Making a Debut in Teaching: Uncovering Prospective Teachers' First-time Teaching Experiences in Schools

First-time teaching is a transitional phase for novice teachers and it is an exciting experience and challenging task that needs to examine qualitatively. The purpose of the study is to explore prospective teachers' teaching experience as they practically live through teaching in the classroom for the first time in their lives. The phenomenological research approach was employed to explore the lived experience of thirteen teachers who were selected purposively from public and private schools in a district of the province of Punjab, Pakistan. Data were collected by interviewing the participants in an open-ended form of questions. The emergent main themes include debut in the classroom, managing classrooms, providing instructions, supported by cooperative teachers and support from school. The analysis of the themes and sub-themes revealed that prospective teachers experienced teaching quite differently from their expectations. The handling of the teaching situation became both challenging and exciting for them. The results have implications for prospective and novice teachers and educators, school administrators and experts of pre-service teacher programs who can make a plan to improve teaching conditions and enrich teaching experiences in the schools.