A Study On Ontario's New Teacher Induction Program

The teacher induction procedure, which is one of three important procedures for teacher education, has usually been overlooked. As the development of society and education research, more and more people acknowledge that the teacher induction is an effective and efficient way to improve our teaching quality and decrease the 'job shock' level to the new teacher.It has been over two decades since the formal and informal teacher induction programs were implemented in Ontario, Canada. There was no province-wide induction program in late-80's last century, and since then more and more people realized that a standardized test for those who wanted to be a teacher in Ontario should be implemented. After several years since that paper test went into practice, its disadvantages have appeared, and not only new teachers but also all those relative partners called for reforming the induction procedure and the test for teacher certification. Therefore, the New Teacher Induction Program (NTIP) including requirements for the performance appraisal process for new teachers, was developed by the Ontario Ministry of Education following consultation with education partners including the faculties of education, parent groups, the Ontario College of Teachers (OCT), teacher federations, principals, and trustees. A comprehensive literature review examining induction in other countries and a pilot project that involved 21 school boards contributed to the final shape of the NTIP which came into legislation through the passing of the Student Performance Bill in June 2006. This paper will analyze the system of the NTIP, such as its goals, implementation and evaluation process, and conclude its advantages, which should help the construction of the teacher induction policy in our country.There will be four parts in this essay to achieve fore mentioned goals:Part one:the introduction, which includes the causes of the research, the literature review and introduction of research methods; Part two:the background information of the NTIP, which includes the development of the induction policies in Ontario and the process of shaping the final NTIP;Part three:the actual contents of the NTIP, which includes the goals and relative partners of the NTIP, implementation process and evaluation system, etc.Part four:the advantages of the NTIP and what we can learn from it, which includes personal evaluation of the NTIP and how we can use the experiences to improve the new teacher induction policies in our country.