Critical Growing Points Of “Green Pepper”:Narrative Research On The Impact Of Critical Incidents On Professional Growth Of Young Teachers In College

Since the establishment of the professional status of teachers from 1966,professional growth of teachers has been an important issue in academic study. In recent years, young teachers in colleges and universities gradually become the mainstay of college teachers, and their professional growth has faced an array of pressures and difficulties. So research on the professional growth of "green peppers"(young college teachers) has important practical significance. Viewing from research literature on professional development of teachers, studies on the common features of professional development of teachers are relatively more. However, there lacks in-depth studies on individual development of teachers, especially studies on individual development of young teachers teaching in colleges and universities.This study is based on the perspective of individual life history, using the research paradigm of narrative research and the methods of interviews, observations and physical analysis to excavate the critical incidents which have great significance to the professional growth of young teachers in colleges and universities.In this study, H is selected as the sample school. And three teachers from H who are with representative genders, ages, teaching years, professional titles, teaching professions and development experiences are selected as the object of study.Through the analysis of critical incidents in the process of the professional growth of research objects, the researcher discovered that the formation mechanism of critical incidents is influenced by three factors. They are teachers’ positive attention to professional growth, teachers’ initiative to specialization and the accreditation of their professional growth. Teachers’ initiative professional development will motivate them to try in new working fields in a constant manner and actively involve themselves in all kinds of work, so that the depth and breadth for the production of critical events will be deepened. In other words, both of the production space and production level of critical events will be promoted. At the same time, teachers’ positive attention on their professional development will enhance their awareness of critical event catching and their ability to sense such events during their professional development, which mayform, jointly with the role of teachers’ initiative professional development,composition forces for the internal production mechanism for critical events. In the process, teachers gain professional recognition all the time, which forms external forces for the production of critical events.This research shows that critical incidents have great impacts on the internal character field of professional growth of teachers including professional ideals,professional emotion, professional ego and professional personality as well as professional knowledge field such as the subject knowledge, the general knowledge and the knowledge of education. Critical incidents also have influence on the capacity of teaching, the capacity of doing scientific research and the capacity of social services and this influence will make the significant migrations in various fields and different stages of professional growth of teachers. Their positive self-reflection of the critical incidents is supposed to bring out their professional growth. Based on the analysis, this study summarizes a number of enlightenments to promote the professional growth of young teachers in colleges and universities, such as leading the improvement of professional ideals of young teachers in colleges and universities, promoting young college teachers ’positive reflection on the personal growth history, building the excellent team culture, providing opportunities of updated work experience for young college teachers, and exploring the breakthrough of professional growth of young teachers.