Induction into Teaching: First Year of Novice Teachers

Author(s):

Mustafa Öztürk

Conference:

ECER 2009

Network:

10. Teacher Education Research

Format:

Paper

Session Information

10 SES 08 D, Research on Teacher Induction and Beginning Teachers

Paper Session

Time:

2009-09-30

08:30-10:00

Room:

NIG, HS 3A

Chair:

Jennifer Harrison

Contribution

The purpose of the study was to look into the induction process of the novice teachers who were assigned to various school contexts in Turkey by investigating their most common adaptation challenges and analysing the factors affecting their induction process. With the help of the collected data, the most problematic aspects of the profession in the induction years and the factors having significant influences on adaptation levels were aimed to be interpreted, and suggestions for the improvement in teachers' professional training and mentoring activities were provided at the end of the study. The research questions of the study were "what are the most frequent adaptation challenges of the novice teachers in their early years of their teaching?" and "do their adaptation challenges change according to certain factors?" Being a teacher is a heavy job requiring much responsibility with an abundance of expectations. Together with the changing world, this profession has become more and more complex. If we add the newly beginning teachers’ concerns and worries to these general difficulties and complexity of the profession, we come up with a more demanding and a highly stressful job. Therefore, it is intended to illuminate the adaptation process of the newly graduated teachers in their early years. Many papers and articles about teacher training available around the world tell why new teachers do cry and have difficulty in adapting to the profession *** see text in brackets in References*** yet there exist only a couple of studies (Korkmaz, 1999; Toker, 2001; Yalçınkaya, 2002; Alan, 2003) about novice teachers in Turkey, which is a candidate counrty for EU preparing itself to meet the standards especially in educational aspects together with other fields. Considering the literature reviewed and the insufficient number of research in Turkey, this study aimed, after getting a general picture of frequently occurring adaptation challenges in early years, to investigate the reasons behind adaptation difficulties of novice teachers by analyzing the variables influencing their induction process.

Method

The research design was a survey study, in which the question of “what” was answered about the induction process of new teachers. Searching previously conducted research and considering the related literature, a survey questionnaire was developed under expert supervision, consisting of three main parts with nine sub-categories: (1) Personal Information; (2) Job-related Concerns like workload, instructional, and classroom management challenges; and (3) Social Concerns like social status and identity, challenges in relationship with students, parents, colleagues, supervisors, and mentor teachers. It was piloted beforehand and administered by the researcher himself. The actual data were collected from 465 novice teachers teaching in randomly selected eight provinces of Turkey. In data analysis process, descriptive statistics like frequency distribution tables with percentages, means, and standard deviations, and inferential statistics like t-tests and ANOVAs were carried out. The follow up test Dunnett C was conducted to evaluate the differences among the means.

Expected Outcomes

The general results revealed that new teachers experienced job-related concerns a little more often than the social concerns. Accordingly, the means and the proportions clustered around particular sub-categories in this sequence: workload, social status/identity, supervisor, classroom management, and instructional challenges. It is also seen that the adaptation of novice teachers differed in relation to different factors like: their age and subject area, the university/faculty they graduated from, their practice teaching experience, existence of a mentor teacher in their pre-service years, the school type they were assigned to, the grade level they were teaching at, and the amount of in-service training taken in induction period. Gender was not a factor affecting job-adaptation of novice teachers. The results in the study indicated (1) a deep assessment of current induction applications; (2) a need for innovations or a redesign of teacher training program for new teachers, *** continues in Intent...

References

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Author Information

Mustafa Öztürk

Middle East Technical University

Educational Sciences

Ulukisla / NIGDE

212

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