"It's all about experience": The challenge of becoming a teacher in fragmented employment contexts.

This paper reports on an ongoing research project which in part considers how the current employment opportunities available to most beginning primary teachers in one Australian state, New South Wales, affect the ways these teachers are able to develop their professional knowledge base in the first two years of their careers. The current employment situation which faces most beginning primary teachers as they leave teacher education institutions in this state, is one of fragmentation of experience through the need to begin careers as casual teachers, a situation where teachers are often viewed as 'baby sitters' and where there may be minimal expected responsibility for student learning or for their professional participation in the culture and community of a school. For these teachers, the early years of teaching are often spent 'on the fringe' of schools, classrooms and the profession often to the detriment of their development as practising teachers. This paper will report on some of the results of a state-wide survey and detail how this fragmented employment situation has affected the capacity of 241 beginning teachers to acquire personal practical knowledge of teaching and to participate in the process of professional socialisation.