Professional Challenges of Novice English language Teachers

Teachers face many professional challenges during their service. Novice teachers are newly appointed teachers. They face various challenges during that period of teaching.

Professional Challenges of Novice English Language Teachers

Teachers face many professional challenges during their service. Novice teachers are newly appointed teachers. They face various challenges during that period of teaching. Basically, In rural areas, teachers face various problems. Some common challenges/problems of novice teachers working at rural areas of Nepal are mentioned below:

The dropout rate of the students

In rural areas, most of the students drop out the school, because they had to face various interruptions. In rural area, there is no opportunity in comparison to urban areas. No economic sources are available in that community. Education is not given priority by the guardian and the students themselves. The people in that area are entangled with many household problems as a result; children got less priority on the one hand. And on the other, they thought that studying up to a basic level is sufficient for their life and left school. Therefore, in order to ensure quality education, and to reduce professional challenges of novice teachers the stakeholders need to be aware to retain students in the school.

Lack facilities as a professional challenge

Nepal is not a country having good facilities mainly in rural area. People love facilities in their life. Facilities have somehow impact in the professional life of the teachers as well. If the teachers get good facilities they can grow themselves professionally. But if they do not get better facilities, they may have problems in their professional development.  Therefore, to solve the problem of physical facilities, the school administration and other stakeholders also can play a vital role.

Political Interference as a professional challenge

Not only rural areas but almost all the areas of Nepal are influenced by political activities. But it seems that rural areas are much influenced by politics due to the lack of awareness. Nepal has witnessed massive political upheaval during the past decade with insurgency forces actively expressing dissatisfaction with the existing status quo. It was in nearly 1996 that the moist insurgency took root in the country exerting a tremendous influence on the social, economic and political life in the country in general and education sector in particular.

Schools seem to be the place for political activities not for teaching and learning activities. The teachers need to be member of any one political party to survive in the school. Due to the political category, there seems some contradiction among the teachers and there is no system of collaboration and cooperation as a result professional development has been hindered.

Geographic challenges as teachers’ professional challenge

Nepal is geographically diverse. We cannot enjoy all the facilities in all the area of Nepal. Some places of Nepal are so remote from where we cannot get access to the centre and other different facilities. The teachers are such persons who need to be updated and professional grow continuously. So, due to the geographical remoteness mostly teachers suffer much. Regarding geographical challenges. Teachers do not get any professional development opportunities due to the geographical problems. Thus, to manage the professional opportunities the stakeholders need to be aware in order to ensure quality education.

Gender Biasness

Gender refers to the social categorization as male and female. Due the gender differences the male and females face different problems and they do have different responsibilities as well. Generally, females have more responsibilities than male except office time. Regarding gender biasness. I think the government need to come up with some special program for the women to maintain equality between male and female. If not the future of the students will be questionable, and women teachers’ performance in the school will be weak. this is how gender problems cause role in professional challenges to novice teachers.

Students’ Diversity

Nepal is multi-religious, multi-ethnic, multilingual and multi-cultural country with geographical diversity and inhabited by various regional groups. In the Nepalese society there is much diverse varieties of classroom are experienced. Students’ diversity has become a professional challenges to novice teachers. All the students are not from same cultural background. The classroom represents diverse people with different social class, age, ability, sexuality, religious, racial and or ethnic backgrounds as well as different personalities. So, they are from different linguistics background too. In our context, English has been taught as a foreign language. Most of the public teachers face the problem to teach the English language where the students are from different mother tongues. The teachers face professional difficulties due to the lack of information regarding the diversity of the children. In order to overcome from the problems, the stakeholders need to be aware and they must inform about the diversity to the novice teacher.

Lack of exposure through training, workshop and seminar

Training and seminars can reduces and address professional challenges faced by novice English language teachers. In rural area the English manpower is very poor. There is no any availability of training, workshop and seminar. One can assume that, the training helps teachers perform better in the classroom practice. So, those students will have improved performance. If the teachers do not receive any training their performance become weaker. Teachers are so eager to attend the trainings, workshops and seminars for their professional development but they don’t get opportunity as they had expected. Nowadays, the responsibility of training has been provided to the local government. In such situation, the local bodies should know the demand of the teachers and provide the trainings to the teachers.

Summary

There are various challenges of novice English language teachers in rural area schools. Lack of facilities in rural areas hinders the professional development of the teachers.  The newly appointed teachers face various problems in the beginning like: lack of support from the administration, no proper resources, no mentor support, lack of practical knowledge and no knowledge of students. Gender biasness in the school creates some sort of negative impact to the female teachers and they feel discouraged which causes problems in their professional development.

Written by: Thuman Adhikari

Also read

> >Teaching as Profession/