Novice Teachers’ Professional Identity Reconstruction

Abstract

<p style="text-align: justify;">A transition from pre-service training programs to teaching is a dramatic and somehow painful experience for novice teachers. The question is what difficulties novice teachers face and how they negotiate their professional identity to cope with difficulties and find joys in their career. This study is aimed to investigate novice teachers’ professional identity reconstruction, from their imaged-identities to their practiced identities. The use of semi-structured interviews collected data from four Vietnamese English as a foreign language (EFL) novice teachers. According to the data, cue-based was the most common type of novice teachers’ imagined identity. Regarding the practiced identities, the interviewees reported different professional identity reconstructions in the first five years of teaching practice. The participants’ excerpts enlisted some challenges that the novices faced such as students’ learning attitudes, working environments, or unorganized colleagues. Based on the research findings, some solutions were proposed in order to help novice teachers get through their difficult times at the very beginning of their career.</p>

Shaping identities beyond the classroom: The influence of journal editorship on Vietnamese EFL lecturers’ professional development

“…Vietnam's burgeoning EFL sector has seen a growing need for a comprehensive understanding of the factors that shape the professional identities of its educators. These identities are not static but are continually molded by various roles and experiences that educators undergo in their career trajectory [4][5][6] . The role of a journal editor stands out in this context due to its potential to alter an educator's professional identity significantly.…”