Literature Review
3.2 Complexities in and significance of the first year of teaching
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teacher’s career (OECD, 2005). Teaching is generally a stressful and demanding job anyway, with practical demands of classroom teaching and school administration to be
handled, not to mention the stress of reconciling personal ideals, meeting performance
standards and being exposed to wider educational concerns. For novice teachers being
faced with the complexities and challenges can be overwhelming (Bullough Jr et al.,
2008; Pollard, 2008). Huberman (1992), in his classic life-cycle research on teaching,
actually describes the phase of career entry (1-3 years of teaching) as ‘survival’.
Indeed the first year of teaching can quickly become a battle for survival, as teachers
become swamped by the complexity of the role and the demands and expectations of
students, colleagues and parents. This might also explain why teaching continues to
have higher rates of attrition and turnover compared to other professions (Ingersoll &
Strong, 2011). Because of such circumstances that inexperienced teachers encounter,
‘the initial year of employment or transition phase has been recognised as an
important segment of a beginning teacher’s career’ (McCormack and Thomas, 2003:
125). It is a unique and significant period to research for various reasons.
.
First of all, first-year teachers undergo reality shock in confronting the complexity and
simultaneity of instructional management (Huberman, 1992). In other fields, such as
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experienced professionals, thus taking on responsibility gradually (Worthy, 1995).
Teaching is, however, very different in that first-year teachers are expected to perform
and assume responsibilities similar to those experienced practitioners, right on the first
day of the job (ibid). By definition, these teachers, though new, are employees rather
than trainees, and are supposed to be competent (Bailey, 2006), but the fact is, they
have limited experience and training. Induction programmes, if any, are theoretically
not additional training but are designed for those who have already completed basic
training (Ingersoll and Smith, 2004). However, no matter how good a preservice
programme may be, there are some things that can only be learned on the job. In other
words, novice teachers can only gain certain skills and abilities by beginning to do
what they do not yet understand, such as communicating with parents and designing
materials that best suit their students. As a result, first-year teachers always find
themselves in a paradoxical situation – they are expected to demonstrate abilities that
they do not necessarily yet have, and what is more, the work of teaching itself, being
‘complex, uncertain and full of dilemmas’, sharpens the paradox (Feiman-Nemser, 2001:16). The first year of teaching can be problematic (Wang, Odell and Schwille,
2008).
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the expected and actual realities of teaching. The optimism of young teachers in some
situations may be somewhat tarnished when confronted with the realities and
complexities of the teaching task (Rushton, 2000). For example they may soon realise
that their vision is incompatible with reality (Orland-Barak & Maskit, 2011). In
Urmston and Pennington’s (2008) study, instead of continuing with their
communicative, process-oriented principles emphasised in the pre-service training and
evidenced in their actual teaching practices, novice teachers (in their first and second
years of teaching) conformed to the cultures in their settings which tended to
discourage innovations, rather than infusing new ideas and practices into the education
system. Indeed, it is very easy for new teachers to become swamped in their first year
of teaching by the nuance and particularity of the sheer volume of what they have to
do (Mahony, 1988). Facing the reality of the classroom, they may resort to and
gradually form the habit of conforming to established norms and ‘standards’, rather than endeavour to be reflective practitioners.
Jones (2003) argues that novice teachers need to be provided with support and
guidance in the process of reconciling their personal beliefs and values with the
realities of teaching, as well as developing positive identities as teachers. It is
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their original assumptions in line with the values underpinning the professional
practice. What is most challenging for both the new teachers and their mentors (or
collaborating colleagues) is that such a process of modifying idealistic assumptions
that contradicted with reality experienced in schools can be painful and in order to
cope, one has to possess a great deal of physical, mental as well as emotional stamina
(ibid). Battersby (1984: 17) even suggests that pre-service teacher training tends to
foster in student teachers the development of ideal images of pupils. He calls this
‘beginners’ dreams and nightmares about pupils’ – new teachers’ having idealistic expectations on teaching and students before they teach, and overwhelmed and
shocked by classroom realities once they start teaching. Needless to say, handling
these in the first year can be challenging.
Thirdly, the reconciliation between personal ideals and school/classroom realities
mentioned above has great impact on novices’ professional identity formation, which sometimes has implications on their personal identity, too. Indeed novices are not
solely concerned with managerial, strategic aspects of doing teacher and becoming a
teacher; There are also human concerns that surround the world of the teacher such as
socialisation into the school culture and workplace (Orland-Barak & Maskit, 2011).
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(Gorton and Schneider, in Gray and Smith, 2007). However, at the same time, there
are expectations (of the novices themselves and other stakeholders) and standards of
performance to be met (Earley, 1988). As a result they may struggle with the multiple
voices that operate in the educational system, which creates a sense of impotence in
their capacity to act (Orland-Barak & Maskit, 2011).
Some novices, for example those in Scherff’s (2008) study, in turn come to realise that a lot of times the power rests not with the classroom teachers, but with students and
their parents, who in turn influence how administrators operate. They even perceive
that the students’ and parents’ desires take precedence over their respect and professionalism, seriously affecting their professional identity (ibid). Achinstein’s
(2006) study also highlights what he calls a ‘politics of identity’ (p. 136), when
novices finds ways to resolve the discrepancies between their own values and the
dominant ones in a school. While some are pressured to forsake their ideals and accept
the conditions and standards of the schools, some reject the school’s approaches and continue to commit to their own teaching philosophies, seeking not to be
institutionally compliant (ibid). Coping with this, what Orland-Barak and Maskit
(2011: 435) call the ‘hostile and adverse sides of teaching’, can be exhausting and
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that mentors should therefore support new teachers to identify ‘a politics of their own
identities, articulate their values, morals and commitments’ (p. 136). The roles of
mentors will be further discussed in Section 3.5.2.
Lastly, the initial year of teaching, though short, has been found to have a huge
influence on whether the teacher continues to stay in the profession, and if they do,
their career development. First-year teachers tend to have a higher risk of quitting
teaching than other teachers (Veenman, 1985), for a whole range of reasons such as
having views about teaching that are incompatible with the reality or the school, as
discussed above. It is claimed that almost one third of beginning teachers leave
teaching in their first 5 years (Darling-Hammond, 2003), and in some cases even as
many as half (e.g. Liu, 2007). It is well known that teacher attrition follows a
U-shaped pattern with a high probability of leaving in the first few years and in the
later years near retirement (Murnane, Singer,Willett, Kemple, & Olsen, 1991).
Attrition is costly to the school, the education system as well as the wider community,
because of reasons such as being forced to lower standards to fill the increasing
number of teaching openings (Bowman & Dowling, 2008). Many countries in the
world have been trying very hard to retain their teachers by providing induction
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Smith, 2004; Woods & Weasmer, 2002). Lam and Yan (2011) find that new teachers
working in an environment that allows them to focus on the core business of teaching
and a reasonable work-life balance are likely to become interested and engaged in
teaching and stay in the profession, irrespective of their initial teaching orientation. In
other words how novices experience their first year is an even more important factor
affecting whether they stay in the profession than what motivates them to become
teachers in the first place. The different types of support for beginning teachers will be
discussed in details in Section 3.5.
The first-year experience is also believed to have significant implications on aspects
of teaching, such as teaching effectiveness, in subsequent years (Hebert & Worthy,
2001). Particularly, Hoy and Spero (2005) argue that some of the most powerful
influences on the development of teacher efficacy are mastery experiences during the
induction year. Results of their study show that there are significant declines during
the first year of teaching, and changes in efficacy during that year were related to the
level of support received. At the same time, efficacy beliefs, which are shaped early,
are found to be linked to burnout (Friedman, 2000), as well as stress and commitment
to teaching (Hoy & Spero, op. cit.). A reduction in perceived efficacy during the
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and themselves as teachers even if they go on teaching. With these complexities and
significance of the first year of teaching in mind I move onto the unique needs first
year teachers thus have as well as the challenges they face.