the research evidence? Paper Delivered at the 2003 ACER Conference ‘Building Teacher Quality’. Huberman, M. A. (1989). The professional life cycle of teachers. Teachers College Record, 91(1), 31-57. Huberman, M.A. (1993) The Lives of Teachers. New York: Teachers College Press. Steffy, Betty E (2001) A life-cycle model for career teachers http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa4009/is_200110/ai_n8962972/ Tsui, Amy B. (2003) Understanding Expertise in Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.