ABSTRACT
In this chapter I explore what is already known about teachers’ values as they move from deciding to teach, through training, and into their fi rst teaching posts. By teachers’ ‘values’ I refer to what teachers regard as worthwhile. These values are constructed over time, through social interaction in the home, school, community, and wider social setting. Values, in this broad sense, can include particular ‘goals’ (e.g., happiness and welfare), types of behaviour (e.g., keeping promises and treating people with respect), or certain qualities of character (e.g., generosity and loyalty; Cribb and Barber 2000). Some of these values may be more stable and less resistant to change, and others may be more susceptible to infl uence. Before any decision is made to teach, some values (e.g., those concerning justice, fairness, respect for different people, etc.) will already have been established before embarking on teacher training programmes and may well infl uence this occupational choice. Values are carried by people but they can change, extended, and elaborated on through life experience. An individual’s values can come into tension and confl ict with the values that circulate within the institutions in which people work. This in turn can create dissonance for teachers if these values differ from some of their own. This chapter explores these issues by considering fi rst why intending teachers chose teaching as their occupation. It then examines what values teachers are exposed to during their training period and fi nally examines the transition from training to practical experience and the effects this might have on their values.
