During this period, Pascal experienced profound transformations that led him to question his self-confidence as he gradually discovered the teacher he was becoming and went through a period of mourning for his trade as he had known it. At the end of this long journey, he found that, to be a good auto mechanics teacher, he needed to stay in touch with the trade and, to an extent, “remain a mechanic” to avoid “losing the trade” that he must pass on to his students.
The results of this study will help provide better support through the transition process of new vocational teachers.
Four Université de Sherbrooke researchers, André Balleux, Chantale Beaucher, Claudia Gagnon and Frédéric Saussez, combined their efforts to better understand the entry into vocational teaching by studying the changes that occur in relation to identity, the relationship to knowledge and conceptions of teaching, and by looking at the support tools that influence these changes. The research relied on an examination of three distinct and complementary dimensions of the transition process to create a better understanding of the subjective transformations experienced by vocational teachers in the course of their professional transition and a nuanced portrait that clearly reflects the complexity of the experience.
The researchers feel that the results of this study will help provide better support through the transition process, thereby fostering the persistence and success of new vocational teachers and reducing the human and financial costs associated with teacher attrition.
Main researcher
André Balleux, Université de Sherbrooke
Deposit of the research report: January 2013