1 Introduction

In The Netherlands, primary school teachers are educated at colleges of higher vocational education. Student-teachers are challenged to develop into self-directed, reflective professionals during their education. During their four-year bachelor education, student-teachers gain experience in regular primary and primary schools for children with special needs, in groups 4–8 year olds (grades 1–4) and in groups 9–12 year olds (grades 5–8). Student-teachers can do internships in primary schools, which organise education according to religious visions (Protestant-Christian, Catholic, Islam, public), philosophical visions, or educational philosophy (Montessori, Steiner, Parkhurst, Petersen). Student-teachers are also encouraged to gain experience in schools in major cities, with pupils from various migration backgrounds [63]. Professional standards and performance indicators describe overall standards regarding classroom activities, collaborating with colleagues, the professional environment, and teachers’ professional development. The teacher education curricula of the last two decades have emphasised the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that teachers need in teaching the subjects of the primary school curriculum [21, 33].

However, this formal organisation of education and teacher education does not seem to be in sync with the social appreciation attributed to education and the teaching profession. Due to educational expansion since the 1960s, Dutch society has changed from a mainly Christian society to a mainly secular society. Individualisation reinforced secularisation, parallelling the decline of institutional Christianity. In addition to the crumbling of Christian religious communities and their church buildings, further de-pillarisation has occurred in media, education, and spiritual care [46]. Individualisation has led to a strong focus in education policy on student learning [41]. It is less and less about the relationship between teacher and pupils and the pedagogical task that the teacher—based on that relationship—faces, but increasingly only about the learning pupil and the learning outcomes to be produced by him or her [10].

During induction, the mentoring and post-initial courses focus primarily on improving competence concerning problem-solving in classroom management and the didactics of specific subjects of the primary school curriculum [34, 61]. This focus narrows down the possibility of evaluating the social-ethical aspects of the teaching experiences and biographic perspectives written down in the personal stories associated with them [19, 20, 23, 24, 42]. The narrowed concept of reflection strongly influences the didactics used during induction, according to which teachers gradually should learn to think systematically and analyse logical and rational teaching environments [44, 45, 58]. The problem-centered approach focuses on the struggle to bridge the theory-practice gap that each novice needs to go through, dependent on personal skills and qualities like self-efficacy and feelings of self-worth [6, 11, 30, 39, 50].

The task of education is thus increasingly understood as the effective and efficient production of predefined learning outcomes in a limited number of subjects and concerning a limited number of identities, such as that of 'the flexible citizen', ‘the economically successful citizen', or ‘the effective lifelong learner’[8]. At the same time, teachers are confronted with social problems (multicultural social cohesion, inequality of opportunity, emancipation, lack of ambiguity tolerance in common public debate (origin, gender, relationship types, authority problems, and approaches to climate change). These social problems appeal to teachers’ relationship with pupils and pupils’ parents in a way that, under educational policy, is little or not developed in teacher training [41, 62].

Increasingly, it has become more prominent in the attention of teacher educators, mentors and teachers themselves that professional development involves overcoming the ‘technical’ problems and coping with issues related to sociocultural frictions in school [5, 8, 13, 51]. During the induction, many novice teachers become aware of the personal stress and frustrations related to issues among pupils or between teacher and pupils, or issues about handling parents’ (over-) caring, the shared responsibility in pupils’ upbringing and discrepancies between teachers’ beliefs and imposed protocols. However, in support of novice teachers, more attention to the micropolitical aspects of being a school community member only occurs when problems arise [42, 57, 61].

We believe that the support of novice teachers’ professional development should not be focused only on problem-solving and reflective skills and the ‘technical’ problems that have arisen. Novice teachers’ professional development should also be based on problem-finding about issues novices are concerned with because of the developed image of teaching, the job expectations, the initial experiences, and the sociocultural aspects of the many communication situations in which they participate. Novice teachers should, therefore, also learn to move beyond reflection [25]. They should practice reflexive skills by developing their self-awareness, the ability to question their attitudes, theories-in-use, values, assumptions, prejudices and habitual actions and understanding of their complex roles concerning others [12, 14, 53]. We promote that at the intersection of Dialogical Self Theory and ethics, professional language can be used as a teacher's jargon to make teachers more aware of the moral implications of their work and provide a framework for reflexivity and discussion [28, 37]. Professional development should focus on finding one’s way of teaching that fits and feels like the right thing to do, revealing what good teaching should be [47, 58]. The reflexive stance toward practice involves a critical approach to the classroom experiences and the tensions and interactions between our ‘private’ and ‘professional’ stories, including understanding why we experience things the way we do [54, 55]. It involves making meaning of one’s daily routines at work, getting involved morally and exploring the opportunities for professional learning caused by unexpected experiences and the diversity of beliefs that novices come across in their work [8, 28, 47].

The following two paragraphs will introduce the theoretical framework for constructing the interview protocol and the data analysis procedure. Subsequently, the research question, method, results and conclusion are presented.

2 The theoretical framework

2.1 Reflexivity of the inner moral dialogues

Narrating about the experienced disequilibria that emerge during initial practice seems essential to cope with the unexpected in teaching practice [18, 22]. Teachers’ awareness of why they act as they do, why their chosen actions are appropriate, valuable or significant and how this influences the extent to which they develop their practical knowledge can widen and deepen the novices’ action repertoire [7, 16, 23, 43, 54]. Teaching novices how to ask ‘slow questions’ [48] about why teachers act as they do refers to the moral aspects of being a teacher. In Dialogical Self Theory, inner dialogues cause and support the process of meaning-making by which a person tries to cope with the reciprocity of personal and situational aspects of a person’s beliefs, underlying values and norms in private life and work. By inner speech—internal dialogue—a person tries to understand the relationship between the Self and the social, cultural, historical and institutional contexts in which the person lives so-called Other [37]. The dialogical frame of morality to understand the necessity of moral involvement to become a teacher professional is explained in earlier articles [26,27,28]. Reflexive narrating helps teachers understand themselves, their practical teaching knowledge, and their moral choices. It helps them agree with themselves about their choices and what they want to make, appropriate to how they want to tune their choices to the sociocultural and discursive forces they experience [5, 17]. Narrating becomes reflexive when it expresses an internal dialogue to understand and evaluate the multiple perspectives of the individual and the social context, and it expresses to maintain or change courses of action based on this dialogue [3, 54]. The inner considerations relate to questions concerning the thoughts, feelings, morals and actions of others and the awareness of differences in thoughts, feelings, morals and deeds compared to their own [2, 15, 23, 40, 52, 56, 65]. Novice teachers (re-)construct personal stories of morality and a manner to communicate about morality to achieve a shared moral consciousness that fits their practical knowledge [18, 23].

2.2 Ethical constructs

Dialogical Self Theory researchers have raised social issues such as democracy, racism, and sexism, but not necessarily related to contemporary ethical theories [38]. In our published framework of Moral Involvement [27], we clarified how inner dialogue about yourself and being different from others takes place and how choices about what the right thing to do in a current situation occur. Personal stories of moral involvement are influenced by shared stories about moral themes expressed by other people, cultures, and formal ethics theories [28, 38]. To typify the personal moral stories that are part of making meaning, we elaborated on the five ethical constructs distinguished in ethical theory to typify possible morally durable points of view regarding adherence to principles, joint interest, and self-interest [64].

Through personal stories of moral involvement, (novice) teachers balance conventional morals concerning the obligation to equity, rules and norms addressed by society, culture and school organisations(1). They try to cope with dilemmas involving conflicts of equity and different rules and norms (2). Concerning post-conventional morals that advocate joint interest, (novice) teachers try to align common equity, rules and norms and the possibilities of work conditions (3). Concerning the personally-centred morals that promote self-interest, (novice) teachers try to balance personal moral concerns (4) and practical concerns (5) [59]. We have used the five constructs to prepare the interview protocol and prepare the eliciting questions, as shown in Table 2, to discuss teachers’ moral meaning-making,

3 Research question

This study explores novice teachers’ personal stories of morality during their induction. Discussing their practical experiences, we challenge them to explicate the moral choices inextricably linked with their practical experiences.

Two research questions were leading:

  1. 1.

    Which moral themes become visible in novice teachers’ narratives about their work with pupils, colleagues, the professional environment, and professional development?

  2. 2.

    How do novice teachers express their reflexivity in narrating the disbalances generated by unexpected experiences during their initial practice?

4 Method

We conducted semi-structured interviews, which were subsequently processed into verbatim transcripts and analysed in a grounded manner [31]. By trying to shape our research groundedly, we want to focus on novice teachers’ perspectives and provide them with opportunities to articulate their thoughts about important issues, allowing them to reflect on these issues of concern to gain understanding and acquire new insights [32]. The analyses of the verbatim transcripts resulted in a list of moral themes and narrative insights into how novice teachers described how they experienced and handled the destabilising aspects of their initial practice.

4.1 Participants

To recruit novice teachers, we emailed teachers working in primary education. We asked management or induction coaches of the schools where these teachers were employed to recommend participation in the research. Nineteen novice teachers who have worked in primary education for no longer than four years participated in semi-structured interviews about responsibility, concerns, and work demands. Table 1 shows the demographic characteristics of the nineteen participants.

Table 1 Demographic characteristics of the participants
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4.2 The interview

We carefully prepared an interviewing approach that would justify our awareness that two kinds of moral standards about adherence to principles, joint interest and self-interest, are present during the interview: the interviewer’s and interviewee’s moral standards. We structured each interview according to a set pattern: an introduction part, a part concerning eliciting questions about working with pupils, a part about colleagues, about the participants in the professional context (e.g., parents and other professionals), and on their professional development (the four typical contexts). Table 2 shows examples of the eliciting questions. The final part of the interview concluded with a question concerning how the teacher had felt about the interview. Also, the interviewer explained that the questions asked, precisely the questions about the why, provide insight into the moral aspects of teaching. The interviewer clarified that the recorded interview would be transcribed and analysed in the context of the quest of moral aspects of teaching. After informing the interviewee of the focus of the analysis, the interviewer asked a final question whether the participant still agreed that the transcript could be used for publications. To appeal to interviewees’ reflexivity and morality, each session concerning a typical context started with a standard open question: ‘Which issues with regards to responsibility, concerns (cares) you have felt or demands that others have imposed on you or that you have imposed on others, can you recall from the previous period?’ Depending on the answers, we posed follow-up questions to elicit further clarification or explanation. In this manner, we introduced and discussed the moral dimension of teachers’ work without indicating to the interviewee that the interview was about morality but, at the same time, optimal challenge the interviewee to react reflexively.

Table 2 Eliciting questions
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The conversation that arose in this manner challenged the interviewee to explicate the inner dialogues about his/her experiences and subsequently reflect on the external dialogues more propositionally [35]. We conducted and recorded all interviews in half a year and then orthographically transcribed them.

4.3 Data analysis

We conducted a mixed-method approach to analyse the obtained transcripts in three steps. Using NVivo-10 software, we encoded the verbatim transcripts according to how the questions were asked (open or eliciting questions) and how the interviewee answered the eliciting questions (yes/no; giving a reflective comment; giving a reflexive comment). Subsequently, we encoded the four contexts of teaching: The issues brought up by the interviewees, themes of the interviewee’s narratives, categories of themes and the five distinct moral constructs of the hybrid moral atmosphere.

The first step of the analysis concerned encoding the interview transcripts. We used a grounded theory approach for encoding these themes [31], resulting in an iterative, inductive manner of generating epitomes. Based on the criteria from critical thinking to formulate propositions, we formulated phrases in a declarative, simple and compound manner consisting of literal, concise and unambiguous language to classify the themes [60]. The coding procedure for generating the epitomes was tested to ensure the quality standards of visibility, comprehensibility, and acceptability [1]. The epitomes express the core ideas the encoder recognises in the paragraphs of the transcripts and are formulated in a declarative and compound manner, consisting of literal, concise and unambiguous language.

The second step of the analysis involved an overview of the encoded epitomes. We conducted a quantitative analysis (using Excel and NVivo) to identify and highlight the main results, followed by a qualitative analysis of the transcripts. The units of analysis for this step were the ‘moral themes,’ as described by the subnodes in the lowest category (i.e., the phrases). Table 3 shows an example of the encoding and categorising of the epitomes. We organised the quantifiable attributes in an Excel datasheet.

Table 3 Example of Encoding Epitomes
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The third step of the analysis involved performing qualitative analysis to gain insight into how novice teachers express unexpected experiences during their initial practice. The units of analysis for this step were the transcribed narratives of the novice teachers, which we examined for epitomes expressing the experience of the destabilising experiences. To navigate the transcripts, we used a Matrix Coding Query in NVivo to relate the coded phrases to the four typical contexts and reflective or reflexive remarks.

5 Results

5.1 Moral themes

The analyses of the 19 transcripts first revealed an image of everyday school life. The novice teachers told stories, often quoting themselves like articulating a play’s script, to describe specific issues and the individuals involved. They often formulated their reasons for mentioning that particular issue, reflected on it and stated their opinions. An initial exploratory analysis of the transcripts yielded limited practical matters. The grounded approach encoding 1014 epitomes in the transcripts gave an overview of 531 epitomes, classified into 53 subcategories and 18 main categories of moral themes, shown in Table 4. In all four typical contexts, the well-being of pupils was discussed as a priority of their concern, followed by the importance of Self-assertiveness, imposing high demands on themselves, and the pressure to prove their qualifications while feeling uncertain about their skills. They also discussed their roles within the school. The novice teachers reported coping with aggressive verbal abuse in all contexts: with pupils, colleagues, collaborative professionals from outside the school organisation, and parents. According to the interviewees, gossip only concerned colleagues, and narratives about discrimination concerned only situations involving children. Analysis of the frequency of epitomes revealed a ranking of main categories and an overall ranking of the ten most commonly used phrases encoded in the narratives of novice teachers. The frequency of epitomes revealed that the interviewees mainly discussed their educational pedagogic performance and their emotions and judgments concerning their work with pupils. The three most common themes about colleagues were judgments about their colleagues, novice teachers’ feelings, and collegial collaboration and support. In working with parents, out-of-school experts, and professional development, narratives about emotions were most common, followed by judgments and statements about truthfulness. Following this global analysis, we examined the narratives concerning statements about destabilising aspects.

Table 4 Main categories of moral themes
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5.2 Reflexive practice

We examined how novice teachers reflexively express their unexpected experiences in their initial practice according to the five ethical constructs described in our theoretical framework. The epitomes outline the approach in which novice teachers expressed the destabilising aspects more reflectively or reflexively.

5.2.1 Epitomes about obligations towards equity, rules, and norms

In their statements expressing judgements, whether spontaneous or in response to eliciting questions or requests to clarify or explain, the novice teachers primarily elucidated what they regarded necessary for the development of their pupils. They continued with comments about colleagues and statements about themselves. Although the statements are often positively formulated, they express matters that kept or keep them effortfully concerned.

Concerning pupils: ‘I feel responsible for doing good, good for the kids. They have to feel okay and at home in the group; if that is not the case, something is wrong (Interviewee 07).

Concerning colleagues: ‘I think every colleague is different towards children or colleagues. I believe that is always the case in any job. I do not say that is always for the best, but every person should be able to be themselves in their jobs’(Int. 06).

Concerning themselves: ‘Well, I thought it is funny to notice how important I think it is, that you can do lots of things, as long as you stick to your beliefs’ (Int. 15).

The narratives included reflexive remarks about matters they disapproved of, particularly the behaviour of parents or issues that their pupils were facing at home. Concerning parents: ‘I have noticed that parents initially easily persuaded me. I wanted to be popular. I learned that I must make my stand and that it is up to a parent to cope. I found out that parents talk a lot amongst themselves about us teachers, and not always in a positive way. At first, I found that difficult to cope with, and I worried about it. Now I am over it.’ (Int. 05).

Concerning home: ‘I think pupils at our school are spoiled by their parents.’ ‘I teach nine-year-old children, and what strikes me is that many children already have socio-emotional problems. I wonder, how can it be that young kids already have problems with who they are? They already have a lack of self-esteem. Is it due to factors at home? Are children at home forced to set the bar too high?’ (Int. 09).

The eliciting questions, intended to open issues for discussion and challenge the interviewees to express judgments about themselves, colleagues, parents and pupils, resulted in statements in which the interviewees gave reflexive, reasoned comments supported by examples of such issues.

Reflexive comment: ‘Do I think colleagues are incompetent? Um, well, no. Sure, mistakes are being made. I, myself, make mistakes. Nobody is perfect, but I do not think that makes you incompetent’ (Int. 15).

Example: ‘Well, for instance, we have a colleague who is my coworker, and (starts whispering) she is troubled by obesity (stops whispering), and she uses a small desktop bell to get pupils quiet. So, when pupils make too much noise, she goes ‘ding-ding’ on that bell, and (starts whispering again) I think she is heading towards burnout (stops whispering). She should take some time for herself but cannot because she is so agitated. I think she might harm the pupils too, in this way.’ (Int. 16).

The retrospective comment mentioned above expresses reasoning about when a teacher is incompetent without discussing the propositions that are part of the reasoning. There is the proposition that it is reasonable to think that everybody makes mistakes when you make mistakes. Moreover, the proposition is that making mistakes does not make someone incompetent. These propositions show that the interviewee has her idea of standards concerning teachers’ work. The whispering about the assumed emotions about obesity also expresses a proposition that values obesity.

5.2.2 Epitomes about dilemmas about conflicts of equity, conflicting rules, and norms

When novice teachers express their emotions (see Table 4. no. 1), they often report feeling powerless towards pupils, parents, and colleagues. They reported being uncertain about their approaches and having experienced frustration that the approaches they had been advised to use by the special-needs supervisor did not often produce the desired results. Depending on the context, the uncertainty arises in different ways. Concerning pupils, many novice teachers spoke about feeling powerless and frustrated because of school protocols and procedures, which fell short in finding and handling the proper support the pupils needed. Alternatively, they felt powerless because they did not know which competencies and techniques to help the pupils with their problems. The following comments demonstrate that novice teachers’ primary concerns are focused on the pupils’ well-being.

Procedures: ‘I felt like, ‘Guys, come on! I know how harmful it is. I did a combination job; I worked in a Special primary school for two days and three days in a regular primary school. I was there: I saw what happens when a child is placed in special education too late and arrives damaged. I thought: Why can’t our procedures ensure the kid is moved in time?’ (Int. 09).

Competence and skills: ‘Well, when a child gets so furious, whatever you say, it does not change his behaviour. I could not get him to relax. The one thing I could do is hold him and prevent him from hurting himself and others. Alternatively, sometimes, because of a quarrel with another kid or just because something was said, a child turns inward, and you cannot connect anymore.’ (Int. 09).

5.2.3 Epitomes about the alignment of equity, rules and norms and work conditions

The expression of novice teachers’ emotions in contexts with colleagues and other adult participants (see Table 4. no. 1) focused on novice teachers’ well-being. They found it challenging to deal with colleagues who do not commit to agreements or who manipulate other team members by imposing opinions and emotions. Moreover, novice teachers spoke about their wobbling because of ‘what others may think of them.'

No commitment to team agreements: ‘When we have a meeting, there is a colleague who is always late and other colleagues, who ensure they are on time, get irritated and make remarks about it or when the latecomer is present, colleagues are curtly towards him, and I do not feel comfortable in this situation.’ (Int. 05).

Obstreperous colleagues: ‘I cannot stand colleagues trying to dominate the discussion by making loose comments or boisterously expressing extreme emotions. That sort of behaviour is the opposite of who I am. I just cannot respond. I feel like I shrink back and think, never mind.’ (Int. 09).

Dreaded feedback: ‘Parents—they are already on top and have many experiences, and I have just started being a teacher. I wondered: Will they wonder why I was hired? I felt that pressure to prove why I got the teaching position. I was uncertain of myself: Do I comply with the expectations, or will my contract not be extended?’ (Int. 06).

Narratives discussing interaction in the classroom (see Table 4. no. 3) expressed disequilibria about the successfulness of novice teachers’ relationship with their pupils and classroom issues and focused on fulfilling the care and well-being their pupils deserve to receive. The interests of the pupils are paramount. Themes like discriminating behaviour, privacy, truthfulness, rules and coercion, raised by the eliciting questions, seemed absent as issues that make them imbalanced. Many novice teachers regarded coercion as a distinct pedagogical tool to be used in daily practice to accomplish their task of ‘teaching pupils to behave,' adding that a degree of tact was needed for such coercion to succeed. The attention to these themes, by asking the eliciting questions which made them reason about it, and by using the specific words in our eliciting questions seemed to give them new perspectives.

Coercion: ‘Whether I would force a pupil? Naturally, pupils need something to do, tasks they do not want to do, but I do not classify that as me using coercion. I think coercion is intimidating someone to do something. I associate coercion with violence. In my classroom, pupils need to do tasks, but that is more of commitment, a class obligation they must fulfil.’ (Int. 11).

5.2.4 Epitomes about personal moral concerns

Many novice teachers indicated that they felt uncertain about tackling extremely confrontational behaviour on the part of parents (see Table 4. No. 13). These experiences were nasty, unexpected ‘tidal waves’ for most novice teachers.

Obstreperous parents: ‘Well, last year, one morning, I stood at the classroom door talking to some parents. Then, a parent of one of my pupils came up to me and started emotionally yelling at me that I had not given sufficient support to her kid all year, all in the presence of the other parents. I just stood there and listened to her. She ran out of anger and then left in tears at one point. I think it was not a personal attack, but how she expressed her worries about her kid, and with the other parents standing there, I felt like it was a knock-back.’ (Int. 05).

Novice teachers explained the importance of being truthful to parents in their reports about pupils’ progress but noted that they had learned to be tactful. About collegial consultation, they believed that ‘not all colleagues present themselves honestly’ and that ‘issues often are explained incompletely, to avoid confrontation'. Concerning deliberations with parents, they tactfully stated that ‘parents can have different viewpoints about the same issue, making ‘differences of opinion about the truth unavoidable.'

Tact: ‘I try to be honest about what I see and experience as far as possible. Sometimes, you need to be more explicit than usual to make progress in convincing them [parents]. For example, to get permission to do additional tests on their kid, you must stress its importance and focus on their child’s good results.’ (Int. 02).

Incompleteness: ’Um, I am working here temporarily because a teacher is ill, but I will probably stay until the summer. I think my colleagues are truthful, but they leave out things that I do not need to know according to them. The other team members have already known each other for quite some time. I can imagine that there are things they believe I do not need to know. It does not bother me.’ (Int. 15).

5.2.5 Epitomes about personal, practical concerns

They also expressed uncertainty about their abilities. They felt that their teacher training had not sufficiently prepared them to deal with issues at school, noting that they mainly had learned the hard way but did not blame themselves for their imperfections.

Induction: ‘I noticed you are thrown in at the deep end. It would be best if you asked your colleagues many things. When you have just finished teacher education, you have all that baggage of knowledge, but you must put it into practice. That is a major switch, which is challenging, and there are many novice teachers, at least from what I have heard, for whom the switch to practice is still very complicated. How do you give instructions to a small group around one table? How do you arrange pupils so that they work independently? How do you prepare to teach the pupils to do that successfully?’ (Int. 09).

No blame: ‘I wish that all pupils never had to deal with a novice teacher who needs to try out so many things to try and try again. Um, just like I also undoubtedly need to ……. I am not so worried about that. I know I am a novice teacher. I cannot know everything; I cannot do everything. I try to do my best, but sometimes I deliberately use my novice status as a trump card to get something done.’ (Int. 18).

6 Conclusion and discussion

This study aimed to discern the moral themes in the reflexive inner dialogues of novice teachers about their encounters with destabilising factors during their initial practice. The reflexive approach applied in this study has been the starting point for developing that questionnaire to rethink and narrate reflexively on (novice) teachers’ personal stories of morality [29].

The way the novice teachers discussed themes that they believed caused disequilibria showed that the reciprocity of explicit inner dialogues and reflexivity is characteristic of how teachers cope with the events in their work. In their personal stories of moral involvement, novice teachers start expressing their emotions, opinions and values to continue comparing and weighing these on the formal frameworks of their work. The alternation of involvement and distanciation is notable for how the interviewees told us about their emotions and judgements and how they weighed up their thoughts compared to what their colleagues believe and do about the issues. It looks like when novices are given the time to discuss their educational practice reflexively and what motivates them to make their choices, they dare to step slow down to explore a broader perspective [26]. Research on reflective versus reflexive practice emphasises how teaching practice influences teachers' epistemic cognition. We promote the desire for teacher education to educate more consciously about reflective versus reflexive practice and challenge student-teachers to combine problem-solving and problem-finding [25].

The analysis shows that the interviewees primarily express their involvement reflexively: the care for their pupils, their worries about their success in work, and their puzzling or sometimes frustrations about school protocols. In novices’ retrospections about their professional development, they expressed that they learn most from their experiences with their pupils about the micro-process in the classroom and the micro-politics of school from their colleagues. Discussions with colleagues and other professionals are more often recalled than discussions with their pupils. However, novices' reflexive statements about their pupils' educational needs revealed that novices disagree with pupils but consider these conversations part of their pedagogical task and do not feel the discomfort they feel in discussions between colleagues and other participants in the professional context. We believe that the focus on problem-solving in induction, as mentioned in the introduction, consolidates the discomfort's demoralising effect. When novice teachers gain more confidence in problem-finding with their colleagues, the uncertainty can move from dread to the gift of uncertainty, as Hermans and Hermans Konopka have cited, and the dialogue becomes navigating the uncertainty [36].

To investigate which moral themes occupy novice teachers, we started the interviews with the open question: ‘Which issues with regards to responsibility, concerns (cares) you have felt or demands that others have imposed on you or that you have imposed on others, can you recall from the previous period?’. Table 4 shows the overview of themes. As expected, very few themes involved common themes of citizenship that are part of the Dutch school curriculum (e.g., crime, tolerance, discrimination). These themes were only discussed in response to the eliciting questions. The involvement of novice teachers with societal issues does not unbalance and discomfort them in their teaching. As a result of the open question, no interviewee saw any reason to make critical remarks about parts of the curriculum or the didactics they used at their school. It raises the question of how teachers' initial education, which focuses so much on reflection and problem-solving, influences the need to discuss regular teacher work when there are no current problems.

In the second part of the analysis of the transcripts, we recognised temporal, contextual, and theatrical dimensions in the expressions of disequilibria that occurred because of the comparison of how things were, are, and can be or should be. Imbalances about issues became prominent depending on the context. For example, not telling the truth is reprehensible towards pupils, but it is less of an issue when the teachers discuss the tactics to bring bad news to, e.g., parents. Imbalances also seem to be experienced depending on who has a role in the retrospected situation. Whether the actors are children, colleagues, members of management, or parents seems to matter because of the impact and intensity of the disequilibria. Pupils as actors mainly created imbalances concerning care and responsibility. However, adults as actors created imbalances about incomprehension, frustration, and more or less criticism. Gaining experience during teachers’ initial education in discussing teaching practice from a problem-finding perspective will help teachers understand their work's complexity so that they may approach their task with more knowledge about that complexity but with less discomfort [4].

The reflexive stories of the novice teachers showed us how they handled their inner dialogues [38], interpreted the retrospective situations and expressed their retrospective justifications about their moral involvement [28]. In this manner, the novices told us a parallel story about the novices’ intentions, appropriation, and sense of responsibility. Their explicating narratives expressed their dedication to and enthusiasm about ‘running their classes' and participating in school events. Cooperation with colleagues and parents to make successful school events was evident to novice teachers, but the classroom work was less isolated than they expected it would be. The proper execution of the primary task (i.e., teaching the pupils) required much consultation with colleagues (particularly the special-needs supervisor) and the parents of the pupils. This intensity of cooperation requires the teacher to constantly sense and weigh the unspoken moral presuppositions of what the others indicate and what they assume to hear [38]. Scores in the top three categories of themes we mapped (Table 4) illustrate that the necessary cooperation disrupted novice teachers’ balance and frequently made them imbalanced and invigorated their worries about thoughts and opinions that others have about their work.

Novice teachers found it frustrating that the ‘tricks-of-the-trade’ they were advised of, and protocols they were expected to follow often differed from what they believed they needed to do and what they saw colleagues do. Novice teachers felt compelled to take over and execute the supervisors’ tricks of the trade, even if it felt uncomfortable. In the latter case, distanciation was embraced and turned into involvement to cope with the imbalances they experienced. The challenge made them aware of the necessity to reconsider their concepts of good teaching, as crystallised from past experiences and their teacher education. However, going beyond the given school practices was not explored.

The novices also expressed their astonishment about malfunctioning procedures, the absence of commitment to team agreements, or the imposition of extreme emotions by colleagues or parents. These seemed to be accepted in school culture. The expressions of imbalances about alignments of equity, rules and norms, and work conditions corresponded with the imbalances in their personal moral and practical concerns. Novice teachers believe the discomfort of these experiences and the effort to understand these micro-politics is part of their induction and should not be considered an indication of inferior teaching quality. Colleagues, parents, or the school management could hold them accountable.

The remarks in the last three paragraphs above make it prominent that novice teachers should learn to be aware of the normative involvement to cope with the interplexity of professional work, characterised by making tradeoffs between the different perspectives of normativity and the contradictions that occur when considering the various angles of normativity[48].

The study presented the findings of moral themes in novice teachers’ narrative and reflexive thinking about their initial teaching experiences and the personal stories of moral involvement [28, 48]. The shared retrospective considerations give a different perspective on the induction of novice teachers. This different perspective leads us to a different way of conceptualising novice induction: professional development is more based on reflexive problem-finding. At the same time, we are aware that the results should be considered from the perspective of the constraints of the Dutch context, in which political and social tensions about work stress, payment and social status of the teaching profession are prominent in the public debate. During the interviews, it became prominent that the interviewees found it surprising that reflexive thinking about the personal stories of moral involvement allowed them to think positively about uncomfortable experiences in their work [26, 28, 38].

The presented findings show that professional conversations in which explicating inner dialogues and reflexive thinking alternate support novice teachers’ professional development. The current focus on improving didactic skills in language and reading instruction (technical competencies) should not be at odds with attention to 'slow questions' and the moral aspects of issues the teacher must address in education. The initial training of teachers should also teach how the moral choices of society are reflected in work materials for language and arithmetic and how they can be discussed [9, 47]. Discussing personal stories of moral involvement, considerations concerning emotions and judgements towards pupils and colleagues seem supportive of handling the unexpected destabilising experiences for professional learning. In initial teacher training and in-service training activities, (novice) teachers should be trained to improve their critical thinking skills to better express their positions on issues and thus become more resilient in their profession [49, 54].

Novice teachers who understand the interchange of involvement and distanciation and can tailor their moral involvement accordingly will be more competent in making their sense of teaching and, simultaneously, teach in a way that fits in with what others expect of them.