The last chapter of the present study was composed of four sections. The first section encompassed extensive discussions about the possible factors that contributed to the participants’ reality shock and the problems that the participants had been confronted with throughout the first year of teaching. The second section probed into the coping strategies that the participants adopted and the support they received to overcome the problems. More emphasis would be put on the potential factors that determined the effectiveness of the support. The subsequent section was the implication of the present study, which was demonstrated from the dimensions of teacher education institutes, future teachers, and the faculty and administrators of the school. The last two sections pinpointed the limitations of the present study and displayed potential directions of future research on the issues of reality shock.
Reality Shock: Problems and Causes
According to the results of the present study, the problems that the participants had encountered in their initial year of teaching could be approximately categorized into four themes, including (1) not having sufficient time to accomplish things at hands, (2) being unskillful in planning for effective instruction, (3) having difficulty in managing the class, and (4) being emotionally influenced by the students’ reactions in class. In the subsequent subsections, detailed inspection of the causes of reality shock and the incidents that contributed to the participants’ reality shock would be made, and the findings of the present study would be compared and contrast thoroughly with the findings of the reviewed research.
Not Having Sufficient Time
Researchers such as Hebert and Worthy (2001) once implied that the problems of classroom management were considered the most challenging to novice teachers in their first years of teaching. However, judging from the findings of the present study, not having sufficient time was recognized not only as the most critical problem by all the participants, but was also one of the major causes that lead to their instructional difficulties. Based on the findings of the present study, it is undoubtedly that novice teachers, in comparison with the experienced teachers, need more time to adapt to the school context and familiarize themselves with the teaching careers and their students.
Moreover, since all the participants came from places other than Greater Taipei area, they needed more time to get used to their new life in Taipei. The following excerpt presented the predicament that Ronda faced when accommodating to her new life in New Taipei City during the first month of the fall semester.
I was extremely exhausted after a long day in school. After work, I had to spend around an hour going back to my aunt’s home where I temporarily lived in order to save money. Because my aunt was mildly physically challenged, I had to prepare meals after I got home. Usually, there was not so much time left after dinner. Even if I had time, I might not have energy to prepare for my teaching.
To be honest, the first few weeks after the semester began were really tough to me. (Ronda, July 20, 2017)
The unexpected and last-minute assignment of tasks was another factor that accounts for the problem of not having sufficient time. Among all the participants, Ronda and Lily received the notification of their assigned duties merely a week before the semester began, which was different from their anticipation in advance. It not only enhanced their anxiety over the beginning of the semester but also had a negative effect on their teaching preparation. Due to the incident, Lily did not even have sufficient time to design her own teaching materials in time and had to borrow them from her friends. On the contrary, since Merlin had already known his assigned duties early on in summer, he had ample time to prepare for his instruction and hence
experienced relatively less reality shock after the semester began.
Some former studies (e.g., Veenman, 1984; Farrell, 2003; Bickmore, 2013) indicated that novice teachers tended to be given difficult tasks in contrast to their experienced colleagues. Slightly different from the indications of the reviewed literature, the present study revealed that the tasks given by the schools were not considered difficult to the participants. Yet, the participants were still consumed by the tasks because they were usually excessive and required considerable time to accomplish. For example, apart from the regular administrative work, Merlin and Lily sacrificed their weekends and the time after work to train their students to participate in Teen Diplomatic Envoys. Even though Ronda was the only participant without administrative duties, she was still requested by the school principal to work as a substitute class advisor of a seventh-grader class for approximately five weeks. The unexpected tasks assignment and the excessive workload not only impeded them from preparing their instruction appropriately but also caused them physical and emotional harm. Lily and Ronda both fell sick at the end of the fall semester. Ronda even became irritable and was unable to manage her class and conduct her instruction as well as she had used to.
In addition, Ronda, Lily, and Angel, who were all substitute teachers, had
experienced the problem of not having enough time to plan for the instruction because of participating in the teacher recruitment tests in the spring semester, which
somewhat affected the quality of their instruction. However, the impact of their teacher identity was relatively mild in comparison with the previously mentioned factors since they had already developed their own routine of instruction and had become familiar with their students’ learning condition through the exploration in the fall semester.
Struggling with What to Teach and How to Teach
The second acute problem that most of the participants had experienced is being unskillful in planning for effective instruction. Four factors were identified that resulted in the problem, including the academic ranking of the school, the practicum experiences, the content of the pre-training courses in teacher education, and the prior teaching experiences of the novice teachers. Betty and Ronda, both teaching in the school with low academic ranking, were discovered to experience extreme reality shock of being unable to plan their instruction appropriately since the English proficiency of their students was beneath their anticipation. The unexpected low English proficiency of their students obstructed their paths to successfully utilize the professional knowledge and teaching experiences that they had acquired from the pre-service training and the practicum, which were primarily about ways to teach students with high academic achievements and English proficiency. Accordingly, it took Ronda and Betty enormous efforts to adjust their lesson objectives. They had to change from preparing slightly challenging materials that expanded their students’
knowledge, to creating useful learning strategies that helped consolidate fundamental knowledge of English, such as the functions of parts of speech and basic structures of an English sentence. The findings of the present study seemed to affirm the
implications of the reviewed literature that the training provided by teacher education institutes still had much room for improvement (Fuller, 1969; Marso & Pigge, 1987;
Farrell, 2012; Correa et al., 2015).
Lily, in spite of teaching in a school with high academic ranking, still
experienced serious reality shock, which was even more intense than Ronda and Betty.
What contributed to the problem persisted in the pre-service training she received and her limited teaching experiences. She constantly mentioned that the pre-service training she received was too theoretical, which was identical with the findings of
Marso and Pigge (1987). Furthermore, the training did not give her ample opportunities to put what she had learned into real practices.
I did not know how a complete lesson is normally conducted until I taught in Lion Boys High School. During teacher education, everything was about theories. I did not have many chances to actually teach on the stage. I was not even given an opportunity to learn how to make a lesson plan! I know it may sound a little bit ridiculous, but it is true. (Lily, July 21, 2017)
Intriguingly, when asked about the impact of personal practicum experiences on the prevention of reality shock, most of the participants cast doubt on its practicality and usefulness. Lily mentioned that her opportunities to teach on stage were few, and she felt that the way her students perceived her during the practicum was different since she was just a student teacher. Merlin and Angel believed that whether the outcome of practicum is propitious or not depended largely on advisors’ commitment. In other words, if advisors were not devoted enough to instructing their student teachers, the effectiveness of practicum might be limited.
The fact that Lily did not have any prior teaching experiences such as tutoring also intensified her reality shock and led to countless pedagogical problems. She appeared to be a toddler in comparison with the rest of the participants, still learning things that should have been acquired in the per-service stage. Therefore, her
pedagogical content knowledge, which Richards (1998) contended to be the most crucial type of professional knowledge of teachers, was relatively deficient compared to the rest of the participants. It provides a possible explanation of why Lily was the only participant who was still struggling to develop a systematic teaching routine in the spring semester while the other participants had already established their own in the fall semester and moved on to refine it during the spring semester.
Merlin and Angel, in contrast to the rest of the participants, did not seem to experience intense reality shock resulting from instructional difficulties because of the
following reasons. First of all, the level of English proficiency of their students is akin to that of the students they had during practicum since the schools where they worked previously and subsequently have similar academic rankings. In other words, the high resemblance between their former and current teaching experiences helped Merlin and Angel to be conscious of the ways to arrange their instruction. The following excerpt from one of Merlin’s interviews may be viewed as a powerful testimony to the significance of the school’s academic rankings.
I am very lucky to work in a school that has a similar academic ranking to the one that I worked during my practicum. Therefore, I can copy and paste what I have learned in the past to what I am dealing with now. If I unfortunately happened to work in a school with low academic ranking, I might undergo similar difficulties as Ronda and Betty did and constantly feel overwhelmed by reality shock.” (Merlin, July 18, 2017)
Secondly, they both had abundant teaching experiences during the pre-service phase. Merlin had been tutoring since undergraduate, and had once taught in cram school. Likewise, Angel had also been tutoring since undergraduate, and had taught as a part time teacher after her practicum for a few months in the senior high school where she graduated. Their rich teaching experiences are believed to promote the development of their pedagogical content knowledge, which enable them to make suitable decisions and adjustment when encountering instructional difficulties and prevent them from experiencing drastic reality shock. The last factor that prevented them from experiencing great reality shock and pedagogical problems is the year of the students they taught. The students that Merlin and Angel taught were in their first year while those taught by Ronda and Lily were in their second year. In general, the content difficulty of the textbook used by the first year students is relatively easier than the one used by the second year student. Consequently, Merlin and Angel might bear fewer burdens compared to the rest of the participants while devising lesson
plans and be less likely to confront instructional challenges.
Struggling to Manage the Class
As formerly addressed, even though some of the participants in the present study were confronted with the problem of classroom management, it was not severe
enough to cause them strong reality shock. Based on the findings of the present study, Ronda and Lily appeared to suffer from more problems of classroom management than Merlin and Angel. The possible reasons might be related to the characteristics of the school contexts, strictness of the class advisors, the year and English proficiency level of the students, and the participants’ personality and teaching belief.
The main reason for Ronda’s difficulty lies in the students’ low motivation to learn, which has something to do with the academic interest of the students and the low academic ranking of the school. Generally speaking, it has been a common phenomenon in Taiwan that students in the science track tend to have lower
motivation to learn English than those who are in the liberal arts track. Since both of Ronda’s classes are in the science track, the students are very likely to have low motivation to learn English. Moreover, due to the low academic ranking of the school, the students in general tend to have low level of English proficiency and academic achievement, which may reduce their self-confidence and turn them to become less willing to participate in class.
Struggling with the same problem of classroom management as Ronda did, however, the cause of Lily’s difficulties seemed to vary profoundly, which was primarily derived from the school’s type. Teaching in a boys’ high school, Lily was found to regularly diverge from what she planned to teach during instruction by her students’ unexpected and somehow obscene responses, which was seldom observed in other participants’ classes. Lily even used the analogy of “wild animals” to describe
her students’ behaviors in one of the interviews. The situation was found to be worse in one of her classes, which was assumed to be in relation to their class advisor’s loose classroom management. Under the condition where all of Lily’s students were in the science track, the students from this very class were prone to do things that were irrelevant to English more often, such as playing music instruments quietly, dribbling the basketballs, constantly switching seats with their classmates, and chatting during the class. She had turned to their class advisor for help several times, but the situation still remained chaotic throughout the year. Besides, having high English proficiency levels might also account for the students’ inappropriate
behaviors in class since the content of the textbook might be too easy for them. It was observed numerous times by the researcher that the students were still capable of responding to Lily’s questions correctly even if they were apparently absent-minded.
On the contrary to Ronda and Lily, Merlin and Angel did not seem to encounter serious problems of classroom management, and the reasons might go as follows.
First of all, both Merlin and Angel are good storytellers. That is, they are really good at connecting their personal stories with their targeted teaching objectives to boost their student’s interest in learning. For instance, Merlin would spend considerable time preparing jokes or anecdotes to engage his students. The type of the school is another factor that prevents the problem of classroom management from occurring. In Merlin’s case, after comparing his practicum and current teaching experiences, he discovered that the students in a girls’ high school were more cooperative and obedient than those in a boys’ high school. In addition, students’ cooperativeness might have close connections with the years they enrolled in the school since both Merlin and Angel were assigned to teach students in their first year. Angel in one of the interviews mentioned that the advantage of teaching first year students was that they were easy to be manipulated.
Even though Merlin and Angel did not meet difficulties in disciplining the students, Merlin, unlike Angel, was found to be emotionally affected by the responses of his students easily and frequently. The key may lie in the differences between their teaching beliefs. Merlin was detected to have stronger desires to be recognized by his students as the subsequent excerpt manifested: “Students drive me to work harder in order to overcome the difficulties I met” (Merlin, October 19, 2016). Thus, when he was ignored or could not see his efforts being paid off, he would start to question his competence to teach, which somehow temporarily influenced him to perceive things negatively. Merlin’s case seems to hold a similar view as Ryan (1986), who
maintained that one of the causes of classroom management problem was the failure of novice teachers to win the approval of their students. Different from Merlin, Angel believed that it was the students who should be responsible for the outcomes of their learning. As a result, Angel was able to remain calm when dealing with her students’
misconduct.
Summary
Based on the careful discussion above, it could be inferred that the reality shock of the participants may be aroused from the combination of a series of external and internal factors. The former includes the content of the pre-service training, the type and the academic ranking of the school where they work, the year of the students they teach, the resemblance between their pre-service and in-service teaching experiences, and their teacher identity; while the latter encompasses the abundance of their prior teaching experiences, personalities, and teaching beliefs.
Compared to the internal factors, the external factors were found to carry more weight in determining the outcomes of the participants’ first year teaching
experiences since these factors are uncontrollable and unpredictable. The story of
Merlin can be seen as a perfect example that illustrates how these identified factors have led him to have a smooth start in his career as a high school English teacher. In respect of the problems, the participants seemed to suffer more from the problems of time management and planning for instruction. The impact of the problems of classroom management, excessive administrative duties, and negative emotions appears to be relatively mild.
Coping Strategies
The aim of this section was to delve into the assistance that the participants asked for and received in overcoming the problems and reality shock that they had experienced in the first year of teaching. Identical to the suggestions made by Farrell (2012), the participants in the present study had sought support from multiple sources when coping with their reality shock and difficulties, which could be categorized into seven groups, consisting of the novice teachers themselves, their mentors and
colleagues, classmates from the same teacher education institutes, friends of the same profession, seminars and workshops, students, and family members.
In this section, the discussion was conducted from the aspects of instruction, classroom management, administrative work, affections, and assimilation into the teaching context in order to enhance its comprehensibility. More emphasis would be
In this section, the discussion was conducted from the aspects of instruction, classroom management, administrative work, affections, and assimilation into the teaching context in order to enhance its comprehensibility. More emphasis would be