Does this teacher’s description of how they felt when they first started teaching ring any bells for you?

It sounds as if this teacher may not have started teaching directly after their initial teacher preparation course, in which case the gap they refer to is chronological. Time away made them feel disconnected and less able to apply their training directly to classroom. This, however, is not the only kind of challenging “gap” experienced by novices moving from trainee to teacher, and it is certainly not the most profound kind. Gaps, obstructions, detours, and dead-ends abound. No matter how superficially seamless the transition into our first classrooms might appear, “the deep end” rightly intimidates all and truly browbeats many. Must it be so difficult? What can be done to help?

Article

Farrell, Thomas S. C. (2012) Novice-Service Language Teacher Development: Bridging the Gap Between Preservice and In-Service Education and Development. TESOL Quarterly 46(3) p435-449. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.36

This is the introductory article of TESOL Quarterly’s 2012 Special Issue on “Novice Professionals in TESOL”. TESOL Quarterly and other ELT journals regularly publish special issues focused on a single, specific topic such as teaching young learners, pronunciation, or critical pedagogy. These special issues can provide useful ‘deep dives’ into particular areas of concern for teachers and others (perhaps making them prime candidates for expanded open access?). The issue at hand, edited by Farrell, brings together five articles, two brief reports, and a forum paper all on the topic of the novice professional in TESOL.

Summary

As the editor’s introduction to a special issue this article does not report and discuss the results of a research study, unlike most articles summarized on this site. Instead, it asserts (in general terms) the importance of further research into novice teachers and (in some more depth) calls for “bridging the gap between pre-service education and in-service development” through various means in order to better support language teachers in their challenging first years and reduce high teacher attrition levels in the field.

Reasons for novice teacher struggle, burnout, and attrition

• the “reality shock” experienced when teaching approaches from their preservice courses appear to lack applicability and efficacy in real classrooms
• institutional resistance to teaching approaches that are unfamiliar and/or construed as divergent
• distress and disappointment resulting from inadequate preparation for the complexity of their dual task: simultaneously teaching effectively and effectively learning to teach (outside of the structured practicum environment)
• the unfortunate fact that, as Farrell puts it, “it seems that supportive environments are the exception rather than the rule” and “too often, novice teachers are left to survive on their own”
• the experience of facing the same challenges as their more experienced colleagues in all aspects of the work (lesson planning, lesson delivery, classroom management, identity development, etc.) in the absence of sufficient guidance or assistance from their institutions
• rather suddenly having little to no further contact with their teacher educators/trainers
• following from this lack of contact, the paucity of knowledge about novice teachers’ experiences to inform the practical knowledge base of the language teacher educators preparing them

Ways to “bridge the gap”: addressing these issues and better supporting novice teacher development

• include in teacher preparation programs a course focused on reflective practice for managing the teaching challenges, conflicts and problems initially faced in the first few years of teaching
• actively maintain some form of contact between teacher educators and programs, schools, and novice language teachers during their first years
• arrange more teacher education program–school partnerships (both formal or informal)
• through these arrangements, focus on furnishing teacher educators with increased understanding of the schools, schooling, and social/cultural contexts in which novice teachers will work, teach, and learn
• also through these arrangements, train mentor teachers in how to explain what they know about teaching intuitively/from experience so that they can articulate practical knowledge clearly to novice teachers
• give novice teachers priority in timetabling to allow for meetings with mentors, etc.
• provide guidance to novice teachers on how to build a social support network and employ strategies for developing collegial relationships
• quash unhelpful assumptions that all they must do is apply all the knowledge they accumulated during their teacher preparation programs and all will be well

Takeaway

During a recent temporary stint helping deliver an in-service teacher training course in South Korea I asked my colleague about the extent to which the course’s graduates were able to successfully implement what they’d learned on the course back in their classrooms. Beyond keeping up personal social contacts with some of them, she told me, there was actually no way of knowing the answer to my question. The program does nothing to follow up with its graduates. No delayed feedback on post-course experience/attempts to apply training is collected, nor is any meaningful further support offered after the final day of the program. Upon hearing this I felt somewhat disappointed…but certainly not shocked. This was because the same thing is generally true at every one of the teacher training program sites I’d worked in and around previously, and also true in my own past experience as a teacher graduating from teacher training and preparation programs whether as a novice or further down the road.

The above is just some of the supportive anecdotal evidence from personal experience that I was immediately reminded of when I read this article, and why I found myself nodding my head in recognition at several points. Of course, more comprehensive and concrete answers to the question of just how second language teacher programs could help “bridge gaps” between pre- and in-service teacher learning and support novice teacher development more effectively are not in the purview of this short introductory article. It is also clear to me that if that teacher educators are to “maintain closer contact with novice teachers than they typically do, or are required to do, after the novices have started teaching”, some relatively dramatic changes in design and significant shifting of resources would likely be required. There is definitely no “insta-bridge” to successfully span this distance.

This brings me to a final thought: the idea that too many articles fail to deliver clear, conclusive takeaways is among the many reasons teachers sometimes express skepticism and/or cynicism about reading ELT academic journals. In response, I’d like to suggest that articles such as this one can serve other worthwhile functions. One of these is to eloquently and compellingly articulate questions for inquiry and thus serve as models for teachers to do the same (in their own fashion). Another is to provide what I might call “fruitful fodder for reflection”. One type of “reflective fodder” I particularly like and (happily) find extremely common in many ELT articles is the “juicy quote”: succinct and precise lines (or cluster of lines) from the published literature cited to support and elaborate on the author’s argument. These short quotes, selected carefully from expansive literature reviews, are often marked by their evocative vividness, and it’s this quality which also:

1) makes it easy to recognize one’s personal/private experiences in them (sometimes almost startlingly so), contributing to a sense of being understood or “seen”

2) explains why they can sometimes supply quite richly salient and memorable language with which to name and rename hard-to-describe events and experiences

3) helps them serve well as densely meaning-packed “kōans” or provisional maxims for ongoing reflective examination

For me, this article supplied one such quote:

(If that were a tweet it’d get lots of likes and retweets from the ELT set. And for not-at-all superficial reasons!).

Reflection/Discussion Questions

1. Is/was your experience as a novice teacher reflected in the description here? What specific aspects seem most worth attention?
2. Have you seen any of the gaps Farrell mentions being successfully bridged in contexts you are familiar with? How did these efforts compare to Farrell’s suggestions here?
3. Do you think the general state of novice teacher support in ELT changed since this article was written (2012)? How or how not?
4. What topic(s) would you most like to read a special issue journal on?
5. What does a ‘reflective’ approach to reading ELT academic journals mean to you? Do you find ‘life’ and inspiration in academic journals?

References:

Johnson, K. E. (1996). The vision versus the reality: The tensions of the TESOL practicum. In D. Freeman & J. Richards (Eds.), Teacher learning in language teaching (pp. 30–49). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Senior, R. M. (2006). The Experience of Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.