How effectively does the Graduate Teacher Programme contribute to the development of trainee teachers' professional values?

Source: Journal of Education for Teaching, Volume 33, Issue 3 August 2007, pages 309 – 321.

Employment routes into teaching, such as the Graduate Teacher Programme (GTP), are making an increasingly significant contribution to teacher training, but does such training provide opportunities for education in professional values? In the light of Ofsted reports which suggest that GTP trainees often bring particularly well-developed professional values to their training, the purpose of this small-scale study is to gain insights into the nature and implementation of the values of a GTP primary cohort in the first phase of their training.

The findings identify that GTP trainees do have well-established values, and high expectations about implementing them, but they experience varying degrees of coherence between these values and their implementation in teaching, learning and classroom management.

 However, there is sufficient evidence to suggest that the highly individualised nature of the GTP does potentially lend itself to a coherent relationship between professional values and practice. In order for that potential to be realised, the study makes three recommendations for teacher educators: enable trainees to integrate well-developed professional values into their individual training plans at induction, give particular attention to the reflective and dialogical skills of mentors, and integrate central training into the reflective process of trainees' values education.