Open AccessTHE PLIGHT OF FIRST-YEAR TEACHERS IN PUBLIC PRIMARY SCHOOLS
Author(s) -
Xiaotian Han,
AUTHOR_ID
Publication year - 2021
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Conference proceedings
DOI - 10.36315/2021end052
Subject(s) - workload , attrition , school teachers , class (philosophy) , competition (biology) , mathematics education , psychology , medical education , pedagogy , computer science , medicine , ecology , dentistry , artificial intelligence , biology , operating system
First-year teachers are teachers who are new to teaching. The number of public school teachers is increasing in many countries and areas. Meanwhile, data also showed that some newly qualified teachers anticipated leaving or already left after the first year teaching. The purpose of the study aims to present a review and synthesize literature regarding the challenges of first-year teachers in public primary schools. Peer-reviewed articles (N=30) are collected from Google Scholar via systematically searching key words “first-year teachers” with one or more of the following terms: challenge, difficulty, attrition, leaving, and public primary schools. The results show first-year teachers meet general challenges listed as below: (a) building a professional teacher identity, (b) applying teaching theories in real class practice, and (c) handling the same heavy teaching loads and responsibilities as experienced teachers. In addition, first-year teachers in Shanghai public primary schools also meet the following challenges: (d) not having enough pre-service teaching programs, (e) facing high competition and a workload, and (f) building positive and stable relationships with parents/administrators. Considering by new qualified teachers’ internal motivation and the external challenge they meet, first-year teachers are overwhelmed in dealing with these imbalances.