Pre-Conceptions of Effective Teaching Practices and Desired Professional Qualities for Novice Teachers

Pre-Conceptions of Effective Teaching Practices and Desired Professional Qualities for Novice Teachers

Literature Review

It has been one of the core areas of interest for many scholars to call for education reform in order to focus on a teacher's academic and instructional skills, as well as, a teacher's content knowledge (Danielson, 2008; Marzano, 2003). The concern is even more critical in case of novice teachers. Numerous researches have shown that almost a third of novice teachers quit their jobs within the first three years. This kind of dropout rate is not affordable in the field of teaching, and thus the need to adequately support beginning teachers and to offer them lifelines in order to remain in the profession and become highly effective educators is crucial (Stansbury, Zimmerman, 2000). Dan Goldhaber in one of his papers on effectively assessing the quality of teachers states that, “The effects that increased teacher quality has on education deluge the need of any other educational investment, like reducing the class size” (Goldhaber, 2009).

Another journal of personnel evaluation in education says that, “Improving education by means of improved effectiveness of teachers would be beneficial than any other single factor” (Wright, et.al, 1997). It further says that, “Having a top-quartile teacher throughout elementary school would be helpful in offsetting or even eliminating the disadvantage of having a low socio-economic background” (Wright, et.al, 1997). Thus, teachers today need to be effective in knowing the content and in having necessary pedagogical and instructional skills. Effective teachers are those who have the ability to enhance their content knowledge into numerous forms of pedagogical skills that are equally powerful and adaptive to the variety of student backgrounds and abilities.

In addition to this, one of the major means for improving schools is to increase effectiveness of teachers so that the national education goals would be met, and the learning success of all students would be ensured, as it is said that, “A few years with effective teachers can result in putting even the most disadvantaged students on their path to college, and a few years with ineffective teachers can result in making students deal with an academic blow for which they would require many years to recover” (Jordan, et.al, 1997). Moreover, numerous researches and studies aim to find out other important factors as well that have their impacts on the process of effective teaching. For example, Noddings believes that, “The current reform movements also repeat the errors and flaws of past decades as they neglect to examine the manner in which the standard statements respond to the primary question of teachers that is how to help students learn all the things they are expected to know and learn” (Noddings, 1997). He further states that the current reform aims to focus on the things students need to learn but it ignores the struggle of teachers regarding how to help students learn it all. Moreover, the inadequacy of pedagogical guidance exists for, the veteran or experienced ...