Professional development of young teachers

―focusing on communication between teachers and students―

Abstract

  Today the ratio of old teachers is increasing. At the same time, more and more young students are becoming teachers especially in urban areas. This makes the situation in which young teachers work harder. Therefore it is urgent to promote professional developments of young teachers.

  Using some examples, this paper aims to clarify the difficulties which young teachers have in common and the skills which experienced teachers use to cope with such difficulties. This analysis is done from a standpoint of communication between teachers and students.

  One of the results of the analysis is that the cause of teachers having difficulties in controlling the classroom is the “discommunication” between teachers and students. “Discommunication” is the communication that happens when the communication keeps going although teachers/students don’t really understand what students/teachers intend to tell. Of course we cannot say that only young teachers experience this kind of “discommunication”. However experienced teachers can predict the crisis happen through the “discommunication” and can avoid the crisis through communication. They surely seem to understand that there are differences between teachers and students.

  Analysis shows that the “listening to” and “waiting for” students are the essential examples of skills to predict and avoid the crisis. These acts are not easy especially for young teachers to do because when they are listening to and waiting for students, the situation is not stable and they are likely to feel nervous. However without doing so, they tend to interpret students’ action from a one-sided view, and then “discommunication” would happen.

  When we try to nurture young teachers and give them such skills, there are two things to do.: First, we can promote young teachers’ reflection. Second, we can make a situation in which elder teachers show the theory-in-Use in front of young teachers. However I must point that it is difficult to do such a succession under a strange balance of teacher population in urban areas.