The first year of the profession is a difficult experience for everyone, but especially for teachers. The first year is the reflection of knowledge in practice for any job. During the years 2020 and 2021, the COVID-19 outbreak has made more complicated this challenge for first-year teachers. The purpose of this study is to explore the phenomenon of being a first-year primary school teacher during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hence, the phenomenological research design was employed. Using a purposeful sampling method, eight primary school teachers in their first year of teaching was chosen. The study group consisted of teachers from both urban and rural schools. Semi-structured interviews with each participant were conducted via Zoom. The themes were created based on the content analysis method. The findings of the study revealed the challenges that the participants experienced during the pandemic, as well as how they tackled those challenges. In addition, the role of their colleagues, principals, and other stakeholders in dealing with the process was highlighted. They also described the impacts of their pre-service and in-service preparation on their ways of dealing with teaching in the pandemic. Last, but not least, they addressed the lack of affordances of the technologies that they used in distance education during the pandemic. The study concluded that the experiences of the first-year primary teachers provided strong insights on the level of preparedness of educators, as well as how to better prepare for future scenarios.
Akçay et al. (Mon,) studied this question.