A Study Of Teacher Identity Of Novice Junior High School English Teachers In Guangxi

As the leader of education,teachers are responsible for imparting knowledge and educating people,and teachers profoundly impact on society’s development.When new English teachers first enter the workplace,their internal expectations for the job often conflict with the external work environment,causing them to experience identity crises.Therefore,it is necessary to study novice English teachers’ identity and analyze their internal emotions and cognition to help them proliferate and overcome their identity crisis.Basing on social-cultural theory and discourse analysis theory,this study adopts a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods.It investigates novice English teachers in junior high schools in Guangxi with the help of questionnaire and interview,aiming to answer the following research questions:(1)What is the overall situation of identity of novice junior high school English teachers?(2)What are the differences in identity of novice junior high school English teachers in terms of gender and educational background?(3)What are the problems and causes of the identity of novice junior high school English teachers?A total of 122 questionnaires were collected from novice junior high school English teachers in Guangxi and other regions,and 12 of them were interviewed.The quantitative results showed that the overall level of novice junior high school English teachers’ identity was high,with a mean value of 3.92.Among the four dimensions of English teachers’ identity,the comparison of the means of each dimension was ranked from highest to lowest: professional identity > professional identity > personal identity > situational identity.Among the two factors of situational identity,organizational support has the lowest mean.In addition,the results also showed that there was no significant difference in the identity of the novice junior high school English teachers in terms of gender,but the level of the work engagement factor was significantly lower for male teachers than for female teachers;in terms of educational background of whether they had received English normal education,the identity of teachers who graduated from other English majors was significantly lower than that of English teachers who graduated from English normal major.Basing on the results of data analysis and interviews,this study found that novice junior high school English teachers had a low level of situational identity because they perceived their salaries to be low,their benefits to be poor,and they feel less organizational support;novice English teachers had conflicts in forming identity because there was a discrepancy between teachers’ expectations of their careers and the reality of work;male teachers had lower work engagement than female teachers because of the phenomenon of over working.The overall identity of novice junior high school English teachers who graduated from other English majors was lower than that of teachers who graduated from English normal major because they lacked theoretical knowledge about English teaching and education as well as experience in educational internships.basing on the results,this study makes implications for educational administrations,schools,and teachers on improving novice junior high school English teachers’ identity.