1. BACKGROUND
1.1 "Who are these supply teachers?"
Although there is a growing amount of published research in Britain on supply issues, the body of literature is still quite small, so it is not difficult to provide comprehensive reviews (Shilling 1991, Galloway 1993; Galloway and Morrison 1994; Massey 1995a, 1995b). Recruitment and retention of supply teachers have been explored, as have their deployment within LEAs, their management at school level, and the experiences of those who are returning to teaching after having taken a career break. In their book, 'The Supply Story', Galloway and Morrison (1994) provide a valuable range of chapters to place supply teaching in organisational, institutional, and labour market contexts, and argue that supply has hitherto been largely 'invisible' in educational debate.
Moreover, within the literature on supply, supply teachers themselves have received surprisingly little attention. As Trotter and Wragg (1990:251) remark, "very little has been written about the experiences of supply teachers despite their contribution to schools". Burgess, in his foreword to Galloway and Morrison (1994:vii), asks: "Who are these supply teachers? What are their characteristics? What work do they take on and what is their experience of teaching? What contribution do they make to the teaching and learning experience?" By their own admission, Galloway and Morrison (1994) do not specifically address these questions. In fact, as yet, no published study in this country has done so, though studies by Loveys (1988) and Trotter and Wragg (1990) have laid important groundwork in exploring "some of the complicated dynamics that can be encountered by a supply teacher (Massey 1995b:3)."
Loveys (1988) argues that a supply teacher must appear to be coping, competent, and, to a large extent, conforming to what she thinks those in the school want of her. He found that both he and the classes attempted to renegotiate "previously established routines and norms", and that the lack of an established relationship between teacher and pupils could make the classroom an unsettled place, where building and maintaining trust could become a major issue. He also draws attention to the diversity of teaching environments which a supply teacher may meet.
Trotter and Wragg (1990) echo some of these points. They add that one of the key issues for the supply teacher is gaining access to information which permanent colleagues can take for granted. Although there is a continuum from being a total stranger to being known by, and knowing, the teachers, the children, and the school, a supply teacher may be less likely than a regularly timetabled teacher to have local knowledge of the school, the class, the absent teacher's pedagogy, the context of the work set, or the subject (in the case of middle or secondary); lack of this kind of information may make successful class management very difficult. Other destabilising factors may be lack of continuity in content and relationships with pupils, and, in comparison to a permanent teacher, ambiguity about the degree of autonomy or ownership of the class in terms of the content or pacing of the lesson, or what standards of work and behaviour to expect and ask for. The individual or cumulative effect of such factors may lead to supply teachers feeling they cannot properly meet pupils' educational needs (Trotter and Wragg, 1990:256). Given such uncertain circumstances, Trotter and Wragg (1990:251) wryly suggest that the next best thing to a supply teacher being prepared is "appearing to be prepared", and Morrison (1994a) comments that a supply teacher's success may, in some circumstances, be measured by the extent to which she can run the lesson as though the replaced teacher had never been absent, by, in fact, her capacity to be 'invisible' in the classroom.
1.2 The subjective world of the supply teacher
Working on the principle that the 'conventional wisdom of schooling' held by teachers is "both biographically and experientially determined" (Loveys 1988:181), I piloted a set of systematic interviews designed to elicit how supply teachers who work in secondary schools perceive and conceptualise their experiences (Massey 1995a, 1995b). The interviews were designed to gain access, above all, to what participants took for granted in an actual sample day's work, but which might be unique to the activity of secondary supply teaching, and included a brief career history to contextualise what a supply teacher had to say about the day's work under discussion.
While this study proved illuminating, it was clear that supply teachers' accounts might, for various reasons, neglect key features of the time spent in school. Participants' oral accounts must always to some degree be mediated by the researcher. A researcher embracing a phenomenological perspective may prize above all else participants' constructions of their world, but the partial nature of the knowledge gained must be acknowledged, as must the inevitability of the intervention of the researcher's constructs and the impossibility either of bracketing oneself out or being completely non-directive; by using the word 'partial', I mean to indicate that accounts are both fragmentary and partisan, in ways which must remain unknown to the researcher. Triangulation of peoples' accounts of their experiences is obviously not possible. That is not to rubbish all attempts to gain access to people's thinking, only to recognise that there are limits to what can be achieved, and that this will not tell us all we might need to know about what is actually going on in a supply teacher's day.
Woods (1983:7) states: "No matter what the circumstances are, or the prevailing official definition, if a person defines a situation in a certain way, that will be the context in which his plans for action are formed." This is only partially true; there are structural boundaries which limit the sphere of action and the choices available. Supply teachers could describe some of these constraints; but an observer in school could also discover constraints which act upon the supply teacher, but of which she is unaware. Moreover, an observer may be able to pick up on issues which, for some reason, would not necessarily emerge simply through conversation with the supply teacher. Finally, in conversation, supply teachers might be less likely knowingly to misrepresent, dramatise or exaggerate their accounts, if they feel (erroneously, of course) the researcher experienced what they have experienced by being present at the same events.
Therefore, in the next phase of the research, I decided to conduct a case study of a supply teacher which would include extended periods of observation in school, followed by frequent discussion of shared events, and to complement this with a long biographical interview similar to those carried out in my earlier study. The rest of this paper focusses on a case study of one supply teacher (Diane), the methods employed, the mode of analysis, and some of the substantive findings.
2. METHODS
2.1 Access
I met Diane in November 1993 through a voluntary support and training group for supply teachers which I was running (Oxfordshire Association of Supply Teachers: OAST). We got to know each other a little at meetings, and, in December 1995, during a phone call in which she rang to talk to me about the next meeting, I used the opportunity to ask if I might spend some time observing her in the school where she had worked on supply for 4 years, and she agreed quite happily.
We talked about how I might get permission from the school (Box Hill) to observe Diane; she said that the headteacher would probably be quite open to the idea, and that she would mention it to her the following morning. Diane told the headteacher about my OAST background and interest in researching supply, and that she was happy to be observed. At the end of the Christmas term, after a short phone call with the head, I sent a brief description of my research, and the reasons for wanting to observe. At the start of the Spring term, I was rung by Dick, the supply coordinator (senior teacher), who said it was 'fine' for me to come in, '"no holds barred."
Diane's 'scouting' trip proved useful:
Diane was slightly thrown by the headteacher's initial caution; I was able to reassure her that the head's reaction was not unusual for a 'gatekeeper'. Given the success of having an insider prepare my contact with the gatekeeper, I would do the same again, though prepare the insider more thoroughly for the possible reactions of a gatekeeper.
Morrison and Galloway (1995) highlight the methodological difficulty of 'researching moving targets' such as supply teachers, whose working patterns can be unpredictable, and how a researcher may be able to establish only a 'fleeting relationship' with such people. Having been a supply teacher myself, I was practised in keeping a bag ready with everything I might need for a last minute call to go into a school, and in making sure I had fuel in the car for an early morning dash. Almost all my visits to Box Hill came from calls from Diane five minutes after she had been rung by Dick, shortly before 8 am. I had to be prepared to drop whatever other commitments I had that day, and was thus able to relive some of the 'on-the-hoof' life of supply teaching.
2.2 Reactivity
Of course, pupils were aware of my presence, and some asked me questions about what I was doing. Diane or I answered that I was interested in seeing what happens in the school"; a pupil would seem not to be bothered after I said, "I'm not interested in you in particular." We both felt it important not to tell the children I was specifically researching supply teaching, lest they decided consequently to behave differently towards Diane. Sometimes there was no apparent reaction at all to my presence. Diane and I agreed that I would quietly leave, or she would ask me to, if either of us sensed that my presence was inhibiting the normal conduct of the cover lesson.
I asked Diane whether my presence appeared to change the mood of the lessons, and she replied that it did not. She may have wished to give me the impression that whatever behaviour I was observing was normal. Conceivably, the pupils' behaviour might have been better than usual, and if Diane was anxious about what opinion I held of her, she might not tell me this. However, I felt at least that the behaviour could not be worse than normal; if that were so, Diane would have asked me to leave. In my opinion, the pupils did not seem much disturbed by my presence, and after several visits to the school and seeing some of the same classes, I was accepted without further comment.
It is impossible to judge the extent to which my presence may have had an influence on how Diane behaved. However, there were certain things which I observed and subsequently discussed with Diane which took her by surprise. For example, I pointed out how she had grimaced and showed frustration on occasions, and she was embarrassed that I had noticed; she was not aware that I might be interested, or that such behaviours were noticeable. This held true for many other features of which more will be said later in this paper.
In the first few days of observation, Diane sometimes asked what I thought about things that had happened. I always stressed that I was not taking an evaluative role, and that I would not provide her with feedback of any sort. Of course, if Diane expressed anxiety about something that had happened or that she had done, or asked my opinion, then it could alert me to whether she felt secure about her competence in a particular area, or the degree of importance that she assigned to particular issues. One could argue that, even if I had expressed a view or value, the extent to which my judgment 'hit home' would depend on the extent to which Diane was predisposed to judge herself in the same way anyway.
2.3 The data
In all, I followed Diane on 16 separate days, which represented 60 double lessons and about 80 hours of observation; the 80 hours includes the time I observed her in the staff room and around the school during breaks and lunchtimes, before and after school. The notes I wrote during or just after the observation sessions were supplemented by keeping a record of all the research-related conversations we had at other times; where possible, I photocopied the cover instructions and materials left for Diane to use with her groups, the feedback forms used by supply teachers in the school. I also made a note of comments and behaviours of others (pupils and staff) which appeared to have a direct bearing on Diane's experience.
I tried to talk with Diane about what I had observed as soon as possible after events, mostly immediately after a lesson, although I also waited longer sometimes so that I could observe what happened at the changeover of classes. Even only five minutes after a lesson, Diane's memory could slip; on one occasion I related what I had seen, and Diane said, "That is the sort of thing I would do." It brings into question what was the nature of the information I acquired in our conversations.
It proved illuminating to ask Diane questions of the form:"What would happen if you didn't do x?" Her responses often revealed assumptions, values, and purposes that lay behind what she did. It might seem that I was leading too much in this respect. However, all questions lead in some way in that they say something about the questioner's interests; rather than attempt the impossible feat of not betraying any research agenda, the researcher must be as aware as possible of that agenda, whether the participant is also aware, and what view the participant may take of that agenda.
3. MODE OF ANALYSIS
There is a large amount of data and an infinite number of ways of analysing it; no single analysis could ever be exhaustive. So how does one decide to look at qualitative data, such that one can learn something that might be considered valuable?
Tempting though it is, we cannot use frequency (commonality or rarity) to help us hunt down what might be important in qualitative data. Sometimes we value a one-off instance. Sometimes we value many instances. But if we value the one-off or the many because of the frequency, we have got ourselves muddled, and missed the point that frequency is not the ground from which we derive value. What we actually do is decide what is valuable, and then try to express it to others by using the construct of frequencies.
So if frequency by itself is not an index of importance in qualitative work, then we must find some other means for establishing what is of value in the data. There is an advantage to discarding the 'crutch' of frequency counts, in that the researcher is pushed towards 'relevance', and into revealing more of her/his agenda and assumptions, and articulating what s/he is looking for or asking about and why.
To the questions, "Why are you looking at and telling us about x, and why should we find x interesting?", I have at least three possible responses:
This last point taps into the researcher's personal agenda. There is nothing wrong with this. It ties the research into consideration of the aims of the activity under study, and, ultimately, in the case of my research, the aims of education; in other words selection is based on relevance. Whether I can persuade you, the reader, to share my passion for my findings and any recommendations I might make will depend, I suspect, on whether I can defend my values with values that you do not dispute.
As Wittgenstein wrote; "Nothing we do can be defended absolutely and finally. But only by reference to something else that is not questioned. I.e., no reason can be given why you should act (or should have acted) 'like this', except that by doing so you bring about such and such a situation, which again has to be an aim you 'accept'." (Wittgenstein 1980:16)
For this analysis, I have taken as my starting point the themes highlighted in the brief literature review in the opening of this paper, and have chosen to consider four days which lay close together, and during which Diane covered the work of just one teacher. While these days cannot be entirely understood without reference to other times that Diane spent in the school, and on supply elsewhere, these four days seemed to form a unit of their own which can provide a focus for analysis.