Beginner's Tale

Abstract

Beginning teachers have been subjected to intense scrutiny. The typical focus has been on the professional problems they encounter in their first year of teaching, usually determined by largescale surveys using a questionnaire in which the range of  possible problems has already been identified. Situational studies where beginning teachers identify and delineate their own concerns are far less common but are potentially richer and more meaningful in what they reveal. Studies of beginning teachers in rural and remote areas of Australia are rare. Reported here are the experiences of one beginning teacher appointed to a remote area school in an Aboriginal community in the Northern Territory. His experiences, although expressed more forcefully than most, are not unique. They capture the essence of cultural and environmental dislocation which many new teachers encounter. The reconstruction covers the period from the system-level and regional-level induction in the week prior to the commencement of the school year to the induction recall period held regionally at the end of the first teaching quarter. Induction recall in the Northern Territory applies to teachers in Aboriginal schools only.