Recruiting New Teachers for the BFC

It seems that initially the MFL department was not in favour of the creation of the BFC. Therefore, in order to implement the BFC, the school had to recruit new teachers:

[...] we were very likely to get high quality staff providing we advertised it well which we did and didn't apologise for it, didn't contain an apology in the advert 'Sorry, you've got to acmally teach this way', but acmally made it the focal point of the advert.

Yeah, by advertising it that way I think it was almost certain that we'd get a very strong team. And, err, the sort of school we had was one that was open to new ideas and therefore would accept a group of teachers like that. At another school that group of teachers, with lots of new ideas, very radical in a variety of ways, you might well have ended up being sidelined by the rest of the staff But I don't think that happened.

As a result of the advertising process, the school recruited three new members of staff I was one of the new members of staff teaching half a timetable, i.e. teaching one out of three Year 7 BFC classes.

As described previously, the headteacher managed to convince the departments who would be affected by the implementation of the BFC of its usefulness. He also managed to exclude the MFL department to a certain extent from the decision making process, as he was aware of the MFL department's resistance to change. The headteacher then proceeded with recruiting new members of staff for the BFC. All of these new teachers were not only new teachers to the school, but NQTs:

I think we interviewed someone who was already a head of department, head of French, although she withdrew, so, no, it wasn't with any intention [that we engaged 3 NQTs], but because of the vast majority of applications because it was a two-year contract. So, it's not surprising that the vast majority of applicants were NQTs. But that's good. Because they had no preconceptions which other people would. And therefore providing much more of a challenge to our existing staff in languages as well. 1 think that was ... we also picked people who had quite strong personalities and would not be muzzled by the languages team. And we also kept them somewhat apart. you remember that first year, 1 was managing the team and I had meetings with the team on their own. And the languages faculty had their team meetings. And some of the staff would attend both, but I was consciously trying to ensure that this was not held, was not managed by the language department.

In this interview excerpt, he points out a number of issues related to the choice of

• He recruited teachers with 'no preconceptions.' This statement is related to the context of the existing MFL department that was not willing to change its practices. Therefore, the newly recruited teachers needed 'no preconceptions' in the sense that they would not be concerned so much about the content of the BFC lessons not fitting exactiy the existing scheme of work for French. At the same time, the newly recruited teachers had to have some very strong

'preconceptions' about teaching content in French as they were aware of the amount of work involved in delivering content-based lessons mainly in French and creating all the materials needed from scratch.

• The headteacher also mentions that he used the newly recruited teachers as a means to 'challenge' the existing practices in the MFL department. The term 'challenge' is crucial here, as it comes up on various levels that I explore in some detail in later sections (and especially so in Part 4) when focusing on my classroom.

• Also, in relation to the MFL team, the headteacher points out that 'we also picked people who had quite strong personalities and would not be muzzled by the languages team.' Again, it becomes clear how he used the new members of staff as a means to improve existing practice in the MFL department.

• And finally, he created a space for the newly recruited teachers to develop teaching and learning in the BFC when he describes that 'we also kept them somewhat apart, if you remember that first year, I was managing the team and I had meetings with the team on their own. And the languages faculty had their team meetings. And some of the staff would attend both, but I was consciously trying to ensure that this was not held, was not managed by the language department.' The space that he created was a space not only provided by him, but also managed by himself.

The headteacher himself had some strong 'preconceptions' about the BFC. He wanted to ensure the successful implementation of the BFC. He agrees with this when stating that '1 was the driving force in the first 6 months to a year.' At the same time, he describes the BFC as 'building up its own momentum' referring to the members of staff involved in teaching in the BFC.

I have described so far the implementation process of the BFC. order to narrow down my research focus further I discuss in the following sections the benefits of the BFC as perceived by the headteacher who initiated the creation of the BFC with the support of the departments affected directiy by its creation and without the initial

support of the MFL department. First, 1 consider benefits for the school and for individual departments. Second, I discuss benefits for the teachers.