Life as a beginning male teacher in Queensland : who are they and what are they doing?

During 2005 a mentor program was run as a pilot strategy to link male pre-service teachers with experienced male primary teachers in the Rockhampton and Mackay school districts. As part of the on-going project investigating the usefulness of a male mentoring program, an online survey was sent out to beginning male teachers in Queensland. Findings indicated that many of the male teachers felt unprepared for the realities of the school workplace with the social and emotional aspects of teaching, issues of work intensification, paperwork and administration as areas of common concern. Three main areas that beginning male teachers would like to see covered more fully in pre-service training included more practicum exposure, more behaviour management skills and pedagogy. In this paper we report on the results in relation to what these teachers would like to see in pre-service training for male teachers and implication for programs such as ours. We conclude by suggesting that further research investigating the BLM internship would beneficial to assess the effectiveness of support for the beginning male teacher and retention of quality male teachers.