Abstract:

The first year of the professional activity at school often becomes a challenge for the novice teacher, which determines further career prospects. The lack of professional experience, knowledge, and abilities, problems in relation to children, their parents, school community members and administration turn into one of the main problems that make teachers who have started their career decide to leave school or change the nature of their career. The ability to learn from one’s own and others’ experiences, reflection and giving a sense to personal experience ensure more successful consequences of adaptation in the profession. It is relevant that as early as while studying, future teachers should acquire learning to learn abilities, which are among the essential skills of experiential learning in ensuring their successful transfer into professional activities, working with children. Based on the said essential insights on the importance of learning experiences lived by novice teachers at the beginning of their personal careers at school, the following problem questions are formulated: How do novice teachers learn from their experience in the initial stage of their professional activity? What are the main sources of knowledge from which teachers gain experience? What are the main problems and lack of knowledge, having started to work as a teacher?

The research aim is to reveal trends of experiential learning manifestation of novice teachers at school.

The study involved 54 novice teachers who have worked at school for up to 3 years. Teachers from all Lithuanian higher education institutions who volunteered to participate in the study were surveyed. At the time of the survey, all study participants were studying at the higher education institution to acquire the teacher’s qualification or doing an internship in education. Data were collected employing a written survey that involved teachers starting their career at school, using an open-ended type questionnaire. Applying the data content analysis method, the study presents the analysis of answers provided in duly and exhaustively completed questionnaires filled in by 32 teachers.

The content analysis of teachers’ subjective experiences highlighted essential gaps in knowledge and information at the beginning of their professional careers. It revealed the lack of psychological knowledge in relation to children and colleagues, insufficient knowledge in choosing classroom management and planning, behaviour and teaching methods while working with children who have special educational needs. The main sources of teachers’ learning are traditional: search for information using computer technologies, studying of literature, formal seminars for professional development. Teachers also name self-evaluation as a source of learning, learning from colleagues’ experiences, reflection, but this is not as common in their practice as long-established although not always serving the purpose and requiring less effort sources and ways of learning.

The obtained research results reveal novice teachers’ learning to learn experiences as opportunities to pay attention to the areas of the learning to learn competency to be improved at school, creating and modelling more effective conditions for a successful process of adaptation in the profession. The results are also useful for developers of teacher education study programmes in higher education, seeking to include what is relevant and significant for teachers themselves at the start of their professional careers at school in the teacher education curriculum.

Keywords:

Novice teachers, learning, experiential learning, professional career, manifestation.