A comparative research on the mental character of novice, proficient and expert teachers

Lian Rong

(College of Education Science, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou 350007, China )

Abstract
Aiming at understanding well about the teachers’ teaching development, we had used some scales to carry out two studies which involved with 433 and 469 subjects respectively on the teaching strategies, achievement goal orientation, personality characteristic, professional commitment and job burnout of novice, proficient, expert teachers. The results showed that: For the issue of teaching strategies, achievement goal orientation and personality characteristic, the expert teachers are better than proficient ones, and the proficient teachers are better than novice ones; When it’s turn to the question of professional commitment as well as job burnout, the expert teachers achieve better than proficient teachers and novice teachers while there’s no difference among the proficient teachers and novice teachers. The main features of novice teachers are attaching importance on pre-class preparation and performance goal are their important working motivation; the proficient teachers have the main characteristics of high performance in in-class teaching strategies, the emergence of task goal as the influential motivation for work and they have the personality of easy-going, concerning about others, gregarious, tolerant. And the expert teachers proclaim the features of taking the pre-class planning of teaching strategies, after-class evaluation and reflectivity as the central part, having the personality of being stable in emotion, be rational, practical, confident and good in criticism, and the high-profile emotional commitment in the profession of teaching as well as the strong sense of professional achievement also contribute to their main features. These three types of teachers have no differences in after-class compensation strategy, performance goal, intro- and extroversion, continuance commitment, emotional exhaustion, in other words, these are teachers’ common points.

Key words novice, proficient and expert teachers, teaching strategies, achievement goal orientation, personality characteristic, profession commitment, job burnout.

1.Introduction

Presently, lots of scholars at home and abroad have used the paradigm of expert-novice to probe into expert and novice teachers ’ knowledge structure〔1-3〕, problem solving〔4-5〕, teaching behavior〔6-7〕, teaching efficacy and teaching regulated ability. We deem it needs a long time for novice teachers to become expert ones, so is teachers’ teaching development. Many studies have verified that there is a proficient stage during the period.

Berliner〔9〕 and Burden〔10〕deemed novice teachers would take approximately five years to become proficient ones. Katz〔11〕 considered novice teachers could reach a proficient stage after 3 to 5 years of teaching. Huberman〔12〕held that novice teachers entered a stable stage after 4 to 6 years of teaching. Yuan K.D〔13〕 found that teachers’ strategy knowledge changed significantly after approximately 5 years’ teaching.

Synthesizing all the studies mentioned above, we suggest that an important stage exist in the process of novice-expert transformation —the proficient stage. Teachers in this stage can handle the routine teaching problem proficiently but lack of teaching creativity. Proficient teaches are undoubtedly novice ones yesterday, but they aren’t sure to be expert teachers tomorrow. Actually, lots of teachers’ teaching development has come to a standstill when they reach the proficient stage. They will never become expert teachers even if retirement, which is an important reason contributes to the limited professional level. Consequently, the important stage in the period of teachers’ teaching development—proficient teachers, should be involved, besides research on novice-expert teachers.

By comparing the differences among novice-proficient-expert teachers, we therefore can go more deeply into the research of teachers’ teaching development and train more expert teachers.

In order to find out the characteristics among the three types of teachers in an all-around way, we have done two studies:

(1) A comparative study on teaching strategy, achievement goal orientation and personality characteristic. Teachers need to possess good teaching strategies to judge and solve the teaching problems that belong to the ill-structured domain. High-level teaching strategy is the core part to solve the teaching problems efficiently and acts as a mark of the teaching level among the three different types of teachers. Calderhead〔14〕, Kagan and Tippins 〔15〕found that expert teachers described a successful teaching more from the aspect of class structure and teaching strategy. Etalapeltor〔16〕 confirmed the types of the strategy knowledge influenced the acquisition and level of teaching development. Wang G.Y and Wo J.Z〔17〕showed that the teaching strategy of excellent teachers is much better than that of general teachers. The study on achievement goal orientation verified that different goal orientation aroused different motive pattern, thus influenced individual achievement behavior. Zhang Y.M and her colleagues〔18〕 verified that individuals who had different achievement orientation differed in cognition and behavior. Through the research of goal orientation among different types of teachers, we can find out the relationship between achievement orientation and achievement behavior in the process of teachers’ growth.

Sound personality is an important characteristic of excellent teachers. Ryans (1960), Rushton (1960), Wan Y.Y (1981), Han J.Z (1989) etc, studied the teachers’ personality characteristics from different aspects and the results showed that teachers’ personality characteristics were: confidence, indomitable will, calmness, careful consideration, wide interest, pleasantness, intelligence, resourcefulness, resoluteness, justness, democracy, warmhearted, approachable etc. Rollett (1992) investigated 102 excellent teachers in Europe and America and found out these teachers were all confident, optimistic and warm-hearted. Kelchterman (1994) used the term of Professional Self to show that personality characteristic had great influence upon teaching behavior. We can say that teaching behavior includes many personality factors; we can even say that teachers’ personality is a kind of technique. Marcalience, a Russian educationist suggested that teachers’ prestige, resourcefulness, judgment and enthusiasm towards work, love for children, observing ability, will power etc were the determined factors to acquire educational techniques. Hence we need further understanding of the core difference of personality among teachers. We consider there is a close relationship between teachers’ teaching strategy and its motive pattern, personality characteristic. People of different achievement orientation have essential distinction in cognition, affection and behavior, these distinction inevitably influences teachers’ choice to teaching strategy; personality characteristic can strongly influence and restrict the psyche activities and thus have great influence for teachers to choose strategy.

(2) A comparative research on professional commitment and job burnout. Studies of teaching development performed by scholars at home and abroad begin to pay attention to the influences of job psychology, especially professional commitment and job burnout. Hackett and Lapierre〔19〕 considered that a high professional commitment individual should engage in the capacity training courses more willingly and took their profession as a career development. In order to achieve success in their work they would work much harder, and they were more willingly to continue the original work. Tai Wan scholar Quo H.L〔20〕 defined teaching profession commitment as the following: “Teachers accept and believe in the aims and values of the teaching work they pursuit, being ready to put in a lot of efforts to their job and willing to stay in the same teaching work.” Job burnout is the result that teachers are lacking of answering strategies to some pressure. Chemiss〔21〕found job burnout had adverse effects on individual work performance, creative capacity and self-efficacy. NEA(National Educational Association) took job burnout as the centric topic in the annual conference in 1979.

To find out the differences in professional affection and deal with professional pressure, it’s necessary to study on professional commitment and job burnout. We consider teachers’ job burnout could influence their professional commitment in some extent.

2.Methods

2.1 Subjects

433 and 419 teachers were chosen respectively as subjects in the two studies. They consisted of students from National Key Teachers’ Training Course, middle school teachers admitted to a postgraduate educational program, teachers whose length of service ranging from 0 to 5 years and graduates from Teachers’ Normal University who had done practice teaching. All the subjects were covered with the curricula of Chinese, mathematics, English, politics, history, geography, chemistry, physics and biology etc. The different types of teachers were chosen according to the length of service and the title of teaching post. Because the title of teaching post normally reflects a teacher’s teaching ability, and it has a close relationship with the length of service. Generally, the longer the length of service is, the higher the title is. Since teaching needs lots of practices, we chose subjects from the National Key Teachers Training Course and educational postgraduates (who had teaching experience) purposely, thus the research was more objective and accurate compared with some other researches choosing subjects only based on students’ performance and headmasters’ evaluation. Expert teachers were divided into three types: the teachers of special classification, senior teachers and teachers of more than 15 years’ standing. Novice teachers also included three groups: teachers holding a 3-grade title, graduates from Teachers’ Normal University and those whose length of service ranging from 0 to 5 years. The definition of proficient teachers was between the two types of teachers mentioned above.

Table 1 The statistical characteristic of subjects

Research Design	Novice Teachers	Proficient Teachers	Expert Teachers
Research 1 Research 2 Total	246 176 422	119 184 303	68 109 177

 

 

 

2.2 Materials

(1) With reference to the Teachers’ Teaching Regulated Ability Scale constructed by Beijing Normal University, We constructed the Middle School Teachers’ Teaching Strategy Scale (The MSTTS). The MSTTS, a 66-item, 5-point, Likert-type instrument, was divided into three dimensions, nine components. The three dimensions are pre-class strategy (planning strategy and preparing strategy) , in-class strategy (managing strategy, motivation strategy, teaching method and guiding strategy ) and after-class strategy (evaluation strategy, reflectivity strategy and compensation strategy). Through the examination, the consistency reliability was 0.920 and split-half reliability was 0.848. The Middle School Teachers’ Teaching reflection Scale made by Shen J L. (coefficient alpha was 0.864, split-half reliability was 0.756 ) was acted as the criterion scale. The pearson correlation coefficient between the two scales was 0.810 ( N=126,p<0.01) and the correlation between the dimensionalities in the two scales have reached the significant level. The correlation coefficient matrix showed the correlation coefficient of the nine factors ranged from 0.264 to 0.600 (p<0.01). Hence it showed the scale had strong construct validity. The indexes of the confirmatory factor analysis ranged from 0.87 to 0.98,showing better goodness-of-fit among the three sub-scales.

(2) With reference to Walle’s (1997) Three Factors Scale, the Teachers’ Achievement Goal Orientation Questionnaire (The TAGOQ ) was developed. The TAGOQ ,a 18-item, 7-point, was made to measure the task goal and performance goal of the teachers. (1 means absolutely agree, 7 means absolutely disagree) The consistency reliability of the TAGOO, the subscale of the task goal and the subscale of the performance goal were respectively 0.792, 0.870 and 0.781. The test-retest reliability was 0.823. The outcome of the content validity showed that the correlation between the items of task goal subscale and the total score of it ranged from 0.64 to 0.80 (p﹤0.01). The correlation coefficient between the items of performance subscale and the total score of the TAGOQ ranged from 0.58 to 0.83 (p﹤0.01). The confirmatory factor analysis showed better goodness-of-fit, with indexes ranging from 0.86 to 0.96.

(3) Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Revised. (Modified by Chen Z G. ,1981) . The Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, Revised (EPQ-R) is a self-report instrument that uses 85 items to determine the strengths of three dimensions of personality: psychoticism, neuroticism and extroversion. The fourth is the validity subscale. High score in the extraversion-introversion dimension indicates extraversion personality. Such as sociable, easygoing, optimistic, fond of change, adventurous, impetuous. Low score shows introversion personality. Like quiet, introspective, reticent, unconcerned about others except close friends, fond of orderly life style and emotionally stable etc. In the neuroticism dimension, high score indicates anxiety, depression, heavy-heartedness, response so strongly to stimuli that often results in less rational behavior. In the psychoticism dimension, high score shows loneliness, unconcerned about others, lack of emotion, unreasonable, fond of provocation, like doing something peculiar regardless of danger, difficult in adapting to the social environment. The assessment is 2-point, 1 is yes,2 is no. The consistency reliability is 0.554.

(4) With reference to the scale designed by Meger, Allen and Long L R. (2001), the Middle School Teachers’ Affective Commitment Scale (The MCTACS) was constructed. The MCTACS uses 22 items to form three dimensions: affective commitment, means the degree of love towards teaching, how deep they throw themselves into teaching career, and their cognition of coincidental degree among teaching career, personal ideal and value; continuance commitment, means a person is unwilling to quit the teaching career due to the fear of losing benefits and difficulties of finding another job; normative commitment, it means on the one hand a person doesn’t want to quit the teaching career because he accepts social ethics ,on the other hand, he has a sense of obligation and responsibility towards teaching career. A 6-point assessment system is used in the scale. Through statistics analysis, the consistency coefficient is 0.853, split-half reliability is 0.769. The analysis of content validity shows the correlation between each item and the scale ranges from 0.48 to 0.65 (p﹤0.01) ,the correlation between the three subscales and the scale are respectively 0.766,0.555,0.778 (p﹤0.01). The indexes of confirmatory factor analysis ranged from 0.65 to 0.99,showing better goodness-of-fit.

(5) With reference to the scale designed by Maslach(1997), the Middle School Teachers’ Job Burnout Scale was developed. The MSTJS consists of 21 items formed three dimensions: emotional exhaustion, means one feels exhausted and forfeit one’s emotional resource because one cannot deal with the problems and demands around him during his teaching; depersonalization, when the teacher get together with the students, he response in an indifferent attitude, that is the teacher gradually comes up with a negative, unconcerned attitude towards colleagues and students and a sense of detestation to the world and its ways; reduced personal accomplishment, the teacher feels a sense of low achievement which comes from three aspects: a sense of lack of ability in cooperation with colleagues, a sense of lack of work ability and a sense of lack of working significance. Through the statistics analysis, the consistence coefficient of the scale was 0.883, the split-half reliability was 0.801. Factor analysis indicates good construct validity and content validity. The analysis of content validity shows the correlation between each item and the whole scale ranged from 0.301 to 0.682 (p﹤0.01), the correlation between the three subscales and the whole scale are respectively 0.766,0.555,0.778 (p﹤0.01). The indexes of the confirmatory factor analysis ranged from 0.60 to 0.99, showing a better goodness-of-fit.

2.3 Procedure

Group measure was adopted. And instruction was used to instruct the subject to fill in the questionnaire.

3.Results

Table 2 The mean on teaching strategies of different types of teachers

 

Types of Teachers	Pre-class Strategy Plan Preparation Management	In-class Strategy Motivation Method Guidance	After-class Strategy Evaluation Reflectivity Compensation	Total
Novice Proficient Expert	3.854 4.146 3.660 3.854 4.000 3.939 4.075 4.217 4.192	3.967 3.827 3.697 4.269 3.997 4.000 4.528 4.184 4.086	3.882 3.856 3.857 3.957 3.964 3.875 4.037 4.066 3.186	3.579 3.682 3.829

 

 

 

Table 3 Multivariate analysis on teaching strategies of different teachers

Statistical Items	Pre-class Strategy Plan Preparation Management	In-class Strategy Motivation Method Guidance	After-class Strategy Evaluation Reflectivity Compensation	Total
F Df	6.00*** 13.70*** 39.67*** 2 2 2	40.44*** 27.69*** 24.65*** 2 2 2	3.15 * 4.98** 0.10 2 2 2	19.48*** 2

 

 

3.1 Compare on teaching strategy among novice-proficient-expert teachers

Table 2 and 3 indicated that there were significant differences among expert teachers, proficient teachers and novice teachers in the total and every subscale of teaching strategy scale. Multivariate analysis indicated, firstly in the general level of teaching strategy, the mean of expert teachers was significantly higher than that of proficient and novice teachers. The mean of proficient teachers was significantly higher than that of novice teachers. The outcome showed that expert teachers possessed the highest level of teaching strategy, while novice teachers possessed the lowest , proficient teachers possessed the moderate level. Secondly in the pre-class teaching strategy, the planning strategy of expert teachers was significantly higher than that of proficient and novice teachers, but there was no significant difference between proficient and novice teachers. When it came to the preparation strategy, proficient teachers scored the lowest mean, while there was no significant difference between the novice and expert teachers. Thirdly in the in-class strategy, significant difference exited among all expert, proficient and novice teachers. The mean of expert teachers was significantly higher than that of proficient and novice teachers. And the mean of proficient teachers was significantly higher than that of the novice teachers. Finally in the after-class teaching strategy, the mean of expert teachers was significantly higher than that of proficient and novice teachers in both evaluation strategy and reflectivity strategy.

Table 4 The mean and multivariate analysis on achievement orientation and personality characteristic of different types of teachers

Items	Novice Teachers M SD	Proficient Teachers M SD	Expert Teachers M SD	F	P
Task goal Performance Performance Extra-introversion Neuroticism pcychotisicm	6.355 0.049 4.219 0.099 4.443 0.080 12.349 0.283 11.541 0.342 5.793 0.167	6.595 0.92 4.416 0.184 4.684 0.148 12.596 0.526 10.397 0.636 4.828 0.311	6.626 0.117 4.162 0.236 4.523 0.190 12.838 0.673 7.875 0.813 4.114 0.398	4.320* 0.561 1.083 0.281 9.513*** 10.412***	0.014 0.571 0.340 0.755 0.000 0.000

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table 5 Special post hoc t tests on achievement orientation and personality characteristic of different types of teachers

Items	Novice and Proficient teachers MD P	Proficient and Expert teachers MD P	Novice and Expert teachers MD P
Task goal Neuroticism Psychoticism	-0.239* 0.019 1.144 0.104 0.965** 0.005	-0.271* 0.029 3.667*** 0.000 1.679*** 0.000	-3.145 0.826 2.523* 0.011 0.715 0.142

Table 4 and 5 showed that there was significant difference in task goal among the three types of teachers. The mean of the novice was significantly lower than that of expert and proficient teachers, while there is no difference between expert and proficient teachers. When it came to the performance goal, there is no difference in all the three types of teachers. In personality characteristic, the three types of teachers had no significant difference in extraversion-introversion dimension. In neuroticism, the mean of expert teachers was higher than that of novice and proficient teachers, while there was no difference between novice and proficient teachers. In pcychotisicm, the mean of expert and proficient teachers was higher than that of novice teachers, and there was no difference between expert and proficient teachers.

Table 6 The correlation coefficient between teaching strategy and achievement goal, personality characteristic among the three types of teachers

Teaching Strategy	Task Goal	Performance- avoidance	Performance- approach	Extra-introversion	Neuroticism	Psychoticism
Total Novice Proficient] Expert	0.198*** 0.009 0.377*** 0.529***	-0.062 -0.143* 0.034 -0.084	-0.104* -0.132* -0.097 -0.222	0.165** 0.083 0.340*** 0.217	-0.147** -0.048 -0.205* -0.270	-0.188*** -0.136* -0.173 -0.367*

Table 7 Multi-regression analysis on achievement goal, personality characteristic and teaching strategy among the three types of teachers

Dependant factor	Predictor	R	R2	F	B	Beta	T
NoviceTeaching Strategy Proficient Teaching Strategy ExpertTeaching Strategy	Formula Model Psychoticism Performance Formula Model Task Goal Extra-introversion Formula Model Task Goal	0.207 0.449 0.497	0.043 0.201 0.247	5.256** 13.114*** 12.163***	-0.023 -0.082 0.082 0.018 0.255	-0.156 -0.142 0.310 0.251 0.497	-2.444* -2.225* 3.397** 2.752** 3.488**

Table 6 and table 7 showed that teaching strategy had a significant positive correlation with task goal and extraversion-introversion, while having a significant negative correlation with performance-avoidance, neuroticism, psychoticism. A stepwise procedure of logistic regression analysis was utilized to get a final multivariate model. The outcome indicated psychoticism and performance-avoidance were the predictors of teaching strategy of novice teachers. Extraversion-introversion and task goal were predictors of the teaching strategy of proficient teachers. Task goal was the predictors of the teaching strategy of expert teachers, it was responsible for 24.7 percent of changes.

Table 8 The mean and variance analysis on profession commitment and job burnout among different types of teachers

Items	Novice teachers M SD	Proficient Teachers M SD	Expert Teachers M SD	MANOVA F P
Affective Commitment Continuance Commitment Normative Commitment Total Commitment Emotional Exhaustion Depersonalization Reduced Personal Accomplishment Job burnout	3.81 0.96 3.24 1.04 4.45 0.88 3.81 0.68 2.97 0.79 2.18 0.81 2.78 0.75 2.68 0.60	3.75 1.02 3.37 0.99 4.39 1.03 3.82 0.74 3.10 0.81 2.25 0.81 2.58 0.72 2.68 0.63	4.41 0.93 3.50 1.04 5.07 0.68 4.29 0.59 3.04 0.73 1.83 0.64 2.06 0.60 2.34 0.50	17.811*** 0.000 2.096 . 0.124 21.694*** 0.000 20.263*** 0.000 1.234 0.292 10.805*** 0.000 35.652*** 0.000 13.428*** 0.000

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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