FROM STUDENT TO TEACHER: PROVIDING SUPPORT FOR NEW WORLD LANGUAGE TEACHERS DURING THE FIRST YEARS OF TEACHING

Abstract

Most new teachers begin their careers in a difficult position. Having just completed their student teaching, they find themselves in a “liminal,” in-between state: not students anymore, but not quite full-fledged professional teachers yet either. This transitional time tends to be characterized by deficit discourses (Griffin, 1997; Kelchtermans, 2019; Sagor, 2000) along with ambiguity and shifting meanings as teachers work to make sense of their new professional environment. Unfortunately, though, early career teacher attrition is a large contributor to teacher shortages in the United States, and World Languages is a curricular area particularly impacted by these teacher shortages. This study applies a Third Space theoretical framework (augmented by figured worlds and authoring the self frameworks) to propose a possible model for novice World Language teacher support in order to help provide a bridge across this liminal space between teacher education and professional teaching. In this qualitative case study, four recent teacher education graduates in the first year of professional practice met monthly in a group facilitated by their former university supervisor. Drawing data from these group meetings, individual interviews with each participant, and a researcher reflective journal, analysis reveals that the space provided by the peer support group provided multiple opportunities for the novice teachers that they might not otherwise have had: to exercise agency in situations where they had been feeling powerless; to engage in a process of authoring of the self as they supported each other in negotiating conflicting discourses they were encountering regarding the nature of what constitutes “good teaching;” and to collaborate and experience deep and occasionally transformative learning via a Zone of Proximal Development that they created together.