30 on it. The lived experience of novice English teachers in their initial years is the
phenomenon of this study.
4. Review of Related Research
According to Farrel 2006, 2008 the first years of teaching has been well documented in general education research, for instances: studies conducted by
Bullough 1989, 1990, and 1997; Bullough and Baughman 1993; and Calderhead 1992. Recently, the first year of teaching has been recognized by
language teacher educators as having enormous influence on the future development of language teachers Farrell, 2006. Though, it is now crucial to
study about novice teachers, “not many detailed studies outlining the experiences of language teachers in their first years of teaching have been documented in the
TESOL education literat ure” Farrell, 2006:212. For instances: Richards and
Pennington 1998; Farrell 2006; Moore 2008; and Hayes 2008. Richards and Pennington 1998, in their study of five first-year teachers
of English in Hong Kong, find that those teachers focus their attention on two main themes: 1 establishing their role and their relationship with the students,
and 2 covering the required material and preparing for examination in their initial years of teaching. According to Richards and Pennington 1998, the focus
of those first-years teachers diverge from their beliefs formed during their pre- service education. It is happened because of number of factors, such as: the impact
of larger classes, unmotivated students, examination pressures, a set syllabus, pres
sure to conform more experienced teachers, students‟ limited proficiency in
31 English, students‟ resistance to new ways of learning, and heavy workloads. Study
by Richards and Pennington 1998 shows that the reality of language classroom could change what teachers have formed as ideal during their pre-service
education. Farrell 2006 conducts a study on how a new Singaporean teacher
balances a delicate and sometimes conflicting role between learning to teach and learning to become a teacher within a local school with an established culture in a
neighborhood secondary school in Singapore during his first year. In his study, Farrell 2006 uses a story framework orientation-complication-result. Farrell
2006 founds three major challenging situations faced by his participant: 1 teaching approach; 2 course content; and 3 collegial relationship. Moreover he
also indentifies his participant responses with each challenging situation as he struggle to establish himself as a teacher.
A study on a Cambodian English teacher‟s first year of teaching in Cambodian high school is conducted by Moore 2008. He describes the first-year
experience of a Cambodian teacher who is trained to teach English in local secondary schools but ends up teaching on the Bed TEFL program she has just
graduated from. Based on his participant‟s experience, it is revealed that she has two kinds of issues: 1 institutional issues and 2 personal issues. The
institutional issues are: 1 the program‟s transition from being taught by native English speakers to being taught by Cambodians; 2 the introductions of a
student‟s contribution fee which created unrest among the students. The personal issues include: 1 the pride and responsibility associated with being a university
32 lecturer; 3 teaching classes in class in which many students had not done their
homework; 4 dealing with trouble-makers; and 4 the resistance of some students to the communicative teaching methodology. Besides revealing the issues
faced by the participant, Moore 2008 also describes how she overcomes those issues and how she helps her students learn.
Another study is a study on Thailand teachers in their first years of teaching conducted by Hayes 2008. The participants of his study are four novice
teachers who have never experienced any formal induction in their first year. In his study, Hayes 2008 documents how those four Thai teachers undergo their
first year of teaching using a life history research method. Based on his documentation, he argues that new teachers need to be prepared for the reality of
the classroom during training program and on-the-job guidance in dealing with school structures and collegial relationship would be reduce some of the burdens
face by teachers. Most
of the previous studies on novice teachers‟ experiences during their initial years of teaching in TESOL context are case studies which only reveal the
problems and challenges faced by them. Hence through this present study I want to not only reveal novice
teachers‟ problems and challenges during their initial years of teaching English but describe their lived experience by conducting a
phenomenological research, particularly the hermeneutic one. Through hermeneutic phenomenological research, the participant
s‟ meaningful experiences which they could reflect on could be described. Then form the description, their
33 feelings, awareness, beliefs, problems, challenges, and thought could be
elucidated.
B. FRAMEWORK OF PRE-UNDERSTANDING
Constructing a framework for research is important since it serves as the main guidance for a research Creswell, 2003. Since this study, is a
phenomenological research in which “the essence of human experiences concerning a phenomenon” Creswell, 2003:15 is identified, the framework is
also formed as the pre-figured themes. The theoretical framework or pre- understanding of the lived experience of novice English teachers at primary level
is formulated as follows. Novice English teachers are teachers who have just graduated from
English Teacher Education study program and in their initial years of teaching which is still less than three years. When they first enter their in-service teaching,
novice teachers bring the ideals that they formed during their pre-service education. The ideal that they have formed during their pre-service education
could be a set of beliefs about teaching English to young learners. However, when they start teaching in the real language classroom they might experience the
“reality shock” in which they face reality which is far different from the ideal that they formed duting their pre-service education and then they start to realize that
there is a gap between what they learnt in the pre-service education program and the reality of classroom language or their in-service teaching Farrel, 2012.