Early career teachers often feel overwhelmed by the complex, intense and unpredictable nature of their work. Recently, policy initiatives have been introduced to provide new teachers with extra release-time from face-to-face classroom teaching duties to assist them in their transition to the workforce. This paper reports on a critical policy study that investigated the enactment of this policy initiative. A data set was created from a larger qualitative study which investigated early career teacher resilience. Drawing on a policy enactment theoretical ‘toolbox’, the findings indicate that school leaders can empower early career teachers to move beyond being ‘receivers’ of policy to assume a more active policy role. This paper argues that school leaders are very powerful in their capacity to enact policy to ensure strategic access to appropriate on-going learning opportunities to support early career teachers.

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Keywords:	Policy enactment; Early career teachers; Teacher induction; School leadership
Research Division:	Education
Research Group:	Specialist studies in education
Research Field:	Educational administration, management and leadership
Objective Division:	Education and Training
Objective Group:	Schools and learning environments
Objective Field:	Policies and development
UTAS Author:	Morrison, CM (Dr Chad Morrison)
ID Code:	111377
Year Published:	2014
Web of Science® Times Cited:	7
Deposited By:	Education
Deposited On:	2016-09-09
Last Modified:	2018-07-04
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