Teaching Experience and Confidence in Teachers.

The process of teachers' gaining a professional identity may be impeded by teachers' autonomy and by their relative isolation within individual classrooms. As a result, teachers and school administrators tend to operate under a logic of confidence--a good faith assumption that teachers will perform their jobs in an acceptable manner without the need for close supervision. The purpose of the present study was to examine the relationship between teachers' logic of confidence beliefs, their levels of teaching experience, and the object of their confidence--self, the typical beginning teacher, and the typical experienced teacher. Findings indicated that there were statistically significant differences in group means only in respondents' perceptions of the typical beginning teacher with confidence in beginning teachers inversely related to experience. In addition, teachers tended to place more confidence in themselves than in either the typical beginning or typical experienced teacher. Recent literature in the field of teacher preparation has addressed a number of concerns confronting the beginning teacher. Perhaps two of the most important of these concerns is teachers' development of their own professional identity as well as consideration for the professional identity of their colleagues. Veenran (1984) identified three existing approaches used in evaluating the professional growth of teachers--the developmental scages of concerns approach, the cognitive development approach, and the teacher socialization approach. The contributions of each of these approaches to the understanding of the development of teacher professional identity are discussed below. The Developmental Stages of Concern The developmental stages of concern approach focuses upon various concerns which all teachers share, including concern for oneself, the actual tasks of teaching, and one's impact upon students. As teachers gain experience, their levels of concern are expected to lower. Adams, Hutchinson, and Martray (1980) evaluated the concern levels of student, beginning, and experienced teachers. One of the several concern factors they addressed was "teacher concerns about adult perceptions. " This factor included the teacher's concern for doing well when a supervisor is present, getting a favorable evaluation of one's teaching, and being respected by one's professional peers. Levels of concern were found to decrease with teacher experience. A statistically significant difference was found between student teacher and experienced teacher group means. Differences between student teacher and beginning teacher group means were not statistically significant, but fell within the general linear trend of the data. Similar findings about concern for teacher professional identity are reported in a study by Adams and Martray (1981) who not only found level of concern to be inversely related to teacher experience, but also discovered that high levels of concern tend to be associated with negative peer evaluation of the personal and professional characteristics of teachers. The findings of this study suggest that as teachers gain professional experience both they and their peers become more comfortable with their professional identity. The Cognitive Development Approach The cognitive development approach focuses upon the teacher as an adult learner who develops