The Novice Teacher Experience

Abstract

Many teacher educators, teachers, students, administrators, and even novice teachers themselves assume that once novice teachers have graduated, they will be able to apply what they have learned in teacher-preparation programs during their first year of teaching. However, the transition from the teacher-education program to the first year of teaching has been characterized as a type of “reality shock” (Veenman 1984: 143); the ideals that novice teachers may have formed during the teacher-education program are often replaced by the realities of the social and political contexts of the school. One reason may be that teacher education programs are unable to reproduce environments similar to those teachers face when they graduate. Consequently, many novice teachers are left to cope on their own in a “sink-or-swim” situation (Varah, Theune, and Parker 1986). This chapter examines the challenges that novice second language teachers face in their first years in the classroom and outlines how these challenges can be addressed in language teacher education to better prepare novice teachers for the delicate transition from the teacher-education program to the first year of teaching. It first defines what is meant by the novice teacher and then discusses the topics of learning to teach, and the influences and challenges novice teachers that face during their first year.