Study On The Role Of Significant Others In Professional Development Of Novice Teachers

Novice teachers are coming force teachers who bear an important mission of training motherland successors. Successful professional development of novice teachers plays a major role in the growth of our educational team, more importantly determines whether the training career of our future generations is successful or not. Novice teachers are "teaching novices" who are in the early stages of professional development. They harbor strong motivation, however poor independence in their professional development. Interaction with and help from others have an important influence and role in professional development of novice teachers. In this study, by researching on the important others of novice teachers’ professional development we aim to identify the significant others in promoting the professional development of novice teachers, present the real early school life experience of novice teachers: their experience of the hardships and desire of development, and potential resources and help from significant others to novice teachers’ professional growth. Our study will provide a reference in professional development for upcoming becoming or has become a novice teacher.In this study, qualitative research methods were applied on novice teachers with under 3 years teacher experience by stratified sampling method to extract from various disciplines. We interviewed two teachers each in 0-1 years, 1-2 years, 2-3 years of teaching experience and 6 total. We carried out participant observation in 2 of the novice teachers and interviewed the staff around them to simply gather information and analyzed data by situational analysis and generic analysis methods. In our study we found that the presence of significant others of following types in novice teachers’ professional development: school principals, academic leaders, members of the teaching and research as well as teaching students, who were to play the following roles in the novice teachers’ professional growth: the professional route planners, professional development pacemaker, professional development partner, professional development wind vane.