Journal article
Career change teachers in hard-to-staff schools: should I stay or leave?
Australian educational researcher, Vol.51(2), pp.481-496
04/2024
PMID: 36817651
Appears in Recent Faculty of Education Publications
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Abstract
Recruiting career changers into teaching has emerged as a part of a strategy by governments worldwide to address complex teacher shortage problems in hard-to-staff schools. In this paper, we present a case study of two career change teachers and trace their career journey into Initial Teacher Education (ITE) and the teaching profession in two separate hard-to-staff schools. We interviewed these teachers during the first 2 years of their career change journey. During this period, 'push-and-pull' factors impacted their intentions to stay in the profession. Challenges included inadequate school-level mentorship support, social-geographic isolation in a regional school setting during the COVID-19 remote learning and the more complex working conditions in hard-to-staff schools. The adverse impacts of these challenges were, to some extent, mitigated by the participants' commitment to making a positive difference in the lives of children and young people through the teaching profession, a strong work ethic and support provided by their ITE programme in the form of university-based mentors and adjustment to study requirements. The participants responded to these push-and-pull factors in ways that highlighted their reflexive decision-making and determination to stay in teaching despite challenges. We discuss the implications of these findings for workforce planning strategies aimed at recruiting career change teachers in hard-to-staff schools.
Details
- Title
- Career change teachers in hard-to-staff schools: should I stay or leave?
- Creators
- Babak Dadvand - La Trobe UniversityJan van Driel - The University of MelbourneChris Speldewinde - The University of MelbourneMerryn Dawborn-Gundlach - The University of Melbourne
- Publication Details
- Australian educational researcher, Vol.51(2), pp.481-496
- Publisher
- Springer Nature
- Number of pages
- 16
- Grant note
- Open Access funding enabled and organized by CAUL and its Member Institutions. The funding for this project was provided by the Melbourne Graduate School of Education as part of the Research Development Award for Team-Based research.
- Identifiers
- 991013345422802368
- Copyright
- © The Author(s) 2023, corrected publication 2023.
- Academic Unit
- Faculty of Education
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Journal article