Beginning Teachers in India

Abstract

ABSTRACT newline Novice teacher is relatively a new category of a stage in teacher development newline that are barely into about five years of teaching. The first few years of teaching of newline beginning teaching is an intense and formative time in learning to teach. At a point newline when mentoring during induction is globally considered as essential to novice teachers newline in several countries, in India, there is no specific categorization of a class of novice newline teacher . They are either grouped as pre-service student teachers or in-service working newline teachers. Studies show the limitations in pre-service education to fully equip the newline beginning teacher to take on all responsibilities which an experienced teacher does. In newline India we find that through the policies and institutions the need based professional newline support is strongly recommended, however, the responsibility to establish one s newline identity as a teacher is left to the individual s intuition which is considered to develop newline on its own over time. newline While on one hand several initiatives towards teacher professional support is newline offered in India, there are no systematic interventions which are exclusively need based newline offered to beginning teachers. Hence, this felt need to understand if the requirements newline and needs of beginning teachers are different and distinctive. Given the highly stratified newline system of the education system and Indian society, there is a need to understand the newline problems and needs of this unique group of beginning teachers and analyse if they can newline be called novice teachers. While there are studies which confirm distinct phases of newline teacher development as highlighted in various theories of teacher development, the key newline question that guided this study was to explore whether the similar global novice newline category is relevant even in Indian context or not. newline This study was an attempt to conduct a qualitative in-depth study of beginning newline teachers to gain a more informed understanding of beginning teachers in their first newline five years of experience in a selected few schools in Karnataka, in India. Towards this newline end, using in-depth interviews and classroom observations of 25 beginning teachers newline representing different geographical distribution- rural urban, semi-urban and appointed newline in different school managements, a more informed understanding of the beginning newline teachers was obtained. newline xviii newline It became apparent from the teachers that rather than leaving them to figure out newline for themselves on how to navigate themselves during initial stages, they seek handholding newline until they learn all the nuances of the profession irrespective of the school newline managements-government, private and religious missionary schools where they are newline initiated into full time teaching. The results did show that not only novice category newline exists but also that the novice ness is of different kinds and takes unique forms as and newline when the individual is expected to encounter new challenges that crop up in the newline dynamic system of education. newline This exploration of the concerns, the precise requirements and of the newline characteristics of initial phase of beginning teachers in India is essential to inform the newline efforts that go into the in-service trainings, the pre-service programs and the nature of newline practice teaching and internship phase to ensure implementation of training ideas for newline achieving the desired outcomes. newline