Experiencing And Growing

This thesis is a research result of narrative inquiry, which details the “life world” of three beginning teachers from rural primary school. Materials used to tell stories of beginning teachers’ career adaptability are collected by conducting field work, doing classroom observation, taking formal and informal interviews, reading teaching plans, analyzing teaching logs, etc. Then the stories about the three teachers are narrated to show their real life experience. After the story-telling, difficulties such as dealing with unpleasant school teaching environment, unskilled teaching methods, unsophisticated communication skills and unacquainted career role playing are summed up to analyze the career adaptability that the new teachers have to face at the initiative stage of their career development, which is inevitably painful yet decisive.There are various factors which affect beginning teachers’ career adaptability, and in this thesis the key factors would be demonstrated in terms of personal elements, educational systems and social surroundings. Personal elements include temperament types, former experience and self-development awareness. Educational systems compass supportive policies implemented by central governmental, new teacher training schemes exercised by local education administrative department and management atmosphere maintained by school. Social surroundings cover significant others, interpersonal relationship and public opinions on rural primary teachers. In response to the three key factors expatiated in this thesis, some suggestions are given to improve the career adaptability of beginning teachers in rural primary school. Firstly, great energy should be channeled into ensuring and enhancing the appeal of the teaching profession, with more emphasis on those teaching in the rural primary school. In addition, local education administrative department should upgrade its training schemes to accelerate the growth of new teachers’ professional adaptability. What is more, schools should step up efforts to better their employment mechanism, thereby building a talent pool by unleashing the creativity of young teachers. Last but not least, beginning teachers should take pains to foster their professional development, because only in this way can they achieve eventually and meaningfully their career value.This thesis is divided into seven parts. The preface part is about the background, purposes, significances and processes of this research. The second part focuses on the definition of core concept and the literature review both at home and abroad. The third part explores the “life world” of the three beginning teachers, with an in-depth description about their career adaptability.The next part unscrambles and analyzes the stories, summarizing the common difficulties encountered by new teachers. Still the next part is responsible for explaining the factors that affect the three teachers’ career adaptability. The sixth part tries to give suggestions to upgrade beginning teachers’ career adaptability. In the end, a conclusion of the current study is drawn to finalize the entire thesis.