How can we help new teachers get safeguarding and professional behaviours right from day one?

It isn’t easy to get anything right first time. Teacher education is all about learning from experience and making improvements over time with support from peers, mentors and expert colleagues.

But when it comes to safeguarding and professional behaviours, we aspire to a higher standard. We want trainees to understand their safeguarding responsibilities from their very first moment in school and be able to respond appropriately from day one.

When considering professional behaviours more broadly, we know that small decisions trainees make at the start of any placement – e.g. related to timekeeping, dress or communication – can combine to create a first impression that is hard to shift. We don’t want these decisions to get in the way of trainees’ progress in the classroom.

Proxima has been supporting a group of school- and university-based providers across England to explore how we can help new teachers get professional behaviours and safeguarding right from day one. Here are four insights from our work so far.

1. Talk about the why

As well as describing the professional behaviours expected of new teachers, it is helpful to explain why they matter and how specific choices relate to underlying principles.

For example, in addition to stating that teachers should immediately report any concerns about a child’s welfare to the designated safeguarding lead, we can explain why this matters and set out the foundational concept that adults in a school must form a network of protection, because no individual can have a complete picture of a child’s needs.

Talking about the why also anticipates possible misconceptions – for example, that new teachers can leave safeguarding to more experienced colleagues – and makes it more likely that trainees act on the ideas they are introduced to from day one.

2. Get trainees thinking

In addition to talking about the why, it’s essential to provide trainees with opportunities to actively engage with ideas through peer- or self-explanation. Evidence suggests that self-explanation – for example, writing a short explanation about why a response in a scenario is more appropriate – increases the likelihood that people learning new ideas are able to remember and successfully apply them in new contexts (e.g. Bisra et al., 2018).

We applied these principles by asking trainees to respond to a series of scenarios related to safeguarding and professional behaviours, and to provide justifications for the choices they made.

For example, the following scenario is designed to get trainees thinking about why teachers should report concerns about a child’s welfare:

Scenario

You are at home on your personal laptop, looking at a social media site. You receive a message asking how you are from an account you think belongs to a pupil at your school.

What would you do? Justify your decision.

1. Change your account settings to make your profile less visible, block the account and ignore the message.
2. Change your account settings, block the account and inform the school safeguarding lead about the message.

A sample of trainees’ responses demonstrates how trainees can be supported to move from an initial focus on identifying the most appropriate response towards a deeper engagement with underlying ideas about preventing escalation and sharing information within a network:

"It’s unprofessional to talk to pupils online."

"Even though it isn’t a big risk, I would report it."

"I should protect myself by telling the safeguarding lead."

"If I ignore it, the issue could escalate and the pupil could contact more teachers."

"The message might reflect a pattern of unsafe behaviour online, so I should report it."

3. Make the implicit explicit

Effective professional behaviours training goes beyond encouragement to “be professional”, “work sustainably” or “build relationships with colleagues” by making explicit what these ideas mean in the context of an English school. Being explicit is inclusive because it recognises that trainees have different prior experiences of education and work.

One way of being explicit is to use examples and non-examples of professional behaviours, as in the scenario above. Non-examples are a straightforward way to highlight what to avoid, but can also be designed as instructive mistakes illustrating specific misconceptions new teachers might hold. For example, a scenario involving a pupil asking a teacher to keep a secret could be used as a starting point for a conversation about the difference between acting like a teacher and acting like a friend.

4. Provide opportunities for rehearsal

As we identified in a recent blog about improving trainees’ questioning, some ideas are easier in theory than in practice. For example, a new teacher might know that it’s important to maintain professional boundaries, but find it hard to respond in the moment if they’re asked an awkward question about their religion or political beliefs.

In these cases, it can be helpful to use approximations to provide time for trainees to practise responding, either by scripting or recording a response. These opportunities help trainees bridge the gap between the principles they’ve been introduced to and their application in school, thereby increasing the likelihood that they get it right first time in school.

References

• Bisra, K., Liu, Q. and Nesbit, J. C. (2018). Inducing Self-Explanation: A Meta-Analysis. Educational Psychology Review, pp. 703-725.

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