Through the eyes of principals : what it means to be a competent beginning professional

Everyone is in favour of beginning teachers having a professional approach to their work. Principals, in particular, have a vested interest in staffing their schools with graduates who are deemed to be professional and can contribute to the school in a constructive and positive way. But what do principals mean by professionalism? What do they value with respect to being a professional? How do principals decide whether a beginning teacher at a school has a professional approach to teaching? What evidence do they collect? This paper sets out to answer these questions and more. The research is timely because in recent times there has been an increased interest in the area of professional standards for teachers. Much of the standards discourse to date, however, has revolved around 'expert outsiders' attempting to capture on lists what it means to be a competent professional and to impose these views on the 'insiders'. Such an approach ignores the real world of the school and does little to try to understand what happens in that world. This study is an attempt to redress this imbalance. It taps into the rich experience that principals have of teachers and teaching and attempts to unpack some of their understandings of what it means to be a competent beginning professional.