Learning and Acting the Role: in‐school support for primary teachers

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Abstract
This paper presents a tentative analysis of the in‐school assistance which 100 mid‐career graduate primary teachers retrospectively felt had been available to them during their first decade of teaching, and of their reactions to it. They thought in terms of professional, social (membership group) and domestic support, but their chief concern was with the first of these. Some found partial role‐models to help them decide ‘the kind of teacher I want to be’, others accepted the practical help extended by a professional parent’. In both cases, potential help seems to have been randomly available. In addition, its effectiveness was apparently mediated by the individual's need to protect her own values as a teacher and yet to belong socially to a staff group. Thus impression management was widespread and, as a result, teachers tended to absorb craft knowledge within their school without discussing educational values or aims. Learning the role became a process of self‐socialisation within a membership group, rather than of collegial induction into a professional culture.