Diagnostic Abilities of Novice Teachers
Diagnostic Abilities of Novice Teachers

Summary/Abstract: This paper discusses diagnostic abilities of novice teachers of English as a foreign languagein Poland as demonstrated through analyzing critical incidents (CIs). A case study,designed to explore patterns and regularities in cognitive processes that practitioners activateto examine disorienting situations in their educational context, provided evidence of effectivemental work of beginner teachers at the verbal and conceptual levels. Specifically-structuredwritten reports on what the instructors considered critical moments in their teaching practiceserved as a tool to verbalize how they represent, interpret, and value phenomena in the FLclassroom by activating and integrating various sources of professional knowledge. The dataanalysis, which included both identification of the character of mental representations thesubjects stimulated during the recall as well as higher order thinking operations on these representations,led to the conclusion that the inexperienced teachers show a degree of efficacyto register relations and variation in classroom realities, to problematize the unproblematic, totake position on matters, and to formulate relevant feedback for their future didactic moves.This encourages a hypothesis that teachers’ diagnostic abilities are not necessarily determinedby the current state of their professional expertise and that limited classroom experience doesnot suppress adequate cognitive and affective responses to problems in beginner practitioners.

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