Suzanne Culshaw
University of Hertfordshire
Suzanne Culshaw is a full-time fully-funded PhD researcher at the University of Hertfordshire. She has a MEd with Distinction in Educational Leadership & School Improvement (ELSI) from Cambridge and taught for many years in secondary schools in the East of England. Her research looks at what it means to be struggling as a teacher.
This paper addresses the issue of struggling in the practice of teaching and reports teachers’ accounts of their experience of struggling. A review of the struggling teacher literature undertaken for the study reported in the paper revealed a tendency to conceptualise struggling as poorly-performing or incompetence. The literature focusses predominantly on how leaders can best deal with struggling teachers from a deficit view of such teachers (eg Tucker, 2001; Yariv & Coleman, 2005). What is missing is an in-depth exploration of the experience of struggling as a teacher, from their perspective. This study contributes to this need for exploration of teachers’ experiences and makes a significant contribution to the field in this regard.
The topic is relevant to BELMAS members as insights into the experience of struggling, derived from the context within which the struggling occurs, provide challenges for policy-makers and practitioners. Lessons learned about the experience of struggling suggest the need to re-examine not only the reactions and responses of school leaders when faced with those who are struggling but also the need to review the types of support provided.
The study’s method allows the voices of ‘struggling teachers themselves’ to be heard (Yariv & Kass, 2017, p. 13). The research questions addressed are:
1. What is the experience of struggling?
2. What factors influence the experience of struggling?
3. What does the movement between struggling and not - struggling feel like?
The study adopted a qualitative approach which explored perceptions, feelings and thoughts about struggling, as experienced and expressed by participants. Participants’ own accounts and expressions of their experience of struggling lie at the heart of this research. Loosely-structured interviews were complemented by an arts-based method. Collage was chosen as it not only frees participants from the challenge of drawing but allows them to express themselves in a way that does not rely on perceived artistic ability (Woods & Roberts, 2013). Moreover, images and objects can sometimes communicate and express that which is not easily put into words (Weber & others, 1995); collage can help participants to reveal that which was perhaps previously unknown even to themselves.
The study was conducted within the English secondary school system; data were collected from 14 teachers (9 classroom teachers; 3 middle leaders; 2 headteachers). In May – August 2017, 23 interviews were conducted and 14 collages completed. This paper reports an analysis of the oral and visual data.
