ABSTRACT

While the role of professional commitment in retaining early career teachers has been widely acknowledged in the literature, few studies have examined the commitment change of early career teachers over time. Informed by a developmental perspective, this study explores three early career English teachers’ commitment change across the teacher education programme, the practicum, the first year, and the second year in teaching. Drawing on data from in-depth individual life history interviews, this study reveals how the participants’ commitment shifted among four commitment levels, i.e., committed passionate, committed compromiser, undecided, and uncommitted. The findings also show that such commitment change over time is an ongoing interaction between individual’s self-efficacy, outcome expectation and the professional autonomy and social support afforded by institutional contexts. These findings call for a need to take teacher commitment as a multidimensional construct and to how early career teachers’ commitment to teaching could be promoted over time.

摘要

虽然专业承诺在留住早期职业教师方面的作用已在文献中得到广泛承认，但很少有研究考察早期职业教师的承诺随时间的变化。本研究从发展的角度出发，探讨了三位早期职业英语教师在教师教育计划、实习、第一年和第二年教学中的承诺变化。本研究利用来自深入的个人生活史访谈的数据，揭示了参与者的承诺如何在四个承诺水平之间转变，即坚定的热情、坚定的妥协者、未决定的和未承诺的。研究结果还表明，随着时间的推移，这种承诺的变化是个人自我效能感、结果期望以及制度环境提供的专业自主权和社会支持。这些发现要求需要将教师承诺视为一个多维结构，以及如何随着时间的推移促进早期职业教师对教学的承诺。