Novice teachers and their geographical persuasions

This paper explores the nature of a novice teacher's geographical persuasion and its influence on professional learning. The implementation of a naturalistic methodology is discussed in order to illuminate aspects of the novice teacher's experience. Analysis of the data endeavours to attribute meaning to an individual novice teacher's experience. Two themes emerging from this research are presented and discussed. Firstly, that novice teachers hold diverse interests and perspectives on the study of geography and feel strongly about particular aspects of the subject; and secondly, during their early school experiences novice teachers suspend their geographical persuasion in their thinking and planning. It is proposed that these findings may have implications for current practice.