A Comparative Study On Beginning Teacher's Induction Between Chinese And American Elementary And Secondary Schools

Teacher education,not only includes the pre-service training and in-service training,but also the key “bridge” between them—beginning teacher's induction.For beginning teachers,induction is an important stage for their career development.For beginning teachers who have just entered school,whether they could overcome the difficulties,and successfully transfer from the role of student to the role of teacher,which directly affect their teachers' professional identity and the persistence to pursue their career.If they can't get through this stage,teachers may choose to leave and consider another career,which will result in the loss of teacher resources.The loss of high-quality teachers is bound to affect the construction of teaching staff in the whole country.The United States is one of the first countries in the world to implement beginning teacher's induction in elementary and secondary schools,and has accumulated rich experience.However,our country is still in the early stage of the beginning teacher's induction in elementary and secondary schools,and all aspects are still to be advised.Therefore,this paper compares and contrasts the beginning teacher's induction in elementary and secondary schools with the New Haven Unified School District in California,U.S and Xinxiang city of Henan Province in our country,aiming to explore delete the similarities and differences in beginning teacher's induction between Chinese and American elementary and secondary schools in the concrete implementation,and to introduce some valuable experience of the beginning teacher's induction in American elementary and secondary schools to our country.Literature review,questionnaire and interview are applied in this study.First of all,the paper teases out the New Haven Unified School District's induction by collecting and sorting through literature.Then,102 beginning teachers randomly are selected form 6 primary and secondary schools in Xinxiang city of Henan Province to participate in the questionnaire survey,at the same time,11 of them are interviewed.The investigation covers effective classroom teaching organization,the received induction,and the forms of mentor's filtrating and their mentoring,etc.Finally,the inductions of the New Haven Unified School District are compared and contrasted with those of Xinxiang city of Henan Province,including the implementation of contents,implementing forms,relevant policies and documents and so on.The major findings of the study are: First,the top-down educational reform and the mentor-based instructional system are nearly the same in both countries.While the differences lie in: The formulation of national laws and regulations;The settings of the induction's contents;The selection and cultivation of mentors;The government's input and supervision of education funds.Next,in order to improve the beginning teacher's induction,China has to:(1)build the beginning teacher's induction policy of our country's elementary and secondary schools in the form of law;(2)help beginning teachers in elementary and secondary schools to build there own “Individual Induction Plan”;(3)focus on the filtrating and training of mentors;(4)strengthen the financial support and supervision of induction.