Chapter 8: Understanding the Lived Experience and Longevity of the Career-Long Teacher

The interviews undertaken in this study were original in that they focussed on career-long teachers’ lived experiences and perceptions of implementing government-imposed change over a 30-year period, in the context of English state education. The study used a novel methodology to investigate the teachers’ career-long experiences, and in the first part of this chapter, I consider the affordances of the approach taken. Drawing on the data generated from the nine narratives, I then present a conceptual model of an ideal type of career-long teacher, in order to capture the original insights offered by the study.

The research design combined a semi-structured interview with a retrospective, narrative approach, so harnessing a longitudinal view. The participants were asked to reflect back over time, so the study has some features of life history interviews, applied to career-long experiences of policy change implementation. The interview was based on a checklist of core areas to discuss, rather than fixed questions. The questioning was deliberately open-ended so that the participants would be able to define for themselves what the critical points of their experience had been, for example, recalling the policies that had the greatest impact on their work. Interviewers did not ‘suggest’ particular policies to consider, but allowed participants to set the agenda for the discussion by sharing their thoughts and recollections. This open-ended approach provides authentic narratives with meaning for the narrators, and allows the interviewer scope for probing to elicit richer, more detailed accounts.