Becoming a teacher: the identity construction experiences of beginning English language teachers in Hong Kong

Debate over educational reform in many countries has addressed the question of how to attract and retain teachers. As part of a multiple case study that includes eight beginning English language teachers in Hong Kong, this paper offers an in-depth analysis of the experiences of two participants, Christine and Samuel, during their initial year of full time teaching in Hong Kong schools. The data, collected during an entire academic year, suggests that Christine used her experiences of becoming a teacher to justify and reaffirm her determination to pursue a career within English language teaching. In contrast, Samuel??s preliminary year of full-time teaching culminated in his decision to leave the teaching profession. A contribution of this study is to explore these very different experiences and outcomes using a framework of teacher identity construction. From this perspective, findings suggest that the participants?? engagement in the practices and activities of teaching, their relations with colleagues, and their positioning within different discourses of teaching and learning by their schools as well as by the wider educational environment, shaped their decisions about whether to continue to pursue a teaching career. Implications for attracting and retaining teachers, as well as for future research, are discussed.     

Challenging and Appropriating Discourses of Power: Listening to and Learning from Early Career Early Childhood Teachers of Color

ABSTRACT

The racial mismatch between teachers and students has become a salient issue in efforts to counter the historical failure of children of Color in American (pre)schools. To address this mismatch, scholars have argued for the critical need to recruit and retain teachers of Color. In this article, we propose that to successfully prepare teachers of Color so that they remain committed to the profession, we must learn from their experiences during their preservice preparation and their first years of teaching. Against the backdrop of normative institutional discourses shaping teachers and teaching, we sought to learn from the ways in which six early career early childhood teachers of Color reconciled their preservice teacher education experiences, identities, and beliefs about education with the construction of their identities as teachers. To do so, we asked: How do the discursive spaces of early childhood teaching and teacher education shape the practices, beliefs, and identities of early childhood teachers of Color during their teacher education programs and within their three first years of teaching? Through Critical Narrative Analysis of in-depth interviews, we sought to unveil the discourses that shape and are shaped by the experiences of early career early childhood teachers of Color. Findings indicate that instead of being colonized by institutional discourses and oppressed by others' perceptions, to remain in the profession, these early career early childhood teachers challenged and appropriated institutional discourses, reauthoring them agentively. Implications underscore the responsibility of teacher education programs in preparing teachers of Color to negotiate the ever-so-normative discursive space of early childhood teaching and teacher education, if they are to enter and remain in the profession.     

理念性存在:教师实践性知识的人学思考

教师实践性知识作为教师在教育教学情境中对自身与他人教育经验的借鉴与升华形成的客观知识,对于提升教师职业专业化、增强教师主体性存在等具有重要意义。基于教师实践性知识作为理念性存在的前提下,对现行教师实践性知识研究进行批判,且以其主体——教师为视角对其开展全新研究,并积极探索立足于生活、建构、理解、实践基础上的教师实践性知识研究体系。     

Is the motivation to become a teacher related to pre‐service teachers’ intentions to remain in the profession?

This study investigated 198 pre‐service teachers’ intrinsic and extrinsic motivation for becoming teachers and focused on the distinction between adaptive motives, which promote lasting and effective engagement, and maladaptive motives, which promote superficial engagement. We examined the relationships with teacher self‐efficacy, the quality of the teacher training programme, classroom teaching experiences and the time pre‐service teachers expect to spend in the profession. The analyses indicated that female pre‐service teachers and pre‐service teachers with higher prior ability showed more intrinsic adaptive motives. Intrinsic adaptive motives were positively related to the quality of the teacher training programme and the classroom teaching experiences. Pre‐service teachers with positive teaching experiences indicated greater teacher self‐efficacy. Pre‐service teachers with extrinsic maladaptive motives indicated having had negative teaching experiences and they intended to remain in the profession for shorter periods. Teacher self‐efficacy was positively related to the amount of time pre‐service teachers intended to remain in the profession.     

Transitioning to the classroom: reflections of second‐career teachers during the induction year

In recent years teacher educators have witnessed an increase in the number of alternative pathways to university‐based teacher education for prospective teachers. One option is for second‐career teachers to enter post‐baccalaureate programs in education; however, the experiences of second‐career teachers are largely unexplored in the international literature. The purpose of this study was to investigate the teaching beliefs that post‐baccalaureate students brought into a graduate level teacher certification program, and the extent to which those beliefs persevered or changed during their first year of teaching. Written philosophy statements and semi‐structured interviews from the three participants were analyzed to identify emerging themes. Outcomes, presented in the form of vignettes, suggested that second‐career teachers experienced many of the same contextual pressures as baccalaureate teachers and struggled adapting to the teaching profession and implementing their stated teaching beliefs. Implications include continued research on second‐career teachers as they represent a distinct population entering the teaching profession.     

情感对教师身份发展影响的叙事探究

教师身份是以教学职业为核心,关于教师如何认识自身工作和在社会中所处地位的认识框架。教师的情感在其身份发展中扮演了重要角色。运用教育叙事探究的方法,笔者对三位在美任教中国教师的教学和生活经历进行了探究,并建构了三种情感对教师身份发展影响的叙事,分别是沮丧感、受压迫感以及恐惧感。沮丧感的产生在于公司化经营的学校将教师视为职业化的符号,使个人的人性与情感被忽略。而情感在教师自我反思和自我评价中扮演了重要角色。受压迫感是激发教师能动性的重要因素。当教师因为遭受不公正待遇而产生被压迫感时,他们开始审视个人与学校环境的关系,并据此作出改变,成为能动性主体。恐惧感直接来源于教师缺乏对于新文化环境的充分了解,它也同时关系到教师是否愿意承担教学主导的角色。本研究讨论了情感的能动作用,学校或教育机构对教师情感缺乏支持的问题,以及叙事如何作为教师建构身份的一个重要途径,以帮助教师检视自身的情感体验。     

From heaven to reality through crisis: novice teachers as migrants

This study focuses on the process of novice teachers’ adjustment to the teaching profession and to school culture in Israel. Forty-six beginning teachers who participated in a support program for novice teachers were interviewed extensively during their first and toward the end of their second year of teaching. The findings indicate how the transition and adaptation that novice teachers need to make in their new schools has much in common with that of immigrants in a new country. The experiences of immigrants provide a lens through which to investigate the stages that novice teachers go through. Similarities and differences between the two groups are examined, pointing to the implications of this analogy to novice teacher induction, teacher training, and attitudes of school principals.     

The telling stories of novice teachers: Constructing teacher knowledge in book clubs

This article reports on a teacher book club consisting of six novice teachers who met over a 2-year period beginning with their first entry into the profession to cultivate their teacher knowledge, identity, and development in a social/supportive context. The teachers met approximately every 6 weeks over the course of the academic year (7 times annually) to discuss a mutually selected (mostly fictional) text including some educational/school experiences (such as Plainsong, reported here). The book club context, texts, and other members became conduits for creating and telling teaching stories. I argue that self-directed teacher development in small teacher communities can begin at the onset of induction into the profession since such experiences appear to inform and shape teacher knowledge and development.     

21st century teachers: how non-traditional pre-service teachers navigate their initial experiences of contemporary classrooms

In the twenty-first century, teachers’ work has become more complex with high levels of accountability, increased bureaucratic responsibilities and unprecedented levels of public scrutiny. However, teaching fundamentally remains a caring profession, requiring well-developed social skills and emotional labour to successfully engage and motivate students. Teachers need resilience to thrive in these environments of intense and often conflicting pressures. Drawing on a transactional-ecological modelthis qualitative study explored the resilience and teacher identity development of a cohort of pre-service career-change teachers as they navigated their initial experiences in contemporary classrooms. The findings indicate that this cohort arrived to teacher education with teacher identities strongly aligned with a broad conceptualisation of care as active practice. This paper discusses how their identities and capacities for resilience were challenged and reviewed during their classroom experiences and the implications for teacher education and the profession.     

Unacknowledged knowledge growth: A re-examination of the effects of teacher education

Researchers on teacher education have faced two dilemmas. The first concerns the knowledge base for teachers. Although education coursework provides the potential to transmit formally the knowledge base of the profession, the knowledge base required for teaching has never been systematically defined. The second dilemma concerns the distinction between the coursework and fieldwork in teacher preparation and how experiences in each contribute to knowledge acquisition and growth. Using the model of the components of the knowledge base in teaching emerging from the “Knowledge Growth in a Profession” project at Stanford University, this research looks at the self-reports of knowledge acquisition of six novice teachers during their teacher preparation year. The results suggest that coursework and fieldwork offer distinct opportunities for learning. From the field experiences teachers reported they acquire general pedagogical knowledge including classroom management and organization. They also learn about students' understanding and misunderstanding of their subject matter. From their coursework the novices reported acquiring their conceptions of their subject matter for teaching as well as their sense of pedagogical ideals.     

Early Childhood Teachers at the Center: A Qualitative Case Study of Professional Development in an Urban District

Professional development for early childhood educators (ECE PD) is an essential component of supporting a professional early childhood workforce. Yet research on ECE PD frequently centers on narrow fidelity data, while teachers’ individual voices and teaching contexts are only rarely considered in order to understand teacher experiences with PD initiatives. This qualitative case study utilizes the critical ecology of the early childhood profession framework (Miller et al., Early childhood grows up: Towards a critical ecology of the profession, Springer, London) to examine process-related questions in a large urban district’s PD initiative connected with the launch of a new district-developed kindergarten curriculum. Examining teacher experiences through an ecological lens, the study focuses on two kindergarten teachers, viewing them as active agents in their own professional learning and situating them within their particular teaching contexts. Data sources included classroom observations, teacher interviews, and curriculum fidelity data. Although fidelity data provided some information about teacher responses to the PD, triangulating this data with teacher accounts of adapting the curriculum to their particular context enabled more nuanced understandings about how teachers adapt information from PD sessions to their particular teaching contexts. This study demonstrates the need for research on ECE PD to go beyond fidelity data to explore process-related questions about teachers PD experiences.     

Computer-Mediated Communication Environments in Teacher Education: Computer Conferencing and the Supervision of Student Teachers

The use of computer conferencing environments with student teachers and their supervisors was implemented during teaching practice and evaluated for four teacher education programs. Computer conferencing can be contrasted with the more common supervision methods, such as face-to-face conferences between the student teacher and the cooperating teacher, or between a group of student teachers and their supervisor at the teacher education institute. In our evaluation, we focused on participants' opinions of computer conferencing and their participation, activities and educational outcomes. During their field experiences, student teachers used computer conferencing primarily to exchange emotional support when they recognised similar experiences among their peers. It was less used for reflecting on their teaching and exchanging pedagogical content knowledge, including instructional methods and designs, classroom management strategies, general and instructional theories, and aspects of the teaching profession. This finding led to the conclusion that more attention should be paid to the structure of student teachers' learning environment, because more coaching and instruction of student teachers in their systematic and reflective use of computer conferencing leads to more varied and extensive communication     

Comments from the Editors

Second‐career individuals are entering the teaching profession in greater numbers. These older, mature individuals bring diffent experiences to teaching than do younger, traditional preservice and beginning teachers. Lyle, a second‐career teacher, began his first year of teaching in a junior high school, a setting that did not allow him to teach in ways that he believed he should. This paper presents a record of Lyle's struggles as he negotiates the role of teaching and his relationships with students. The conclusions examine some factors that mitigated against Lyles’ smooth transition into the teaching profession and suggest that second‐career teachers such as Lyle may be disadvantaged by traditional teacher education programs, the pressures under which they accept teaching positions, and their sometimes distant perspective of teachers, teacher's work, and students.     

反思:教师专业成长的必由之路

反思是教师自我发展的重要机制,它对于提高教师专业化水平具有重要的意义。教师只有立足于自己的教学行为和教学经验进行自我反思,通过反思实施自我监控、自我调适,不断优化和改善教学行为,才能提高教学水平。由此,我们认为反思是教师专业成长的必由之路。如果没有反思,那么一个学校的教育教学将永远建立在冲动、直觉或常规之上。因此,为满足当前教育改革与发展的需求,提高教师的业务素质,学校必须加强教师反思能力的培养。     

Why some graduating teachers choose not to teach: teacher attrition and the discourse-practice gap in becoming a teacher

ABSTRACT

Teacher attrition is a perennial problem in many countries around the globe. With attrition especially pronounced amongst early career teachers, efforts to retain and sustain these teachers have highlighted the importance of effective mentoring and support programs within schools. However, less is known about the perceptions and experiences of graduates of initial teacher education (ITE) programs who choose not to enter the teacher profession, therefore not benefiting from such mentoring and support, and subsequently being lost to the profession, potentially forever. Therefore, this paper reports on a qualitative case study that investigated the reasons why one group of graduates from an ITE program in Hong Kong chose not to teach. Using in-depth interviews and grounded in a theory of teacher identity construction, the results reveal how the participants struggled to construct their preferred professional identities, in particular during a teaching practicum, and the role this played in their decision not to enter the teaching profession. Implications for how teacher educators can better support preservice teachers as they struggle to construct their professional identities are considered and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Beginning early childhood education teachers’ struggle with inclusion in Turkey

The purpose of this study was to investigate Turkish early childhood education teachers’ perception of inclusion before they started their teaching profession and to explore their experiences with the children with disabilities in their first year of teaching. Sixteen Turkish pre-service teachers were first interviewed when they completed the teacher education programme about their expectations of inclusion practices in their future career. Four participants among the 16 teachers started to teach children with disabilities in their first year of teaching. Then, they were interviewed about their experiences at the end of the first and second semesters of teaching. Findings revealed that Turkish pre-service teachers displayed positive attitudes towards inclusion before they started teaching. However, they had negative experiences with children with disabilities in their first year due to the misimplementation of the inclusion policy and being inexperienced about the inclusion process, and began to question the effectiveness of inclusion. Implications for the inclusion policy and teacher education programmes are discussed.     

坚守理想信念 享受做教师的幸福

幸福是人生的真谛,享受教育的幸福应该是每位教师矢志不渝的追求。教师是神圣的职业,我们既然选择了教师这一职业,就要有坚定的理想信念,就要有引领学生成长的耐心,还要有一种永不停止的追求。有了这些,再苦再累的工作也会其乐无穷,作为一名教师就是最幸福的。本文作者通过回顾自己多年的教学生涯,从几方面讲述了自己的亲身感受,提出了教师幸福的来源,有幸福的教师,才有幸福的学生,才有一个民族幸福的未来。     

Who is the ideal teacher? Am I? Similarity and difference in perception of students of education regarding the qualities of a good teacher and of their own qualities as teachers

This research examines two images of teachers as seen by students of education: the ideal teacher and their own self‐image as teachers. The research compares the students’ perceptions of these two images using two sub‐groups of students of education: students at an academic teachers’ college who will be referred to as student teachers and beginning teachers, who, while teaching, are completing their academic degrees at teachers’ colleges or regional academic colleges. Data were collected from 89 students at the two colleges by means of a questionnaire that included open‐ended questions which were analyzed qualitatively. The findings of the research indicate that there are two major categories that comprise perceptions of the ideal teacher: first, personal qualities; and second, knowledge of the subject taught as well as didactic knowledge. Both groups of students similarly attributed great importance to the personal qualities of the ideal teacher, but there is a difference in their perception of the importance of knowledge: the beginning teachers attributed great importance to knowledge and perceived it as a quality similar in importance to personal characteristics, while the student teachers, who had not begun their teaching careers, attributed less importance to knowledge as a characteristic of the ideal teacher. A quality which was less prominent when profiling the ideal teacher is general education and wide perspectives. The teacher as a socializing agent, a person who promotes social goals, was not mentioned at all. Students maintained that, during their studies, they had improved their qualities as ‘empathetic and attentive’ teachers, ‘knowledgeable in teaching methods’, and in ‘leadership’. But they had hardly improved their knowledge of the subject they taught or their level of general knowledge. The discussion of knowledge and the desirable personal qualities of a teacher is relevant to the current debate regarding the relative merits of disciplinary education in contrast to pedagogical education in preparation for teaching as a profession. The clear preference for disciplinary education by policy makers in Israel and elsewhere in the field of teacher education is contradictory to the emphasis placed on the personal development of future teachers and their pedagogical education by the students of education who participated in this research.     

Operating at the margins while seeking a space in the heart: the daily teaching reality of Japanese high school teachers experiencing workplace stress/anxiety

The esteem historically attributed to the teaching profession in Japan is eroding, and some Japanese teachers who identify with the ideal of being a ‘life educator’ are becoming disillusioned with teaching. While the stress and anxiety associated with teacher disillusionment have been researched from a Western perspective, little is known about the work-related stress and anxiety experiences of Japanese teachers. Thus, this grounded theory qualitatively details the teaching experiences of 14 Japanese high school teachers. The findings reveal that whereas only two teachers within the present study had actually achieved a ‘space in their heart’ where they were able to create a balance between the negative and positive forces operating within their teaching careers and home lives, this was a position that many other teachers strove toward.     

Student teachers’ participation in learning activities and effective teaching behaviours

Teacher learning is essential to the teaching profession, because it has been strongly linked to improved teaching practices and teacher quality. The source for teacher learning is initial teacher education, a crucial phase in the learning-to-teach continuum. To gain insight into this influential period for student teachers’ long-term professional lives, this exploratory study investigates student teachers’ participation in learning activities and explores whether it is connected to their own effective teaching behaviours in a school-based teacher education setting for secondary education in the Netherlands. The results indicate that student teachers vary in their self-reported learning and that this learning relates positively to observations of their effective teaching behaviour. These findings have several implications for teacher education programmes that aim to enhance the likelihood that their student teachers will become career-long learning professionals.