Bertram, Carol Anne.Ncayiyana, Bayanda Thembokuhle.2023-09-072023-09-0720222022https://researchspace.ukzn.ac.za/handle/10413/22231Masters Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg.The development and support provided to novice teachers is of paramount importance for the provision and maintenance of quality education and bringing about educational reform. Therefore, the training of new teachers created a need for effective professional development programmes for these new teachers when they get to schools. The objective of this research study was to explore how novice teachers experienced induction in schools. The study was underpinned by a theoretical and a conceptual framework namely: Lave and Wenger’s (1991) Situated Learning Theory and Langdon’s (2011) Enabling Factors that Support Induction. The research study was located within the pragmatic paradigm and adopted the mixed methods approach. The participants were 58 University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) Post Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) students from the Pietermaritzburg campus who graduated in 2018. Two data generation methods were employed, namely, Google Form surveys, and semi-structured interviews. Google Form surveys were used to generate quantitative data and semi-structured interviews were used to generate qualitative data. A snowball sampling method was used to locate 130 novice teachers and a Google Form survey link was sent to all of them via WhatsApp, 6 novice teachers were purposefully selected to participate in the semi-structured interviews. Findings revealed that; 1. Most participants said that their schools did not have proper planned induction programmes for novice teachers, 2. Induction policies as stipulated in Department of Education documents were not properly implemented in schools and no follow up was done by the DoE on how induction of novice teachers was implemented in schools, 3. The time of the year which novice teachers were hired influenced the kind of induction support which they received. From these findings it was recommended that the DoE reexamine its induction policies and how these policies are implemented in schools and to allow specific time in schools for school managers to implement these policies. Furthermore, it was recommended that school management teams develop induction programmes that directly support the needs of each and every novice teacher.enTeacher development.Professional learning.Professional development programmes--Teaching.Thesis