A Study On Novice EFL Teachers’ Professional Emotion

Teachers’professional emotion, the core factor that permeates through every stage of teachers’professional life, is an important indicator of teachers’ spiritual status as well as a potent element that influences their teaching practices and professional decisions. As an individualized and dynamic concept, emotion serves as both a means and the lubricant in teachers’ everyday teaching practices; however it ought to be deemed beyond just a means and lubricant, it’s also a quality, an ability that every teacher should work hard on improving. The significance of teachers’ professional emotion is not some lofty castle; instead it is entailed in the very professional growth wisdom, it is teachers’ emotional appraise of the value of their work, of the meaning of education. In 1960s, researchers began to pay attention to this topic as they realized that subject knowledge and pedagogical skills are far from enough for a good teacher. However, most of the researches on teachers’ emotion fall into a certain category of emotion and discuss how it can be regulated to better contribute to teaching as well as students’ learning. Moreover, the focus of the studies were mainly experienced teachers, little attention has been paid to novice teachers.The present study has looked into teachers’ professional emotion from the angle of professional development with an attempt to find out what role does professional emotion play in forming a self-growth awareness in the first period of service and the main influencing factors in teachers’ professional emotion. Three novice EFL teachers are selected to provide their accounts of life and educational experiences. By presenting and reliving the experiences, the author hopes to solve the following three research puzzles:(1) How did the beginning teachers think about teaching at the very beginning of their professional training?(2) What are the most meaningful/valuable experiences during the first period of their professional service? And what effects do these experiences have on later professional development?(3) Is there any change in their attitudes towards EFL teaching? If yes, what attributes to such changes?After a detailed study of the accounts of the three participants, it is found that among students, school administration and other influencing factors, the most potent one is the relationship between the teacher and students, followed by the interactions with colleagues and the professional support teachers get from the school administration. From these findings we can draw the conclusions that in order to offer a better professional development environment for novice teachers, school administration needs to update their managing principles and pay more attention to establishing stronger emotional ties within the faculty and the institution; as individual teachers, novice EFL teachers are encouraged to overcome the gap between reality and ideals and initiate self-growth based on one’s own circumstances.