Novice Teachers’ Voices on Professional Agency and Professional Identity in Finland and China

Abstract: Research in novice teachers has been wide and rich because they are experiencing a special period in their career life after spending their childhood in school and freshly graduating from teacher education. At the workplace, novice teachers might be specially treated because they are the newcomers, but they may want to realize some professional ideals. Research in novice teacher’s professional agency and professional identity needs to be enriched. Professional agency can be understood as initiatives taken at the workplace, and professional identity can be a “self” as a professional. Both professional agency and professional identity are complex when socio-cultural contexts and subjective factors are intertwined. However, they are related and interdependent—professional agency externalizes and negotiates professional identity, whereas professional identity internalizes and influences professional agency. By comparing ten novice teachers from China and Finland, the overall aim of this thesis is to investigate the degree of professional agency as well as professional identity from a developmental perspective so that the socio-cultural contexts, especially the education systems in Finland and China, and subjective factors can be understood. In this thesis, five novice teachers from China and five novice teachers from Finland were invited to participate in semi-structured interviews. By adopting thematic analysis, the author has found that how those novice teachers’ voices on professional agency and professional identity are similar or different. The result shows that Finnish novice teachers enjoy a relatively higher degree of professional agency at the workplace, and they seem to be more well-prepared by according to the testimonies in the interviews. Early-childhood teachers’ wellbeing in Finland and China need to be considered in the future educational reforms and development.