Early career educators’ worldviews of education. Personal philosophies of education and their influence on state primary school teachers

The professional context within state primary education in England is one which exemplifies high levels of stress on practitioners and large attrition rates of teachers. Possible reasons for this are many and documented but what is less documented are the worldviews of education held prior to undertaking a teacher education pathway and how these worldviews might develop within an Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programme and during the early stages of a teaching career. The assumption examined in this paper is that those entering into the profession do so with different but strongly held worldviews of education which are challenged by the various educative projects as articulated in state schools in the primary age phase in England whether they are faith based, maintained, or academies whose contexts and ethos vary. This project examined the perspectives of ITE students, some of whom had just commenced their degree programme and others at the completion of it following a convergent mixed methods approach. Findings suggest there are no statistical or narrative differences between student perspectives on personal worldviews of education at the commencement and completion of an Initial Teacher Education degree. This is despite their participation on a prolonged education degree with extensive professional placement experience in a variety of schools. The implications are that the ITE provider in this study and perhaps others could develop programmes to inform early career educators’ personal worldviews of education in order to foster philosophically informed professionals alongside the technical knowledge and skills currently being developed.