Chapter 2 Literature Review

2.1 Research on Novice Teachers

Novice teachers, which refer to teachers who are at the beginning period of
their teaching, are said to face “reality shock” (Veenman 1984). The first year of
teaching, which is defined by Farrel (2008) as a transition that the novice have to
make from their teacher education programs to the real classroom teaching, can be
really important and challenging as teachers need to socialize into the new working
environment and learn to teach in the real classroom context. During this period of
time, novice teachers are said to “find some sense of balance” (Mann 2008). These
difficulties which appeared during the transition process sometimes lead to teacher
attrition (Veenman 1984; Fantilli, McDougall 2009; Kardo 2003; Black 2004;
Farrel
2008).
In his review of studies on perceived problems of beginning teachers,
Veenman (1984) concluded that the most common troubles for this group of
teachers are around classroom discipline, motivating students, dealing with
different individuals, relationship with parents, problems with individual students,
etc. Farrel (2008) studied a novice teacher in Singapore and found out that this
novice teacher confronted several complications in his first year, including the
learner-centered approach to teach verses the established teacher-centered way in
local school, the school curriculum verses the novice’s desired curriculum, and
problems related to collegial relations. This is similar to the research result in the
study of Urmston and Pennington (2008) that beginning teachers in Hong Kong
found it hard to implement interactive and innovative teaching approach when
facing the dominance of examination. Besides, these beginning teachers also felt
much constrained by the set school curriculum. Kardo (2003) concluded in the
study that novice teachers reported not receiving sufficient help during the
induction process or working in a professional environment where decision for
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teaching is not determined by both the

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novice and the veteran faculty result in teacher attrition, and this kind of professional
environment provides little chance for the novice to communicate and discuss about

their work with the more experienced teachers. Another similar study launched by
Meister and Melnick (2003) indicated that novice teachers chose to leave their
position during the beginning years of their teaching mostly due to their trouble in
dealing with behavior issues, with different students, with the tight teaching

schedule, heavy workload, and problems with parents, etc.

Since it has been reported that novice teachers always encounter great difficulty

in adapting to the real teaching context and finding some sense of balance, some
studies discussed how the induction process should be to help novice teachers to
cope with these problems. Cameron and Lovett (2007) interviewed several
secondary and primary school novice teachers about their working experience in the
first two years’ classroom teaching. According to these novice teachers, their

beginning years of teaching would be much more difficult without the professional

help or emotional support from the school administration and fellow colleagues
during the induction. This kind of supportive environment is helpful for novice
teachers to learn and grow, and mentors should give the novice equal opportunity to
think and speak out their ideas, provide emotional and professional support, and

provide opportunity to do lesson observation (Wang 2008). From the standpoint of

the teacher, Feiman-Nemser (2001) observed and interviewed an experienced
teachers’ experience with a group of novice teachers who were going through their

induction period. Similar conclusion is reached that the novice need the guidance
and help of the experienced teachers to overcome difficulties in the beginning years.

The help includes co-thinking with the novice, helping the novice realize the
connection between effective teaching and how students think, helping the novice
identify their instructional problems, etc.
However, mentors in different regions and schools may put different kinds of
help in priority. Wang (2001) found that different teachers hold different beliefs

about teaching, and thus tend to teach the novice different skills. Mentors in the U.S.

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believe that knowing about students and the purpose of teaching are vital for
the novice while those in China tend to think that knowledge about curriculum,
ethics and subject matter is more important. Athanases and Achinstein (2003)
claimed in their study that beliefs about children’s thinking is important and
mentors should help novice teachers to understand how students think.
In conclusion, novice teachers, who are likely to face reality shock in the
beginning years, often encounter many difficulties in knowing about pedagogy, in
socialization into the school culture and in student management, etc. In this
case, induction becomes an important process for the novice to adjust to the
teaching context and improve their teaching practice. During this process,
working in a supportive environment where mentors and experienced teachers
provide constant guidance to help the novice learn to teach, to adapt to
curriculum, to know about students, etc. And at the same time, providing the
novice the opportunity to discuss about teaching and do lesson observation can
largely improve their teaching abilities in the real classroom context.
However, these studies were launched from the perspective of mentors
and discuss what they should do to help the novice overcome the difficulties thal
bother them, since novice teachers find their ideal teaching challenged by the
reality, it is necessary to know their original beliefs about teaching, factors
that shape their beliefs, and fnctors cause their difficulties in the beginning years.

2.2 Research on Teachers’ Beliefs and Teacher Preparation

Programs

It is apparent from the review of studies on the induction process of

novice teachers that there is a strong relationship between teachers’ beliefs
and their learning experience. Most teachers gained their original pedagogical
beliefs from teacher education programs, and these beliefs will later guide
their classroom teaching practice at the beginning of their teaching career.

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 Borg (2003) mentioned that teacher cognition and its development rely heavily

on teacher education and their prior language learning experience. For student
teachers, the majority of their beliefs about teaching and learning are from teacher
preparation programs and teaching practicum (Mattheoudakis 2007; Guo 2008;
Johnson 1994; Yuan, Lee 2014). During lheir learning process, they had courses
about teaching theories and their “memories of instruction gained through their
apprenticeship of observation” about their teachers (Borg 2003) shape student
teachers’ early images of teachers and primary beliefs about EFL teaching. Both

Johnson (1994) and Mattheoudakis (2007) found out in their studies of pre-service
EFL teachers’ beliefs about teaching that student teachers’ beliefs changed during
their three years of teacher education program, especially in their beliefs about

classroom teaching pedagogy. This suggests that the pre-service teacher education
indeed has some influence on student teachers’ pedagogical beliefs that tend to be
dominant in their practices after they joined the teaching practicum that is a part of

the program during which student teachers work as intern teachers in local schools.
Most novice teachers first start their first teaching practice during the practicum

when they learned about teaching, pedagogy and curriculum from experienced

teachers. Guo and Wang (2009) launched a case study to interview a pre-service
student teacher’s experience during a teaching practicum. As a result, her beliefs

about teaching were in large part formed during her time at the teacher preparation

program and went through changes after teaching in real classroom settings. The

teachers’ experience in practicum was divided into two phases, including the

observation and the practicing. The first process gave her a chance to get to know
about students and the classroom environment while the latter gave her a chance to

practice and modify her teaching beliefs and behavior. During this process, this

novice faced many difficulties in the real teaching context for the first time. For
example, her original beliefs about classroom environment were quite ideal with

students behaving themselves, but the fact that classroom management being more

difficult than she thought it would be forced her to adjust her plans and renewed

her
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beliefs about the classroom. Despite of this, the help from her mentors, lesson
observations and her efforts in finding ways to better know her students through
communication make her more and more experienced in dealing both contextual
and teaching problems, and her improvement further changed her previous beliefs
about EFL teaching and students.
Yuan and Lee (2014) acknowledged several stages of change in student
teachers’ beliefs during the practicum, which was categorized as confirmation,
realization, disagreement, elaboration, integration and modification, which are also
observed in Li’s (2016) study of pre-service teachers who have been through the
practicum. These teachers held certain beliefs about teaching before practicum, and
teachers would actively modify their previous understandings of teaching practice
based on their observation of experienced teachers’ classroom practices and on the
reflection of their own teaching experiences. And the modification includes
confirmation of some of previous beliefs and objection of those that don’t fit the
real context. This was proved by Zhang (2013) and Jiang (2013). Through
questionnaires and interviews with pre-service teachers that their previous English
learning experience, courses in teacher education programs and teaching practicum
impacted the way in which student teachers think about teaching. By analyzing
participants’ working diary, Gao (2011) inferred the beliefs of student teachers of
high school English and concluded that student teachers’ previous learning
experience formed their original beliefs about teaching. Teachers’ experiences
during the teaching practicum changed some of their originally formed beliefs, and
strengthened those beliefs that suit the teaching context.

Although the novice come to their work place with beliefs that have been
formed through their previous experience with students in practicum, facing the
real teaching context is much more complicated. These primary pedagogical
beliefs, which are formed in a quite ideal teaching context where everything goes
smoothly according to plan with students’ perfect cooperation, were sometimes in
contrast to the realities in the classroom, resulting in the so called “reality shock”

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that is

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mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. As Gatbonton (2008) claimed that
although teacher training programs and past teaching experience during practicum
help form primary beliefs of the novice (Gatbonton 1999), they still need more
experience with the context to better implement what they believe about teaching in
real classroom teaching practices. In other words, what they believed before
officially become teachers are not always appropriate for the real teaching context
and will be modified by contextual factors, including size of school, subject,
workload, teachers’ interpersonal relationship with others and student
characteristics, etc. (Guo 2008).
In conclusion, what teachers have learned back in teacher preparation
programs allow them to know about latest teaching theories, and during the
teaching practicum, they learned and imitated experienced teachers, which helped
improve their teaching skills in the real teaching context.

2.3 Research on Teachers’ Beliefs and Working Environment

Believing that beginning years are particularly formative for continued

professional growth and the formation of teachers’ beliefs, Watzke (2007) inquired

how beginning teachers’ knowledge of pedagogy developed during the first few
years of teaching. It indicated that their understanding of approaches to instruction

was gradually modified by reflecting on their own practices specific to the in-service

classroom context. Contextual factors, including students’ language proficiency,

classroom management, teaching schedule and student-teacher relationship, exerted

influence on how they know and believe about classroom teaching and learning.

Qualitative studies on ESL teachers in China have proved that teachers’ teaching

practices are generally guided by pedagogical beliefs already formed, but may vary

during their teaching process (Zhang, Liu 2013; Guo, Wang 2009; Tan 2007; Lou,

Liao 2005; Zheng, Borg 2013). Both Lou and Liao (2005) and Tan (2007) found out

in their studies of university teachers that their classroom practices were generally

in accordance with their beliefs about teaching and learning, but were still a little

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different from what they originally believe. Reasons for this were mainly time
constraints in class, students’ misbehavior, teachers’ lack of teaching motivation,
pressure from high-stake testing and school policies, etc. Zhang and Liu (2013)
studied secondary school English teachers’ beliefs in the context of curriculum
reform in China. The questionnaire and interview were carried out from four
aspects: teachers’ beliefs about pedagogy, about grammar and language form,
about resources and about students’ roles. As results suggested, the constructivism-
oriented curriculum reform was generally accepted by these secondary school
English teachers; in other words, these teachers believed that student participation
and interactive learning could bring more energy and dynamism to English classes.
However, when it came to different teaching contexts, teachers tended to swift back
to the traditional teacher-centered teaching method. This was believed to be
influenced by several contextual factors, such as pressure from high school entrance
examination, different language proficiency of students, school types and traditional
culture values. In China, the Confucian tradition favors a teacher-centered
classroom practice, and this exerts great influence on teachers’ beliefs about
pedagogy and student roles in the classroom. Besides, considering a more practical
reason that high-stakes testing (high school entrance examination) mainly measure
students’ linguistic knowledge rather than linguistic skills, teachers are more likely
to emphasize drill and lecturing. Similarly, Zhang and Borg (2014) found out thnt
English language teachers faced challenges when required to move from a more
traditional one to communicative curricula. In their study of three Chinese
secondary school teachers of English, observational and interview data showed that
all three teachers believed task-based language teaching should be
involved in communicative work, in pairs or groups, with a focus on
speaking. However, when it came to real teaching practices, experienced teachers
seemed more likely to return to traditional teaching method, impacted by their
teaching experience. Besides, contextual factors like the size of the class,
proficiency of students, time constrains, and examinations all reduced the extent of
their implication of the task-based
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language teaching according to their beliefs, which further supports the viewpoint of

Tabaclinick and Zeichner (1986).

In light of the fact that most participants in studies above work in secondary
schools where specific teaching tasks are not taught separately by different
teachers, it is a question that whether learning tasks play a part in shaping teachers’
pedagogical beliefs. More recent studies further studied teachers’ beliefs in specific

teaching tasks including listening, speaking, reading and writing (Yang 2010; Gao,
Qin 2010; Graus, Coppen 2016; Gao, Liu 2013; Farrel, Ives 2015; Zheng, Borg
2013; Cuayahuitl, Carranza 2015). Participants in these studies are usually
university teachers responsible for different teaching tasks. Both qualitative and
quantitative analysis suggested that though teachers hold different ideas of how to

teach when it comes to different teaching tasks, they all agree that general language

teaching should be student-centered to allow students to proactively learn and

discover. However, this kind of beliefs is sometimes challenged by the teaching

context where factors like school administration, students’ attitudes and level,
teaching tasks, etc. change what teachers originally believed to be important.

Yang (2010) studied university teachers’ beliefs about teaching writing. It is

reported that although most teachers considered writing as a process to discover,

different teachers may vary in their focus in classroom teaching practice, influenced

by their own teaching experiences. Gao and Liu (2013) found out that contextual

factors, such as time constrains, size of the class, and high-stake testing (CET 4), etc.

would drive teachers away from their original teaching beliefs. This was also

confirmed by Cuayahuitl and Carranza (2015) in their study that what happens in

the classroom influenced the way in which teachers used and interpreted textbooks.
Others investigated teachers’ beliefs about grammar teaching (Gao, Qin 2010; Graus,
Coppen 2016). Both these two studies admitted that contextual factors’ influence

teachers’ grammar teaching beliefs. Results indicated that students’ academic

performance and proficiency also influenced teachers’ teaching behavior in the real

context, despite that most teachers believed in communicative teaching, student

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teachers believed it better to choose more traditional form-focused approach to
teach higher-level language learners. In another study of one second language
teacher teaching reading, Farrel and Ives (2015) interviewed him about his opinion
on how reading class should be carried out. Qualitative analysis suggested that
developing students’ reading skills and strategies like scanning and skimming was
the primary aim in his reading class, and group work helped to attribute more time
for active student participation. And same with what he thought, this teacher
assigned various reading tasks to group of students, and encouraged them to solve
the problems by themselves.
From what has been reviewed, it is apparent that teachers’ beliefs about
teaching guides their classroom practices. However, there are still inconsistencies
between their reported beliefs and actual teaching practices, and these
inconsistencies made them to change their beliefs (Guo 2008; Zheng, Jiang 2005;
Zhang, Liu 2011). Guo (2008) concluded that contextual factors including teaching
reform, school type, size of class, workload, school culture and student
characteristics all impact the development of teacher thinking. Further qualitative
studies support this claim. Zheng and Liu (2005) inferred from teachers’ verbal
reports that teaching reform, high-stake testing, teaching material, school culture
and school administration all played their parts in shaping teachers’ beliefs about
teaching. Another large-scale investigation towards teachers of English in junior
high school suggested that curriculum reform, the school culture, school
management and students’ level influenced teachers’ understanding of second
language teaching and learning (Zhang, liu 2011). A teacher tended to adopt a more
student-centered, flexible teaching method when students have higher level of
English language and when school culture values cooperation and innovation.

Through questionnaires and interviews, previous studies on the influencing

factors of teachers’ beliefs reached an agreement that EFL teachers, especially
student teachers, gained most of their understanding and beliefs about teaching
through teacher preparation programs and teaching practicum. During beginning

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years of teaching, novice teachers’ beliefs are frequently
challenged by realities of classroom teaching contexts. The
real situation is that most students are about average level
and teaching them fundamental knowledge of language is
already difficult, let alone all kinds of unexpected situations
that may lag them behind schedules.
However, these studies are usually general discussions on
the discrepancies between teachers’ beliefs and their classroom
teaching practices and the possible factors that cause this
phenomenon, few has studied from the perspective of
teachers’ self-reflection of their own learning and teaching
processes and how these experiences impact their beliefs.
Besides, most participants in these studies are pre-service
teachers who have just finished their teaching practicum, novice
teachers who have more experience than student teachers but
are less experienced compared with experienced ones have
gained little attention. What’s more, despite that numerous
studies have proved the effectiveness of teacher preparation
programs, the influence of the learning experience of those EFL
teacher who haven’t been to any such programs has been
neglected. In this case, this study will launch a narrative
study of how novice teachers’ previous learning experience
and teaching experiences during the beginning years shape
their beliefs.

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