Vượt qua “Cú sốc vào nghề”: Khám phá cảm xúc và hành động của một giáo viên mới trong quá trình hòa nhập thông qua lăng kính chính trị vi mô
VNU JOURNAL OF FOREIGN STUDIES, VOL. 37, NO. 3 (2021)
103
NAVIGATING “PRAXIS SHOCK”: DISENTANGLINGAN EARLY
CAREER TEACHER’S EMOTIONSANDACTIONS
IN ORGANIZATIONALSOCIALIZATION
THROUGHAMICROPOLITICALLENS
Tran Thi Ngan*
VNU University of Languages and International Studies
Pham Van Dong, Cau Giay, Hanoi, Vietnam
Received 3 December 2020
Revised 5 February 2021; Accepted 26 May 2021
Abstract: In the present research, we seek to study the process of organizational socialization
of early career teachers (ECTs) through a micropolitical lens that focuses on the issues of power, control
and influence as part of the ECTs’ sense-making of and acting in their job. By means of a case study
with a beginning Vietnamese university teacher, we attempt to answer two questions: (1) what sorts of
emotions does the ECT experience in her organizational socialization, and in challenging micropolitical
situations in particular? (2) what kinds of action does the ECT employ in such situations? The research
material consists of three narrative interviews within one academic year. The findings highlight the
importance of the micropolitics of the school as an organization and the multiple emotional dimensions
that are present when ECTs strive to reconcile the school micropolitics with their own beliefs and values
as teachers. Along with that, the research contributes knowledge about how ECTs learn to negotiate
challenging micropolitical situations using diverse types of micropolitical actions. Implications are also
proposed with regard to teacher training and induction.
Keywords: micropolitics, early career teachers, emotions, micropolitical actions
1. Introduction*
The induction phase for early career
2002a, b; Veenman, 1984; Wideen et al.,
1998), which is their “confrontation with the
realities and responsibilities of being a
classroom teacher that puts their beliefs and
ideas about teaching to the test, challenges
some of them, and confirms others”
(Kelchtermans & Ballet, 2002b, p. 105).
Whereas the technical dimension of teaching
(i.e., knowledge and skills) has been
extensively investigated with regard to
ECTs’ induction period, there have been
scant attempts to unravel the cultural and
teachers (ECTs, also called beginning
teachers) is generally characterized by their
constant search for a professional self and
reflection on their motives for becoming a
teacher (Beauchamp & Thomas, 2009; Day
et al., 2006; De Vries et al., 2014). This
period, however, has also been associated
with specific challenges and complexities,
provoking a form of “praxis shock” (Gold,
1996; Intrator, 2006; Kelchtermans & Ballet,
structural
working
conditions
* Corresponding author.
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(micropolitics) that they are confronted with
(Kelchtermans & Ballet, 2002b).
understand these processes of socialization
and professional development. ECTs, when
embarking on their teaching career, hold
certain normative ideas about what
constitutes desirable or necessary working
conditions for them to do a proper job as a
teacher (Kelchtermans & Ballet, 2002a, b).
At the same time, they become part of an
organization that lives by certain traditions
and more or less subtle power relations
between members with different interests.
The ECTs are thus confronted with a
micropolitical reality in their socialization
process (Kelchtermans & Ballet, 2002b).
As ECTs enter the teaching
profession, they also become members of an
organization.
The
organizational
socialization of ECTs constitutes an
essential task for teachers as much as their
classroom teaching (Kelchtermans & Ballet,
2002b). This process of socialization,
according to Kuzmic (1994) and Zeichner
and Gore (1990), is an interactive and
interpretative process between the new
teacher and the context. Not only are ECTs
influenced by the context, but they also
affect the structures in which they are
socialized. While trying to adapt their
professional beliefs to the socializing forces
within the school culture, they also attempt
to defend existing professional beliefs that
they value and wish to maintain (e.g.,
Loughran et al., 2001; Mesker et al., 2018).
In the present research, we seek to study the
socializing process of a beginning teacher
with a view to exploring the emotions and
the actions that she employs in her
organizational socialization, particularly
when facing structural challenges. Through
a micropolitical lens, we focus on the issues
of power, control and influence as part of the
ECT’s sense-making of and acting in their
job. In brief, we attempt to answer two
questions:
The micropolitical perspective takes
the idea of different interests among
members of an organization as a central
focus (Ball, 1987; Blase, 1991, 1997).
According to Hoyle (1982), “[m]icropolitics
embraces those strategies by which
individuals and groups in organizational
contexts seek to use their resources of power
and influence to further their interests” (p.
88). Power and influence, in this sense,
include conflict, tension and rivalry, but they
also involve collaboration and coalition
building in order to attain shared, valued
goals (Blase, 1991). The micropolitical
perspective, hence, deals with a natural
phenomenon in the functioning of any
organization, where micropolitical processes
occur as a result of internal as well as
external interactions of its members (Ball,
1994). From this perspective, the
functioning of the organization members is
largely determined by the desirable or
necessary work conditions, constituting
• What sorts of emotions does the ECT
experience in her organizational
socialization, and in challenging
micropolitical
particular?
situations
in
professional
interests.
When
these
• What kinds of action does the ECT
conditions are absent, threatened or
employ in such situations?
abolished,
micropolitical
ECTs
will
engage
aimed
in
at
activities
2. Literature Review
establishing, safeguarding or restoring them
(Curry et al., 2008; Kelchtermans & Ballet,
2002a, b; Vanderlinde & Kelchtermans, 2013).
2.1. Micropolitics in Teacher Induction
When looking at the induction period
and the key players within the school as an
organization, we cannot help but adopt a
micropolitical perspective in order to
Kelchtermans and Ballet (2002a, b)
identified five categories of professional
interests. First, the self-interests refer to
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105
interests related to teachers’ self-
understanding and their beliefs about
themselves as teachers. As such, these
interests mainly have to do with looking for
self-affirmation, coping with vulnerability
and with the visibility in their job. The
second category involves material interests,
which encompass issues concerning the
availability of and teachers’ access to
teacher socialization, given the fact that
ECTs do not simply slide into an existing
context but they also actively interpret and
interact with the context (Kelchtermans &
Ballet, 2002b). Thus, emotions are not
merely teachers’ private experiences, but are
products of meaningful interactions between
teachers and their working conditions
(Zembylas, 2007). When teachers feel
strongly about something, the feeling most
likely means that it is significant and
meaningful to them (Zembylas, 2007), and
actions are oftentimes triggered accordingly
teaching
materials
and
resources,
infrastructure, or time. The third category,
organizational interests, is related to
teachers’ role, position, and structural
conditions. In the case of early career
teachers, these interests may incorporate, for
example, the job description or contract
terms, which are related to getting and
keeping employment. The fourth category
comprises cultural-ideological interests,
which are the shared normative ideas about
good education and the school’s mission.
These interests often come into play when
there are discrepancies between the teacher’s
own task perception and job motivation and
the dominant culture in the school, or when
they have remained in the school for a
relatively long period of time. Finally, the
social-professional interests are about the
interpersonal relationships in and around the
school as an organization, which also
include those with students’ parents. Since
(Jokikokko et al., 2017). From
a
micropolitical perspective, recognizing the
structural context of the school enables us to
better understand these emotions and
actions, as we delve into how school
organization,
politics
and
culture
inextricably intersect with the teachers'
personal values, beliefs and qualities.
Previous research on micropolitics in
teacher socialization has explored some of
the ways ECTs make use of political actions
to safeguard their interests and deal with
challenging situations in the workplace.
Blase (1988) identified that when teachers’
beliefs, values and goals and those of the
administrators, faculty, parents and parents
conflicted, their response would most likely
be to protect themselves from others and to
proactively influence others. The resulting
micropolitical strategies that he identified
could be put on a continuum from reactive to
proactive strategies, including acquiescence,
good professional
relationships
are
important, in their interactions, teachers will
be selective, establish preferences for some
fellow teachers, keep others at a distance,
and be strategic in seeking people who best
support their job (Baker-Doyle, 2011).
conformity,
ingratiation,
diplomacy,
passive-aggressiveness, and confrontation.
Whereas reactive strategies aim at
maintaining the situation or protecting the
teacher against changes or external factors,
proactive strategies are geared towards
improving the situation and impacting the
circumstances. Acquiescence refers to overt
conformity and adherence to the wishes and
commands of others. This response is
usually elicited by external, often
illegitimate influences and is typically
2.2. Emotions and Actions Through a
Micropolitical Lens
Emotions have been increasingly
recognized in studies on teachers’ work,
self-understanding, commitment, well-being
and exhaustion (e.g., Jokikokko et al., 2017;
Lassila, Jokikokko, et al., 2017; Lassila,
Timonen, et al., 2017). The topic of
emotions is highly relevant in research on
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accompanied by extreme negative emotions.
Conformity is similar to acquiescence in its
protectionist concerns, usually linked to
compromises made by teachers in order to
stay afloat. However, unlike the former, the
latter is not so often associated with strong
negative feelings. Next in the continuum is
A simple inventory or list that summarizes
all micropolitical strategies and actions is
not relevant, if not possible, because any
action may become micropolitically
meaningful in a specific context (Blase,
1988, p. 11). To illustrate, they profiled the
“political” learning process of a beginning
Flemish schoolteacher in which he learned
to employ a variety of political strategies
ingratiation,
which
emphasizes
reciprocation (i.e. exchanging favors),
influencing others, and which is normally
accompanied by negative emotions. Blase
(1988) put it another way that this technique
is intended to "flatter" or "brownnose"
another in order to defend oneself and
achieve one's goals. The technique of
diplomacy, on the other hand, appears to
represent a balance between protection and
influence, is usually employed with tact,
politeness, friendliness, positivity, and
empathy for others in mind, and is often
correlated with positive emotions. On the
more reactive end of the continuum are
passive-aggressiveness and confrontation,
both of which are aimed at influencing the
situation. The former employs indirect,
covert, and "devious" methods to discredit
the acts of others, whereas the latter usually
involves directness, frankness, and honesty,
and is generally driven by strong personal or
professional values/ethics.
under
different
circumstances
(see
Kelchtermans & Ballet, 2002a). In order to
get a job, the teacher made himself “visible”
by actively self-marketing, leaving a good
impression about his professional qualities.
When coping with structural power, he made
use of proactive strategies, confronting the
stakeholders. When trying to position
himself within the school team during his
short interim contract, he chose to keep an
emotional distance, standing aloof from his
colleagues. When things did not go as
expected, he looked for and concentrated on
other comforting aspects of the situation to
maintain a satisfying balance of the positive
and negative aspects.
Other more recent studies that
focused on the reactions of early career
teachers
in
extreme
micropolitical
circumstances have shown that some may
become cautious and withdraw, while others
see these obstacles as learning opportunities
that open up room for professional growth
(Bullough, 2009; Kelchtermans, 2005).
Hong (2012) revealed how ECTs who
remained in the field after the first years
established emotional boundaries that
helped them avoid making their perceived
professional problems personal. In their case
study of a Finnish secondary teacher,
Jokikokko et al. (2017) demonstrated how
both proactive and reactive micropolitical
strategies were employed in maintaining and
changing challenging situations. Lindqvist et al.
(2020), on the other hand, investigated
conflicts as a particular aspect of school
micropolitics, suggesting four major sets of
coping strategies common among the
Kelchtermans and Ballet (2002b),
while recognizing Blase’s action strategies
in their definitions, argued that the different
variants of micropolitical actions have to be
understood as cyclical or iterative, rather
than as positions on a continuum. Actions to
restore lost working conditions are, for
example, reactive in goal and direction of
action, but they imply proactive strategies
that aim at improving the situation. They
therefore suggested that in reality
micropolitical action can take a variety of
forms: talking, pleading, arguing, flattering,
being silent and avoiding comments,
avoiding taking sides, accepting extra
responsibilities, changing the material
working conditions, using humor, and so on.
VNU JOURNAL OF FOREIGN STUDIES, VOL. 37, NO. 3 (2021)
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participants,
including
collaboration,
them” (Savin-Baden & Major, 2013, p. 231).
As they are based on experiences, the
accounts serve as mediating tools that
contextualize emotions in broader social,
cultural and political contexts (Riessman,
2008, as cited in Jokikokko et al., 2017).
conformity, influencing, and autonomy.
Through the micropolitical lens, a more
nuanced understanding of the process of
teacher socialization is created, explicating
how emotions and political actions arise as a
result. In the context of Vietnam, however,
to the best of our knowledge there is
currently no research on the emotions and
micropolitical behavior of beginning
teachers in the socialization process from the
perspective of micropolitical theory. To fill
this gap, this paper examines how the
process of socialization that a beginning
teacher in Vietnam experiences in their
The research’s participant is a
beginning university teacher, hereinafter
referred to as Linh (pseudonym). At the time
of the interviews, Linh was 22 years old and
had just graduated from a bachelor’s
program in English language teacher
education. She worked under a renewable
one-year contract, teaching English for non-
majors at a state university in Vietnam. Linh
began her job two months before the new
school year as a probationary teacher. As the
school year started, so did her official
contract. Her job mainly involved teaching
English to first-year students of both the
Advanced Educational Program (AEP) and
the mainstream program. Her classes
consisted of 30 to 50 students, all of whom
were non-English-majored. The faculty
where she belonged was a relatively small
one, with 15 teachers. Also new to the
faculty at that time were two other female
teachers, who were the same age as her.
induction
micropolitical actions accordingly.
triggers
emotions
and
3. Research Design and Methodology
The central focus of our exploratory
study is the early career teacher’s
experiences
socialization process during their induction,
with a particular focus on their emotions and
of
the
organizational
micropolitical actions. Therefore,
a
qualitative design was chosen, with a focus
on a single case. The choice of case study is
particularly suitable for “practical problems”
because it is specific in focus (Merriam,
2009, p. 43), and has distinct advantages
when it comes to answering the “how” and
“why” questions (Yin, 2003). Narrativity
forms the theoretical and methodological
framework of the study. A narrative inquiry,
with its “evaluative and explanatory value”,
will facilitate the meaning-making process
between the researcher and the participant
(O’Shea, 2014, p. 141), therefore enabling a
deep exploration of the subject’s
perspective, emotions, experiences and
construction of knowledge. In the study,
narratives serve as both a research approach
and a primary source of data. Story telling
enables us to “understand the experiences
and the way they are told, seeking clarity
about both the events that have unfolded and
the meaning that participants have made of
To capture the changes and processes
in the participant’s narratives, we conducted
three interviews: the first one around the
middle of her first semester, the second one at
the beginning of her second semester, and the
third one near the end of her second semester
as a teacher. These are critical points in a
school year, allowing the ECT sufficient time
to reflect on the different events that have
occured during her socialization. The
interviews had basically the same structure,
with questions focusing on the participant’s
relationships at work, positive and negative
events in her socialization, as well as her
reflections of such experiences. However, the
interview questions were also broad enough
for the participant to be able to recount her
experiences with their own plots, using her
own words and choice of orders, so as to
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108
ensure the nature of narrative interviews. The
interviews were done within 60-90 minutes
and audiotaped, with respect for privacy, i.e.
the subject’s beliefs, attitudes and opinions.
of the emotions experienced by the ECT in
her organizational socialization (Research
Question 1). In the next three sections, we
present three anecdotes, through which the
emotions and actions of the ECT in
challenging micropolitical situations are
demonstrated (Research Questions 1 and 2).
After verbatim transcription of the
audiotapes, the interview protocols were
coded in two cycles: initial and axial coding
(Saldaꢀa, 2015). By means of initial coding,
we assigned open codes to the data, labeling
the issues addressed in the text fragments.
After that, in the process of axial coding, we
compared and examined the relationships
among the initial open codes, in order to
group them into broader categories of codes.
Once the coding was completed, we
conducted a narrative analysis of the
subject’s experiences, using a holistic-
content approach (Lieblich et al., 1998).
Narrative analysis, as opposed to an analysis
of narrative, uses a narrative form to frame
data, and a plot to connect distinct
experiences together and establish the
context for understanding (Vanassche &
Kelchtermans, 2016). By following the
principles of a holistic-content approach, we
analyzed all three interviews in the context
of the whole story, detecting the themes
relevant to the research questions and their
development throughout the interviews. The
inductive analysis of the data was done with
careful reference to the conceptual
framework (Kelchtermans & Ballet, 2002a, b),
in such a way that the findings would be
congruent with the literature. Afterwards,
the interpretations were communicated with
the subject so as for her to validate how her
experiences were portrayed. The narrative,
4.1.1. The Emotional Panorama of
an Early Career Teacher: Joy,
Bewilderment, and Frustration Amid
Intricate Power Relationships
In the interviews, Linh spoke warmly
of her students and showed her enthusiasm
for the teaching job. From her first classes,
she set out to engage with her students on a
personal level, becoming a close mentor to
many. The better she understood her
students’ circumstances, the more inspired
she was to help them progress in their
learning and personal development. From
her close observations, she noticed that:
What seems to be their biggest
disadvantage is their mindset, which
I believe has largely been shaped by
their social backgrounds. I mean,
they typically underestimate their
own potential and dare not think big,
while in fact there are abundant
opportunities out there at university
if they know some English. But they
are usually timid and thus shy away
from the opportunities...
Her particular attention to students’
difficulties may have stemmed from her
previous experience of teaching practicum at
a private school, where students were from
well-off backgrounds and had ample
possibilities for exposure to English. With
her own pedagogical beliefs, Linh was keen
to take care of individual students so that she
could “know how they feel and offer them
timely orientation.” She was also eager to
impart life lessons and teach them reasoning
and social skills. Having been a dynamic
student herself at college, she quickly
accordingly,
was
a
co-constructed
production resulting from the process of
dialogue and negotiation between the subject
and the researcher.
4. Results and Discussion
4.1. Results
Below, we present the findings of the
study. The first section provides an overview
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became involved in planning extracurricular
activities, which she believed would help her
students “make the most out of their student
life.”
from some particular people,” she said, “we
are not supposed to say no.” Also recurring
in her stories was her resentment being
downplayed. Linh mentioned some older
colleagues were dismissive of her
competence, saying that she was “too
confident while not performing up to [her]
qualifications.” The fact that she was young
and new to the workplace, hence, caused her
to not only be assigned unreasonable tasks,
some of which were not at all work-related,
but also to be demeaned by colleagues who
barely had the chance to know her personally
and professionally. Throughout the
interviews, Linh revealed her attempts to
justify her own professionalism by
Whereas the word “excitement”
characterizes Linh’s emotions towards her
students and the teaching work, her
interactions with the fellow teachers and the
overall structural organization of the faculty
so often caused her to feel conflicted, if not
irritated. Being new to the job herself, she
confessed to filling a considerable amount of
time preparing her lessons. At the time of the
interviews, she was responsible for about 36
to 40 class periods (30 to 33 hours of
teaching) per week, which she already found
daunting indeed. She reported feeling
drained by the endless amount of lesson
planning and extra-curriculum for the
faculty’s English center that she was tasked
with organizing. While recognizing that
organizing extra-curricular activities was her
asset and a good opportunity for her to
become more well-rounded as a teacher, she
felt that she was missing out on opportunities
to hone her teaching skills, which were then
her priority at work. In the second interview,
she mentioned proposing a workload
reduction to the dean, yet the response she
received was “just find a way to minimize
the amount of time you spend planning
lessons until the side work is reduced”
(“which was never reduced”, remarked she.)
Although her workload remained the same,
the conflicting feelings gradually got less
intense as told in the third interview, as she
came to realize that extra-curricular
activities were just part of every faculty’s
added values outside the teaching and
learning indices in their mutual competition.
Therefore, as a faculty member, she felt
compelled to devote her time and effort for
the sake of the organization.
proactively taking on
a
number of
responsibilities at work. Although she was
unsure about her colleagues’ change of
attitude towards her, Linh believed that it
was her rectitude and proactiveness that
made a strong impression on the dean, who
would then generally be listening to her
views.
Several
aspects
relating
to
micropolitics can be observed in Linh’s
stories. The faculty as an organization
operated according to its own beliefs and
practices, with its own priorities regarding
what constitutes its strengths and
competitiveness over the other faculties. The
faculty members, including herself, were
with their specific professional interests.
Linh, as a beginning teacher, was to affirm
her professionalism against her colleagues’
skepticism, while also seeking to struggle for
her material interests in terms of time and
resources. She strove to establish close,
attentive working relationships with her
students and the two fellow beginning
teachers, and yet retained a rather wary
stance towards some other colleagues who
attempted to use their informal power to put
her in her place. At the center of her
socialization stories lie various emotions:
excitement towards her teaching and
students, confusion when it came to
There were, however, episodes
linked to the “unwritten rules” in the faculty
and some colleagues’ attitudes that caused
Linh to feel annoyed. “When a task comes
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110
questioning her own professional ideologies
against the faculty’s prevailing traditions,
and annoyance when confronted with
unreasonable tasks, ungrounded judgments,
and in certain instances, the entire
micropolitics of the faculty.
deliberately used their higher position as an
excuse for making the beginning teachers do
what is beyond their professional duties.
Emotionally disturbed as she was (“I found
it irrational”, “I felt really angry”), she chose
to reluctantly accept to do the task (“we had
no other choice”, “but I couldn’t help it…”)
In this case, the micropolitical action that she
chose to take is a form of acquiescence, i.e.,
overt behavioral compliance and obedience
to the expectations/demands of others
(Blase, 1988, p. 131). The demand that she
was supposed to respond to was somehow
illegitimate within the context of the
workplace, leading to intense negative
emotions as a result. Her choice of
complying with the demand in the anecdote
could be seen as her own way of
safeguarding her organizational interests. In
order to keep her employment, she chose to
stay silent and act as requested, despite her
unwillingness to do so. Silence, then, is both
a micropolitical strategy (Kelchtermans &
Ballet, 2002a) and a strategy of emotional
labor (e.g. Liu & Zhang, 2014) when
teachers must maintain composure when
dealing with society's expectations and the
repercussions the choices of action could take.
We
further
illustrate
the
micropolitical picture of Linh’s induction by
presenting three exemplary anecdotes
chosen from the interviews with her.
Through the anecdotes, aspects related to
micropolitical actions in challenging
micropolitical situations will be detailed.
4.1.2. Calls “From Above”
One week before the Lunar New
Year holiday, I and the two other
beginning
teachers
suddenly
received a long document from one
of the faculty’s “core people”. The
document was his wife’s, which
obviously had nothing to do with our
work. It was 80-page long in
Vietnamese, and we were asked to
translate it into English before the
Lunar New Year. Since we had no
other choice, we had to split the task
among ourselves. Clearly, these were
not part of my work requirements,
but because they came from “certain
people”, I wouldn’t be able to reject
them. Anyway, I found it irrational
and I felt really angry, but I couldn't
help it…
4.1.3. Learning by Shouting, or Not?
My faculty decided to cooperate with
a language center, whose method of
teaching, in my opinion, was quite
problematic. Students who followed
this method were asked to stand in
class and recite memorized English
This anecdote reveals an aspect of
micropolitics concerning vulnerability, as
Linh could not be in full control of the
circumstances she had to deal with. The task
was imposed on her, and although she found
it irrelevant, she had to perform it
nonetheless. The “more or less subtle power
relations between (groups of) school
texts
aloud.
They
learned
pronunciation using their hands and
feet instead of transcription, and they
were asked to get up early at 5 a.m.
to run while yelling an English text
aloud. Although this method seems
to have helped some students
become more confident when
speaking English, I found that they
were actually memorizing without
members,
with
different
interests”
(Kelchtermans & Ballet, 2002b, p. 107) was
made visible when some “certain people”
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understanding what they were
saying. I expressed my concerns
about this teaching method with the
teachers in my division. Although
they agreed with the shortcomings of
the method, they refused to voice
their opinions to the faculty. After
that, I was even more disappointed to
know that the faculty had even
purchased books and teaching
software from that language center.
“That was confusing indeed”, I
thought; so I came to express my
opinion with the dean but received
no approval. He even asked me to
work with that center in order to
learn from their method and help
build an English club for the faculty.
I accepted the assigned task, but only
to the extent that I would help them
meet my students. Other than that, I
deliberately chose not to follow their
method. After a couple of weeks, as
the dean noticed the disparity in our
teaching viewpoints compared to the
partner center, and seeing that I had
frankly expressed my disagreement
from the outset, he eventually agreed
to take me off the project with that
center…
emphasis on cooperation with the language
center may have arisen from his wish to
promote the image of the faculty by
experimenting with novel methods and
establishing partnerships outside of the
university. Linh's colleagues, though in
agreement with her about the learning
method's dubious outcomes, remained quiet
about their views. Meanwhile, she chose to
approach the dean and talk directly about her
concerns when her feelings got intense
(“That was confusing indeed”, “I came to
express my opinion with the dean”). When
she was required to work with the center,
which was against her will, she politely
agreed to undertake the task, yet used her
own power as a teacher to choose not to
follow the method which she found
problematic. In this instance, the
micropolitical behavior she took seems to
mirror a concern with both protection and
influence. Motivated by a strong task
perception and job motivation, she worked
to establish more desirable working
conditions.
Although
this
implied
confrontations, the way she handled the
situation was with much tact and diplomacy.
4.1.4. Extracurricular Activities:
Whose Extra Duties?
This semester [the second semester]
we had a talent contest for students
of the AEP of our faculty. Originally,
Ms. Huong, one of our colleagues,
was in charge of it. However, the
date of the contest was approaching
and nothing had yet been fixed, so in
the faculty meeting, I raised some of
my ideas. The dean seemed
convinced, I guess, so he appointed
me to lead the project together with
Ms. Huong. Ms. Huong and I then
discussed ways to extend the
application deadline and turn the
event into a large-scale one. We were
really stressed not only about making
In the above anecdote, the conflicts
of cultural-ideological interests of the
different stakeholders at the faculty were
revealed. Linh certainly held her own
pedagogical ideology when she challenged
the validity of the learning approach
introduced by the language center (“…they
were
actually
memorizing
without
understanding what they were saying”). The
dean, however, seemed to be in favor of this
new technique, as he insisted that Linh learn
it from the center and help build an English
club together with them. From the position
of a leader, it could be the case that his
VNU JOURNAL OF FOREIGN STUDIES, VOL. 37, NO. 3 (2021)
112
rules but also how to communicate
with students so they wouldn’t get
confused by the changes. Most
importantly, we needed to keep the
image of the contest and the faculty
with whatever decision we would
make. I thought things were going
well and “BOOM” – Ms. Huong told
me that she would stop working at
the faculty in a week’s time to
prepare for her study abroad. By that
time, we had already been approved
by the dean to expand the contest to
students of the whole university and
universities all over the city. Ms.
Huong passed everything to me, and
then I was the only one to take charge
of the project! There were lots of
things to do on the checklist, so I
asked my colleagues to register to do
them. Turned out, only the two other
new teachers put their names on the
list. Some teachers were doubtful
about the plan and told me to be less
ambitious, some said they were
already too busy, and so they refused
to take part in the organization of the
contest. I didn’t try to persuade them,
though, but I decided to recruit 10
students from the AEP to run the
event instead. We had about a month
for the organization and I think
everything went quite smoothly,
from applying for sponsorship,
designing backdrops and banners,
sending out invitations, to handling
all the logistics stuff, except that I felt
totally exhausted. Three days before
the event, the dean was taken aback
to see my name and the two other
new teachers’ all over the checklist,
without the participation of the other
colleagues. He quickly assigned
some of them to help us with the rest
of the preparation, and this time they
joined us. Fortunately, our event
went smoothly. The only sad thing I
learnt was that he was pretty angry
with the colleagues who refused to
help out. I don’t know if I should
have done differently to involve
them from the beginning…
The anecdote highlights the teacher's
relationships with her colleagues. Based on
Linh’s description of the situation, it seems
as though the other teachers in the faculty
were not very cooperative in this particular
event. When they were asked to register to
take part in the event organization, the
teachers seemed to show little trust to Linh
as a team leader (“[s]ome teachers were
doubtful about the plan and told me to be less
ambitious”). In her previous interviews,
Linh at times mentioned how some teachers
were “a bit skeptical” of her professionalism.
In all likelihood, they assumed Linh's ideas
for the event would not turn out successful,
considering the fact that it was her first time
being a project leader at the faculty.
Nevertheless, it appears that their lack of
participation was due to their concern for
time, i.e., a matter of material interests. This
is seen to be a subtle, implicit micropolitical
precept within the faculty, that organizing
extracurricular activities falls mostly on the
shoulders of beginning teachers. The older
colleagues did not seem to be interested in
participating, and in fact, they only did so at
the behest of the faculty administrator.
While Linh was not quite supported
by her colleagues, it was clearly evident
from the anecdote how she actively took
actions to handle the situation. Linh took the
initiative in proposing ideas to the people
with authority and voluntarily accepted extra
responsibilities. Even when her colleagues
refused to take part in the organization, she
nevertheless stayed diplomatic by not
attempting to plead with them, nor informing
the administrator. Instead, she resorted to her
VNU JOURNAL OF FOREIGN STUDIES, VOL. 37, NO. 3 (2021)
113
students to assist with the project, and
despite being “totally exhausted”, she and
the two other beginning teachers managed to
handle the tasks satisfactorily. From the
anecdote, Linh seemed to have learnt the
unwritten rules of the faculty that
extracurricular activities are expected to be
beginning teachers’ duties. Although it is an
indication of inequality between teachers,
these tasks also appear as opportunities to
demonstrate their capabilities (Jenkins et al.,
2009). This explains how she on the one
hand made visible the micropolitical rule of
the faculty (proactive micropolitical
actions), but on the other allowed the faculty
to preserve its unwritten micropolitical rule
by doing what was required of her (reactive
micropolitical actions).
confusion, sometimes even frustration or
anger when confronting a challenging work
environment. These kinds of emotions have
been found common among early career
teachers (Hebert & Worthy, 2001); however,
on top of that, Linh maintained her
enthusiasm towards her students and the
teaching job throughout her first year as a
teacher. Although her socialization process
involved plenty of obstacles and her
professionalism was challenged, she
managed to address different situations with
her own agency, incorporating different
strategies and actions, finding a balance
between micropolitics and her own ideals.
We identified major micropolitical
actions on the basis of the subject’s proactive
and reactive concerns. With regard to
proactive concerns (i.e., establishing
desirable working conditions), it was evident
that Linh frequently took initiatives, making
herself visible to the faculty administrator. In
their earlier research, Kelchtermans and
Ballet (2002a) also indicated how
developing and maintaining contacts with
prominent gatekeepers serves as a self-
marketing strategy when early career
teachers look for, as well as embark on their
teaching job. In addition, she also made
visible the culture and some of the unwritten
rules in the faculty (e.g., faculties compete in
a variety of aspects other than academic
training, and extracurricular activities are
expected to be beginning teachers’ duties).
Her acknowledgement of the nature of these
unwritten laws thus had an impact on her
subsequent thoughts and behaviors. This is
quite clearly an indicator that finding one’s
position as a teacher in the faculty’s
established micropolitical context is not just
a passive adjustment but part of a process in
which an early career teacher consciously
interprets and interacts with the context
(Beijaard et al., 2004; Kelchtermans &
Ballet, 2002b). Linh’s third course of
micropolitical action involves taking on
more responsibilities at work, so as to look
4.2. Discussion
In this section, we discuss our
findings and situate them in the context of
the existing literature on the micropolitics of
teachers’ organizational socialization and
the related emotions and micropolitical
actions.
Linh, the ECT in our study, was in
constant negotiation about how she should
act as a teacher. While these kinds of
negotiations are routine for teachers at the
beginning of their career, they can be
elevated in pressure-filled settings. In her
interactions with different stakeholders in
and outside the faculty (her students,
colleagues, superintendents, and the
faculty’s cooperative partner), Linh has
gradually grasped the micropolitical
implications in the job. This process of
learning is understood as ECT’s
development of micropolitical literacy
(Kelchtermans & Ballet, 2002a), that is,
when ECTs “learn to ‘read’ the
micropolitical reality and to ‘write’
themselves into it” (p. 756). During this
process, Linh underwent a mix of emotions.
The initial excitement was gradually
accompanied by feelings of disappointment,
VNU JOURNAL OF FOREIGN STUDIES, VOL. 37, NO. 3 (2021)
114
for self-affirmation and recognition by
colleagues and superintendents. These kinds
of acknowledgement, according to Gold
(1996), are important sources of positive
self-esteem for early career teachers, which
Linh in this case strove to establish.
5. Conclusion and Implications
5.1. Conclusion
Our study explores an early career
teacher’s experiences in the organizational
socialization process during her induction
period. Taking a micropolitical perspective,
reflecting on Kelchtermans and Ballet's
(2002a, b) five categories of professional
interests, we attempt to make sense of the
early career teacher’s emotional reactions
and behavior in her socialization, as well as
in specific, challenging micropolitical
situations. Over the course of one year, the
ECT underwent a mix of feelings as a result
of her various encounters with different
stakeholders, on top of which she maintained
a sense of enthusiasm towards her students
Apart
from
her
proactive
micropolitical actions, Linh also employed
actions that were geared towards reactive
concerns (i.e., safeguarding or restoring
desirable working conditions) when the
situations got more challenging. First, she
frequently had direct talks with the
administrators – in this case, the faculty’s
dean. Although this approach did not always
change the situations, it was a means of
justifying her professionalism and thus
safeguarding her material, socio-cultural, as
well as self-interests. Being silent was her
second frequently employed action when
being exposed to intense situations. Silence,
in this case, was not a sign of indifference to
or ignorance of the workplace micropolitics.
Instead, it demonstrated how the early career
teacher began to develop her micropolitical
literacy by being selective in terms of
reactions. The silence had different
meanings in different situations – a form of
acquiescence when there were no other
choices, but also a form of diplomacy when
dealing with difficult, uncooperative
coworkers. This “culture of silence”
(Jokikokko et al., 2017, p. 68), seems to be
common in the workplace, given the fact that
failing to do so could threaten their position
at work (Uitto et al., 2015). Finally, we
identified an interesting kind of action,
which we called “quiet opposition”. When,
for example, a proposal of change was not
agreed upon, the early career teacher would
remain quiet on the outside but inside, she
would react strongly by concrete behavior
(e.g., accepting a task that was against her
professional ethics, yet refusing to
compromise by acting according to what she
believed would be beneficial to her
students).
and the teaching job. Through
a
micropolitical lens, her actions have also
been explored on the grounds of both
proactive and reactive concerns, reflecting
her
incremental
development
of
micropolitical literacy as part of her
socialization into the organization.
5.2. Implications
The results of our study present some
implications for teacher induction research.
In their induction, early career teachers are
not just inductees who wait around
passively, but they are also initiating
participants. In the school’s micropolitical
climate where they work, teachers form
emotions and adopt micropolitical strategies
to help them negotiate intricate situations.
Therefore, it is important that early career
teachers be trained as “organizational
persons” who possess the necessary skills to
function in an organization (Friedman &
Kass, 2002). These skills include “an
understanding of organizational processes,
communications within the organization,
group decision-making processes, and most
of all, the importance of equipping teachers
with skills in informal aspects of
relationships among colleagues, and the
VNU JOURNAL OF FOREIGN STUDIES, VOL. 37, NO. 3 (2021)
115
capacity to deal with difficult social
situations arising within the organization"
(Friedman & Kass, 2002, p. 165).
continuity of the story. However, given the
exploratory nature of this kind of research,
the heterogeneity of a quantitative method
would also act as a triangulation to the
quality of the data. Furthermore, we find that
some comparison of experiences within the
same school context, as well as between
early career teachers across different settings
is worthy of investigation. Finally, although
we have limited ourselves to the study of a
university teacher, we feel that it would be
equally valuable to discover more about the
experiences of schoolteachers, who
constitute the majority of the teaching staff
in Vietnam.
Secondly, our findings indicate that
early career teachers are not only those in
need of support, but they also possess strong
expertise and professionalism that can
benefit other teachers as well as the
organization as a whole. These findings are,
in fact, in line with the present-day paradigm
shift from the deficit/ remedial perspective
which views them as lacking particular
competencies and thus are in need of support
to adapt to the norms and expectations, to
more nuanced representations of early career
teachers. Kelchtermans (2019), for example,
proposed three alternative representations to
frame early career teachers and their
induction, including the early career teacher
as an actor or agent, as a networker and as an
asset. Taking a non-deficit approach,
therefore, means acknowledging them as
professionals who bring with them
knowledge, expertise, and networks to
contribute to the school’s development.
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VƯỢT QUA“CÚ SỐC VÀO NGHỀ”: KHÁM PHÁ CẢM XÚC
VÀ HÀNH ĐỘNG CỦAMỘT GIÁO VIÊN MỚI
TRONG QUÁ TRÌNH HÒANHẬP
THÔNG QUALĂNG KÍNH CHÍNH TRỊ VI MÔ
Trần Thị Ngân
Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ - Đại học Quốc gia Hà Nội,
Phạm Văn Đồng, Cầu Giấy, Hà Nội, Việt Nam
Tóm tắt: Nghiên cứu được tiến hành nhằm tìm hiểu về quá trình tham gia vào tổ chức của các
giáo viên mới vào nghề thông qua lăng kính chính trị vi mô, tập trung vào các vấn đề quyền lực, kiểm
soát và ảnh hưởng như một phần trong quá trình hiểu và hành động của các giáo viên mới vào nghề.
Nghiên cứu đặt ra hai câu hỏi: các giáo viên mới vào nghề trải qua những loại cảm xúc nào trong những
tình huống chính trị vi mô khó khăn, và họ đã sử dụng những loại hành động chính trị nào trong những
tình huống như vậy? Tài liệu nghiên cứu bao gồm ba cuộc phỏng vấn tường thuật với một giảng viên
đại học mới vào nghề người Việt Nam. Kết quả nghiên cứu cho thấy tầm quan trọng của chính trị vi mô
trong trường học như một tổ chức và những cảm xúc hiện diện khi các giáo viên mới vào nghề cố gắng
dung hòa giữa chính trị vi mô của trường học với niềm tin của chính họ với tư cách là giáo viên. Cùng
với đó, nghiên cứu cũng đóng góp kiến thức về cách các giáo viên mới vào nghề học cách giải quyết
các tình huống chính trị vi mô khó khăn thông qua các hành động cụ thể.
Từ khoá: chính trị vi mô, giáo viên mới vào nghề, cảm xúc, hành động chính trị
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