Novice teachers are often eager to embark on their journey in the teaching profession after years of teacher education, ready to actualize their educational ideals. Some head towards a smooth start while others encounter a wide range of constraints during their initial years of teaching. Drawing on narrative interviews with a number of novice English teachers in Shenzhen and Hong Kong for at least one academic year and other data sources such as their EFL learning autobiographies and school documents, this paper examines and compares (1) the opportunities and constraints these teachers face in their initial years of teaching and (2) their responses to the perceived opportunities and constraints in their attempts to take control of their teaching, in two different socio-cultural and educational contexts of Shenzhen and Hong Kong. This paper highlights how possibilities for and constraints on teacher autonomy are mediated by teacher agency, teacher identity and teacher beliefs. It also sheds light on how novice teachers can be afforded more opportunities in their struggle to become autonomous practitioners. Copyright © 2016 華中科技大學外國語學院.

Following years of pre-service teacher education, novice teachers are often enthusiastic about embarking on the journey in the teaching profession. However, they may not always possess the internal capacity and institutional support to take effective control of their teaching. This paper reports on a case study of the teaching lives of two novice secondary school ESL (English as a second language) teachers in Hong Kong, drawing on qualitative data gathered through individual face-to-face interviews, and supplemented by email exchanges and telephone conversations, over a one-year period. The study investigates how novice English teachers develop their teacher autonomy, and what factors contribute to their development as autonomous English teachers. The paper concludes that novice English teachers in Hong Kong possess the capacity and are also ready for autonomy, and that an invitational, supportive and collaborative school environment plays a decisive role in affording ample opportunities for novices to develop their autonomy in language teaching. The study suggests that novice teachers should become critically aware of the affordances (opportunities, possibilities, invitations, enablements) in their working conditions, and should meanwhile exercise their teacher agency to act on these affordances to pursue their personal-professional development.
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