A Narrative Inquiry Into Novice English Teachers' Identity Formation In Junior Middle Schools

Various approaches have been adopted in studies on teachers' professional development, among which the ideology about the nature of teaching as a state of being, not merely as a way of acting or behaving arouses reconsideration of the nature of the teaching field. Many researchers put forward that the initial teaching period is crucial to a novice teacher's career life, as it is a process of his or her being socialized in the professional context, namely, merging into the school, professional framework and social structure. This phase might evolve into two scenes:some teachers enter the capability-establishing stage, manifesting the openness and vigor, and becoming proficient in teaching; while other teachers become complacent, conservative and lack of enthusiasm. Most of my former classmates in the university are teaching as novice teachers now. Their professional life quality has been my great concern. Therefore, I stepped into the site, trying to explore what conflicts they might experience between expectations and teaching reality, what professional identities are constructed as well as influential factors in their professional identity construction. My research is to trace to the source along the journey of inquiry, aiming at describing and explaining novice teachers'growth in the professional environment. The increasingly glamorous qualitative research methodology adopted in this study enables the researcher to step into novice teachers'life world to find and construct a kind of exploration, of which the story is to uncover the mysterious veils and present educational soul. This sort of description and explanation is a kind of humanistic care for novice teachers themselves, and also a sensible reminder for personnel components in this professional environment.The researcher employs Borich's (1999) theory of sense of self, Wenger & Vallacher's (1986) action identification theory, and Gee's (2000) systematic functional grammar as theoretical frameworks. Narrative inquiry and case story method are adopted as the research methodology in the study. The participants consist of the researcher's three female friends who are now teaching as beginning English teachers in three distinctive junior middle schools. The data collection period lasts for one year, during which the researcher stepped into their schools to understand their growth experiences by means of on-the-spot observation, conversation, teaching diaries and other ways of data collection.With the mainstream line of these three novice teachers'growth course, the study constitutes several vivid narrative stories of their initial adaptation to school teaching and their following growth experiences. Taking these stories as a starting point, the researcher first analyzes conflicts they experience in relationship with others and in their teaching practice. Then five dimensions of sense of self are drawn from the narrative stories, which conclude that these novice teachers develop their professional identities as a role-player rather than a role-taker, a seeker for their own teacher authority and a follower of existed authoritarian regulations in the professional context. Besides, the influence of internal factors, i.e. teachers' personalities, teaching beliefs and their sense of self; and external factors, i.e. profession culture, teaching (learning) community and stimulus to further exertion, on the process of their professional identity construction are stated in the discussion part.After the analysis and discussion, implications are put forward both for novice teachers themselves, i.e. to communicate with others as often as possible, to pre-plan their professional development and to generate a clear perception of self; and for others in the professional context, i.e. to establish a supportive school culture, to provide support and assistance in the learning community.