About the project
The project focused on situations that novice teachers found particularly challenging and the strategies they chose in order to handle these challenges.
This was a qualitative longitudinal study based on interviews with a group of novice teachers in three phases. The first interview was conducted before they started working as teachers, the second towards the end of their first semester, and the third at the end of their first year in the profession.
Aim
The project aimed to gain new knowledge about what novice teachers experienced as particularly challenging and how their perceived self-efficacy influenced their coping strategies. This knowledge could provide teacher education and induction programmes with a new understanding of how to support and guide novice teachers in coping with challenging situations.
Background and process
The transition from campus to school represented a reality shock for many novice teachers, who were especially vulnerable in challenging situations. The theoretical foundation for the project was self-efficacy beliefs (Bandura, 1997): how novice teachers perceived and experienced their self-efficacy.
Interviews were conducted three times during the participants’ first year as teachers. The data were analysed thematically. The project ran from 2017 to 2020.