Teaching as collective work: What are the needs of novice teachers?

The introduction of new pedagogical methods and techniques requires more collaboration within educational communities in order to share professional support and to bring individual practices into line with collective purposes. Collective work is considered an essential mechanism for deepening novice teachers' content knowledge and developing their teaching abilities. It is indeed a challenge for novice teachers to ensure their teaching is relevant to the students and their learning contexts and responds to their needs. This research studies the collective work among the novice teachers so as to identify the dimensions, modes and functions of collective work. In addition, this research aims to explore the difference between the need for assistance and resources and the actual need gained in their teaching. A total sample of 405 novice teachers was selected from three states in the northern part of Peninsular Malaysia. This study employs the quantitative method to collect data from novice teachers during their induction year. The findings showed that 88.9 percent and 65.7 percent of the novice teachers respectively indicated the collective work in their schools was arranged vertically and horizontally. However, only 25.4 percent of the respondents indicated the collective activities in their schools were voluntary, and 74.6 percent stated that they were compulsory. Modes of collective work implemented in most of the schools are collaboration and co-action rather than distributed cooperation. The functions of collective work applied are more on argumentative function and dilative function than integrative function. According to the results of t-test analysis, there is a significant difference between novice teachers' required need level and actual need level in collective work. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.