The BEST site on the internet: An online resource for beginning and establishing successful teachers

Beginning teachers face enormous challenges in their first year of teaching. High attrition rates of teachers within the first five years attest to the difficulties inherent in commencing professional life as a teacher. This paper describes the design, development and evaluation of a website designed to relieve many of the problems of professional isolation encountered by beginning teachers. The website allows new teachers, and preservice teachers on school practice, to communicate with each other and expert teacher mentors through discussion boards, and provides access to a range of resources including lesson plans, annotated lists of useful websites, weblogs, wikis and frequently asked questions. The paper describes the theoretical foundations of the approach, the features of the site in detail and the plan for effectiveness evaluation of the site.