COMPARISON OF TEACHING CONCERNS OF BEGINNER AND RE-BEGINNER TEACHERS – DIFFERENCES IN BELIEFS AND ATTITUDES

The list of teaching concerns was assembled by two groups of teachers. One of these contains teachers who are re-beginners, starting their new career at a new school with an unknown and distinct curriculum in another European country, while the other one comprises those teachers who are preparing for helping and supporting traditional beginner and non-traditional re-beginner teachers as professional mentors. I employed different methods to analyse these teaching concerns and highlighted the differences between the beliefs and attitudes of the beginner and re-beginner teachers. Teachers’ beliefs, practices and attitudes are important for understanding and improving educational processes. They are closely linked to teachers’ strategies for coping with challenges in their daily professional life and they shape students’ learning environment and influence student motivation and achievement. Teachers’ professional knowledge and actual practices may differ not only among countries but also among teachers within a country. To gain an understanding of the prevalence of certain beliefs and practices it is therefore important to examine how they relate to the characteristics of teachers and classrooms and how flexible these beliefs are. Beside the traditional survey and qualitatively evaluated interviews, I put into force the metaphors in written and visual forms with several pictures as well as the ordered and in-compact concept mapping methods. All the results show the evidence that there are several fundamental differences between the freshly educated beginner teachers without vital practice and those re-beginner ones who have already had a notable teaching practice. One of the most important distinction measurable and experience-able in the application and utilization of the previously studied and acquired pedagogical, psychological, sociological knowledge that can be widened with the scheme-pool in teaching practice but must be acquired professionally in teachers' training only.