A Study On Classroom Teaching Principles And Intentions Of The Novice University English Language Teachers

As the great increase in the recruitment of universities and colleges students continues, the number of novice teachers in universities and colleges is rising rapidly, and actually they are at the crucial beginning phase of their professional development. As any improvement or innovation in classroom teaching practice has to be accommodated within the teacher’s own understanding of teaching, conducting research on them to identify and understand the novice teachers’ own constructions of their classroom teaching is a precondition for their improvement in teaching.This study aims to investigate a group of novice university English teachers’ classroom teaching practices, with a particular focus on identifying the principles and intentions that underpin their teaching and figuring out the similarities as well as differences between them, the ways teaching principles influence their actions, and discussing the methods to enhance their teaching.As a qualitative study, this research adopted multi-cases approach. The three participants with a maximum teaching experience of three years varying in age and educational background were enrolled from Wuhan University Luojia College. Data were collected through class observation and follow-up interviews. During the observations, the researcher took detailed notes of each observed lesson in the form of running account, which served as prompts for the follow-up interviews with the three participants about their observed practices. The results of this study present the features of three novice teachers’ classroom teaching as mainly adopting didactic and teacher-centered approach, maintaining a clear focus of the lesson and infusing positive emotional factors. Data analyses reveal that the rationales of each novice teacher can be explained within a pattern of teaching principles and intentions. By cross-case analysis, it is found that each participant has a primary objective of her classroom teaching, labeled as the guiding principle. In order to achieve the objective, each one has some essential notion as the main principles, and a set of intentions explaining their specific actions. The research also reveals that although their teaching principles and intentions are based on held beliefs and their perceptions of the teaching context, there still exist a gap between intentions and realities, including the gap between novice teachers’ own perception of good teaching practices and what is actually good for students according to their own needs and university’s requirements, and the gap between their intentions to adhere to their teaching beliefs and the failure in internalization and implementation, which results from a lack of professional skills and ecological knowledge.The findings of the study carry important implications for enhancing novice teachers’ classroom teaching and professional development. For novice teachers, in teaching they should enhance positive emotion, articulation and collaborative reflection. And some suggestions for teacher educators and mentors are also included. Mentors need to be aware of the personal and ecological dimension in the process, with a counseling attitude and skills, as well as an extended pedagogical content knowledge base to help the novice to reflect and so to develop valuable craft knowledge and skills in teaching.