This paper reports the findings of a study on the lived experiences of UNE graduates from a range of Primary and Secondary initial teacher education programmes who are employed as casual beginning teachers. Data were gathered through telephone interviews and analysed using the relatively new qualitative data software called Leximancer (Smith, 2007).

In 2005 the UNE Education Alumni Support Project provided online support for UNEgraduand and later graduate beginning teachers as they commenced their careers.Beginning teachers may find full-time work as permanent or contract workers, or,part-time employment as casual, relief or support teachers. EdASP was not designedto take the place of any support structures presently in place for beginning teachersbut rather to supplement these.We were aware that many beginning teachers did not get the support that theyneeded. We were aware that UNE graduates were relatively more likely to go intomarginal settings such as rural and isolated schools and also into hard-to-staff schoolsperhaps necessitating extra support. We also knew that UNE internal and externalgraduates were very familiar with online work and specifically knew how to usediscussion fora based on WebCT software. Our main motivation to develop theproject was to see if beginning teachers could be supported online.