Beginning teachers: An AARE response

Beginning teachers face numerous challenges upon entering the profession. These challenges have been the subject of considerable research, as well as national and state government reports and policy, and numerous specialised programs including mentoring and online support networks and initiatives. This paper attempts to consolidate some of this research by reviewing a span of papers published through the Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE). Specifically, it provides a meta-analysis of conference papers and Australian Educational Researcher (AER) journal articles from the past 16 years (from 1994 to 2010), to identify trends in relation to the researcher (university affiliation and gender) scope of research methodology (length and type of study), forms of data collection and analyses, and participants in this research, with particular attention to gender and school teaching sector.