Opportunities and Challenges of Novice Teachers for their Career Development in Community Schools

Abstract

The research work entitled Opportunities and Challenges of Novice Teachers for their career development in Community Schoolswas an attempt to find out the opportunities of the novice teachers for their career development and challenges they faced in initial teaching phase. The study followed narrative inquiry research design. Four participants were selected from four different community schools of Bardiya district to get the data for the study. A set of guideline questions and outline for classroom observation were prepared as major tools for collecting required data. Semi-structured interview was conducted to elicit required information form respondents and their classes were observed on the basis of classroom observation outlines. Thematic approach was used to analyze and interpret the collected data. Further, the data were interpreted under different themes and sub-themes. After the analysis and interpretation of the data the major findings are derived. The major finding of this study shows that novice teachers did not get opportunity for their career development, they did not get opportunity to participate in professional development activities neither get any supportive programmes from school administration. They were not given any teacher trainings during their teaching career to grow professionally. This shows that rural areas’ community school novice teachers are not given opportunity for their career development. They did not receive even mentoring programme. Similarly, this study found that novice teachers encountered with many challenges regarding classroom management, establishing good relationship with students and co-workers, addressing linguistic diversified students’ needs. They faced difficulties in implementing theoretical knowledge in the real classroom. This thesis has been organized into five chapters. Chapter one consists of background of the study, statement of the problems, objectives of the study, significance of the study, delimitations of the study and operational definitions of the key terms. Chapter two consists of review of related literature, review of theoretical literature, review of empirical literature;implication of the studyand conceptual framework. Chapter three consists of methodology. Design and method of the study, population, sample and sampling strategy, research tools, sources of the data are the topics. In the same way chapter four deals with results and discussion,which includes analysis and interpretation of the obtained data from respondents’ narrative stories and classroom observation diary and chapter five includes conclusion and recommendations. References and appendices are included at the end of this work to make the research more valid.