A Case Study About Beginning Teachers' Difficulties Of Occupational Adaptation In Primary School

The first year of beginning teachers is the key period for their professionaldevelopment. Its success or failure will influence beginning teachers' development inthe future. The previous studies show this period is also a period of crisis for theirprofessional development. Generally speaking, beginning teachers will meet "realityshock" during this period. They feel perplexed, anxious, even frustrated because of it.If letting the beginning teachers mature naturally, it will prolong their period ofadaptation. Most importantly, the educational beliefs and teaching mode that theyform during this period will terribly influence their professional development in thefuture. If they can go through this period under leaderships' care and co-workers' helpin their school, they will be full of confidence in teaching practice and grow rapidly. Itis this research, a case study that will aim at this problem.I adopt qualitative research, which is showing its unique fascination gradually insocial study. It advocates the researcher's participating into research circumstances,arousing the sympathy, facing the facts,describing details and realities, and thenreorganizing the sections into stories and revealing the "essence" gradually by theempathic understanding of the researchers. I collect materials from March to November,2005. The ways of collectingmaterials include observation, interview and objects collecting. I choose twobeginning teachers from two different primary schools as my cooperators. I observeand talk with them,find their difficulties and try to give them some advice to solvethe difficulties.This dissertation is divided into four parts. Part one introduces the setting andsignificance of this research, reviews the literatures and introduces research process.Part two analyzes and induces the beginning teachers' difficulties. By analyzingoriginal material, I find out four aspects of difficulties that beginning teachers meet:educational beliefs, teaching skills, classroom management and occupational relations.The four aspects of difficulties have the following causal relationship: educationalbeliefs influence teaching skills, the teaching skills influence not only classroommanagement but also occupational relations such as teacher-student relation,teacher-teacher relation and teacher-parent relation. I analyze and study just basing onthis thinking. In every aspect, I describe difficulties that new teachers meet and theway they deal with,interpret according to theory of education, and give them someadvice. Part three analyses factors of influencing beginning teachers' occupationaladaptation. I analyze the reasons for beginning teachers' difficulties from both thebeginning teachers' personal elements and school where beginning teachers work.Personal elements include personal expectation and development motive;schoolelements include routine work, tutor program, school administration and teachers'culture. Part four is suggestions. In order to make the beginning teachers adaptthemselves to teaching as soon as possible, Based on the conclusions of this study, Imake recommendations respectively to both beginning teachers and schools theywork in. As a beginning teacher, he or she should have rational expectation duringinduction. He or she neither expects too much, nor runs its course, he or she shouldhave the consciousness of self-development and achieve autonomous professionaldevelopment;The schools that he or she works in should reduce the beginningteachers' routine work, perfect tutor program for the beginning teachers, constructopen school climate and build collaborative teachers' culture.