A Sociocultural Analysis of Novice EFL Teachers’ Professional Development Activities

Document Type : Research article

Author
L. Pham Hoai Huong
University of Foreign Languages and International Studies, Hue University, 57 Nguyen Khoa Chiem, Hue city, Vietnam
10.48311/LRR.14.3.97
Abstract
This sociocultural theory-based study investigates how professional development activities mediated novice EFL teachers in their teaching careers. Four volunteer novice teachers in their two-year probation time participated in the study. Each novice teacher wrote a narrative every month in a semester and was interviewed at the beginning and end of that semester. Data from all the narratives and interviews disclose that the institutional context with much teaching workload, mandatory research, and involvement in administration-related work provide the affordances for the novice teachers to internalize their understanding of the duties of English lecturers and drive to practice those duties. Besides, the professional development activities in teaching, researching and others are reported to lead to growth in the understanding, experience as well as confidence level of novice teachers. From the findings, implications are put forward to how to provide support to mediate the professional growth of early-career teachers.


Keywords

Subjects

Ashton, K. (2020). Novice teacher agency in the multi-level language classroom.Language, Culture and Curriculum, 1-15. doi:10.1080/07908318.2020.1818766
Chen, C. W. Y., & Cheng, Y. S. (2014). Learning from team teaching and beyond: A case study on EFL teachers' professional development. Journal of Pan-Pacific Association of Applied Linguistics, 18(1), 33 - 47.
Cirocki, A., & Farrell, T. S. (2019). Professional development of secondary school EFL teachers: Voices from Indonesia. System, 85, 102111. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2019.102111
Eksi, G. Y., & Gungor, M. N. (2018). Exploring the use of narratives to understand pre-service teachers' practicum experiences from a sociocultural perspective. Australian Journal of Teacher Education (Online), 43(4), 159-174. http://dx.doi.org/10.14221/ajte.2018v43n4.9
Farrell, T. S. (2012). Novice‐service language teacher development: Bridging the gap between preservice and in‐service education and development. Tesol Quarterly, 46(3), 435-449. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.36
Golombek, P., & Doran, M. (2014). Unifying cognition, emotion, and activity in language teacher professional development. Teaching and Teacher Education, 39, 102-111. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2014.01.002
Golombek, P. R., & Johnson, K. E. (2004). Narrative inquiry as a mediational space: Examining emotional and cognitive dissonance in second-language teachers’ development. Teachers and Teaching, 10(3), 307–327. doi:10.1080/1354060042000204388
Huang, J., Wang, Y., & Teng, F. (2021). Understanding changes in teacher beliefs and identity formation: A case study of three novice teachers in Hong Kong. Teaching Education, 32(2), 193-207. https://doi.org/10.1080/10476210.2019.1693535
Jiang, Y. (2017). A study on professional development of teachers of English as a foreign language in institutions of higher education in Western China. Springer.
Johnson, K. E. (2009). Second language teacher education: A sociocultural perspective. Routledge
Johnson, K. E., & Golombek, P. R. (2020). Informing and transforming language teacher education pedagogy. Language Teaching Research, 24(1), 116-127. i1.o0r.g1/107.171/1773/612361261868188187777539
Mackey, A., & Gass, S. M. (2015). Second language research: Methodology and design. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Mohammadi, M., & Moradi, K. (2017). Exploring Change in EFL Teachers' Perceptions of Professional Development. Journal of Teacher Education for Sustainability, 19(1), 22-42. 10.1515/jtes-2017-0002
Merriam, S. B. (2009). Qualitative research: A guide to design and implementation. Jossey-Bass.
Osterling, J. P., & Webb, W. (2009). On becoming a bilingual teacher: A transformative process for preservice and novice teachers. Journal of Transformative Education, 7(4), 267-293. 10.1177/1541344610386470
Ridwan, A. (2019). A Vygotsky’s sociocultural approach to understanding pre-service English teachers for professional development. SELL Journal: Scope of English Language Teaching, Linguistics, and Literature, 4(2), 138-145.
Sariyildiz, G. (2017). Novice and experienced teachers’ perceptions towards self-initiated professional development, professional development activities and possible hindering factors. International Journal of Language Academy, 5(5), 248-260. http://dx.doi.org/10.18033/
Shi, H. (2017). The theoretical interpretation of EFL teacher's professional development from the perspective of sociocultural theory. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 7(11), 1059-1064. http://dx.doi.org/10.17507/tpls.0711.14
Tasker, T., Johnson, K. E., & Davis, T. S. (2010). A sociocultural analysis of teacher talk in inquiry-based professional development. Language Teaching Research, 14(2), 129-140. 10.1177/1362168809353871
Tavil, Z. M., & Güngör, M. N. (2017). A sociocultural perspective on the development of Turkish pre-service teachers’ competences and qualifications. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 25(2), 263-277. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14681366.2016.1252788
Vygotsky, L. S.(1978). Mind in society: Development of higher psychological processes. Harvard university press.
White, C. (2018). Language teacher agency. In S. Mercer, & A. Kostoulas (Eds.), Language teacher psychology (pp. 196 -209). Channel View Publications.
Language Related Research
Volume 14, Issue 3 - Serial Number 75
July and August 2023
Pages 97-121