Section archive - Beginning Teachers

This study examined the influence of technology-based internships on teachers’ instructional decision-making during their first year in the classroom. The findings indicated that the technology internship exposed participants to such realities as time and classroom management, adaptation to available technology resources, and introducing new tools to students.

This article examines the change of four novice EFL teachers’ professional identities in the first years of teaching in K-12 schools in China. the findings suggest that (1) novice teachers’ cue-based or exemplar-based imagined identities may change into rule-based or schema-based practiced identities as mediated by the mixed influences of the institutional contexts of school and the dynamic educational contexts; and that (2) the institutional pressures seem to cause the imagined identities to be negatively replaced, but the teacher’s perseverance and agency in seeking opportunities of professional development may ultimately determine the positive evolution of the imagined identities.

This paper explores the micropolitical staffroom experiences of two beginning health and physical education teachers. The two narratives draw attention to how the context of the staffroom significantly shaped and reshaped the beginning teachers’ micropolitical learning and practices throughout their first year of teaching. The findings reveal that staffroom occupants shaped situations which beginning teachers encountered. The two beginning teachers became more micropolitically ‘literate’ overtime with a more in depth understanding of the particular context and prevailing micropolitical staffroom stories. The authors recommend that more attention needs to be paid to the staffroom as a micropolitical context in which beginning teachers transition, learn and develop professional and micropolitical identities.

This paper discusses to what extent students of teaching in early entry teacher education programs experience their work environment as a stimulating learning environment. The results indicate that in most schools opportunities for learning are incidental and not in the form of labour. Student teachers are not gently introduced into the practice of teaching, gradually taking more responsibilities and becoming experts. Besides, the core of the practices for teachers is enacted in classrooms where student teachers are left to their own devices. However, autonomy is highly valued but double-edged: a source of motivation and isolation. Furthermore, when knowledge exchange, reflection and problem solving occur, they have little prospect of improving student teachers’ conceptual knowledge and deep understanding.