Learning from those who no longer teach: Viewing teacher attrition through a resistance lens

Most public school teachers in the United States now leave the classroom before reaching retirement. Research on teacher attrition has tended to focus on novice teachers, using human capital or organizational theories to understand trends in teacher exit. This study examines the accounts of certified, experienced teachers who left teaching after making significant investments in the career. The accounts of these invested leavers are examined through a lens of resistance, illuminating issues of power as well as the ideals of teaching that may be expressed through the decision to leave.     

Experienced teachers dealing with issues in education: a career perspective

This article reports on a qualitative study on the issues experienced teachers may encounter in everyday teaching practice. Some issues may possibly originate at the beginning of a career and continue to be a struggle during their career. Data were collected among 20 mid- and late career teachers from eight secondary schools. The results showed that at the current moment in their career, respondents of this study particularly recognised three issues: teacher–parent interaction, teaching versus other tasks and private life versus work. Teachers seldom talk about their issues, but more often than not they try to find a solution themselves or put up with the situation.     

Beliefs of experienced and novice teachers about achievement

The aim of this study was to examine the beliefs that experienced and novice teachers hold about school achievement. It is important to investigate these beliefs and attributions because of the significant role that teachers play in the lives of most children. A group of Greek Cypriot elementary school teachers (n = 154) and a comparable group of teacher education students (n = 159) completed the Beliefs About School Achievement (BASA) scale. It was found that, in comparison to student teachers, experienced teachers tend to attribute achievement more to factors that are biologically determined, uncontrollable by the child, and stable over time – such as intellectual ability. They also believe significantly more than student teachers that factors such as gender and family background play an important role in child achievement. In contrast, novice teachers believe more in the role that teachers play in student learning and in the importance of student effort.     

Tales out of school: Tracing perspective change through the stories of former teachers

Most public school teachers in the United States now leave the classroom before reaching retirement. This study examined the accounts of certified, experienced teachers who left teaching after making significant investments in the career in order to better understand their exit decisions. Anecdotes told by these invested leavers as they described their career were examined through a narrative lens. The analysis indicated a shift in perspective: as the teachers moved through their career, the primary sources of frustration for these former teachers switched from students to adults.     

Beginning teachers who stay: Beliefs about students

Beliefs serve as an adaptation that helps teachers organize their teaching world. Little is known, however, about how beliefs change and serve to help retain and sustain teachers, particularly for beginning teachers who are most likely to leave teaching. This study explores teachers' beliefs about students in the US (N = 67) and if these beliefs change during the first five years of teaching. Results indicate that teachers hold beliefs about students that capture pride and participation. Over time, these beliefs become more positive. Implications for teacher education and policy are discussed.     

Resilience strategies for new teachers in high-needs areas

This qualitative study investigates strategies of resilience exhibited by fifteen novice teachers employed in high-needs areas, such as in urban and rural contexts and in special education. Findings indicated that teachers utilised a variety of strategies, including help-seeking, problem-solving, managing difficult relationships, and seeking rejuvenation/renewal. These strategies assisted beginning teachers in building additional resources and support; however, the burden for success and securing resources fell on teachers themselves. Furthermore, the researchers recognised that resilient teachers demonstrated agency in the process of overcoming adversity. Implications for future practice and research are discussed.     

Why some graduating teachers choose not to teach: teacher attrition and the discourse-practice gap in becoming a teacher

ABSTRACT

Teacher attrition is a perennial problem in many countries around the globe. With attrition especially pronounced amongst early career teachers, efforts to retain and sustain these teachers have highlighted the importance of effective mentoring and support programs within schools. However, less is known about the perceptions and experiences of graduates of initial teacher education (ITE) programs who choose not to enter the teacher profession, therefore not benefiting from such mentoring and support, and subsequently being lost to the profession, potentially forever. Therefore, this paper reports on a qualitative case study that investigated the reasons why one group of graduates from an ITE program in Hong Kong chose not to teach. Using in-depth interviews and grounded in a theory of teacher identity construction, the results reveal how the participants struggled to construct their preferred professional identities, in particular during a teaching practicum, and the role this played in their decision not to enter the teaching profession. Implications for how teacher educators can better support preservice teachers as they struggle to construct their professional identities are considered and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

From attrition to retention: a narrative inquiry of why beginning teachers leave and then rejoin the profession

The issue of beginning teachers leaving the profession in the first few years of their career represents a global problem, and while discrepancies exist over precise numbers, there is consensus that the attrition rate of new teachers is high. This paper reports on a narrative inquiry into two beginning teachers who left the profession after just 1 year of practice, only to return 2 years later. By examining this continuum from attrition to retention through the lens of the two teachers’ narrative accounts it is possible to gain some insights into how new teachers’ personal and professional landscapes intertwine. Findings reveal that these beginning teachers’ experiences of their school contexts combined with their personal stories in the first year of practice shaped their professional identity culminating in them leaving and then rejoining the teaching fold. Insights gleaned may have significant implications for beginning teachers, school leaders, teacher education institutions, and policy makers.     

Foucault,Confucius and the in-service learning of experienced teachers in an era of managerialism

By drawing on Foucault’s theory of subjectification, this study presents a case study of two experienced teachers’ in-service learning in the managerialist climate of Macau. The results indicate that the prevailing policies and administrative strategies on in-service learning served as the apparatus of managerialism working on teachers and constituting their subject as entrepreneurs. At the same time, however, experienced teachers were able to rely on the time-honoured Confucian philosophy to negotiate their learning experience with the dominating managerialism. Their in-service learning took place in and through their relationship with others and this learning, in turn, facilitated the creation and sustainability of the social harmony of the relationship. In-service learning therefore is essentially a lifelong ethical project that aims to cultivate their potential to become a Confucian sage, rather than an entrepreneur.     

Keeping our teachers! Investigating mentoring practices to support and retain novice educators

For this study the researchers used data from the 2006 North Carolina Teacher Working Conditions survey to investigate the possible relationship between mentoring and intentionality with respect to beginning teachers’ intentions to remain in the profession. The sample consists of 8838 teachers who were mentored during their first two years of teaching. To determine whether the quality of mentoring is related to teachers’ intentions to stay or leave the profession, mentor matching, degree of support, and frequency of interactions were variables examined. Beginning teachers who were matched by grade level, who received assistance with the supports investigated, and who met with mentors at least once monthly for the specified activities were more likely to commit to remaining in the profession than their peers who had received less support.     

Factors affecting service learning implementation: a comparison of novice and veteran teachers

This qualitative study investigated factors that facilitate and hinder implementation of service learning for novice and veteran teachers. We conducted case studies of three novice teachers and three veteran teachers, using a cross-case analysis within and across groups. Confirming prior research, facilitating factors included teachers’ knowledge of service learning and availability of time for planning and enacting it. Some novel factors contributing to the literature included student characteristics and common core pressures. Findings indicated differing needs of novice and veteran teachers for learning about and implementing service learning. Study implications and limitations are addressed.     

An ecological perspective of teacher retention: An emergent model

The aim of this study is to examine the characteristics of an ecological school culture conducive to the retention of novice teachers. Twenty novice teachers were selected randomly from 20 different schools in Israel. The qualitative research findings revealed that an ecological school culture conducive to the retention of novice teachers possesses a multi-dimensional framework characterized by categories such as organizational practices, peer communication, individual aspects, community, working conditions and teacher status. The research findings can contribute to reshaping guidance procedures and practices best-suited to novice teachers, which will ultimately aid in the retention of quality teachers.     

Investigating advanced professional learning of early career and experienced teachers through program portfolios

Since closing the gap between different levels of professional development for teachers has been identified as a particular need in our profession, capturing the results of professional coursework can help teacher educators better understand and meet the unique needs of teachers with different levels of experience. This study examined the effects of professional development on early career (EC) and experienced (EXP) teachers during an advanced master’s degree programme in the USA. Qualitative analysis of 47 teacher portfolio reflections and 11 post-programme interviews investigated how EC and EXP teachers engaged in programme learning experiences to determine the ways that coursework influenced their professional growth. Differences between EC and EXP teachers were noteworthy, indicating that these two groups responded to professional development experiences differently. Ongoing research to determine effective differentiated approaches toward professional development for both novice and EXP teachers remains a key area for teacher education research, most particularly with a goal of measuring the results of professional development on improving PK-12 student performance.     

Sustaining teachers’ stories to live by: implications for teacher education

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we focus on questions around who we are as teacher educators as well as our responsibilities in helping pre-service teachers compose forward-looking stories as they prepare to begin teaching. We draw on the results of two studies in this paper: one a semi-structured interview study with 55 second- and third-year teachers in two Canadian provinces and one narrative inquiry into the experiences of early career teacher leavers. These studies showed how early career teachers’ stories to live by fuel their desires to become teachers. Teaching was a way to try to live out and sustain their stories to live by, that is, participants continued to live out their stories to live by shaped in early personal knowledge landscapes and embodied in their personal practical knowledge. We also learned that when teachers could not sustain their stories in the professional knowledge landscapes, their stories to live by shifted to stories to leave by, and they left teaching.     

Exploring the real-world decision-making of novice and experienced teachers

For the past two decades, those involved in teacher training have encouraged teachers to incorporate evidence from research into a process of critical reflection to improve the quality of their decisions. Using research as part of a deliberative reflective process has been thought to enable teachers to learn from their practice. However, teachers’ decision-making has proven highly impervious to external influence. Teachers often resist reflective models that attempt to take their thinking to deeper, critical levels and are unlikely to use empirical evidence to inform their decisions. Given these conditions, this study seeks further insight into teachers’ pedagogical decision-making amidst the complex dynamics of ‘real-world’ educational contexts. Based on a systematic review of over three decades of decision research, a questionnaire was developed to investigate the decision process of 80 pre- and in-service teachers working in the post-compulsory sector. Data were analysed to uncover how these teachers made sense of the range of information that came into play when deciding how to resolve a pedagogical issue and the sources they used to inform their decision-making. If those involved in pre- and in-service teacher training could build upon teachers’ intrinsic decision processes, they could potentially support greater decision effectiveness.     

Lesson Study with preservice teachers: Lessons from lessons

This article examines a 2-year process of integrating Lesson Study—a form of teacher-led professional development—into an introductory course on the principles of teaching for students majoring in early childhood education. The course is taught in conjunction with beginning practicum work in area schools. We describe obstacles, modifications, and outcomes as we adapted the Lesson-Study process to help preservice teachers pay closer attention to instructional strategies (such as questioning techniques, anticipating student responses, and how lesson flow affects student understanding), and become more comfortable with constructive criticism by focusing on the lesson plan rather than the teacher.     

The retention question in context-specific teacher education: Do beginning teachers and their program leaders see teachers' future career eye to eye

This paper discusses the challenge of retaining teachers in hard-to-staff schools by examining how it is addressed in three context specific teacher education programs, which prepare teachers to teach in urban public, urban Catholic, and Jewish Day Schools in U.S.A. The findings of this study suggest that counter to teaching force trends teachers from the three programs that we studied expressed high motivation to serve as teachers or leaders in their particular schools and communities. In particular, we found that teachers' career commitments developed around the religious or civic missions promoted by their respective programs. Finally, teachers' career perceptions seem to correlate, though not entirely match, with those of their program leaders.     

The role of motivations and perceptions on the retention of inservice teachers

This article addresses the characteristics, motivations and perceptions of teachers regarding retention. The participants were practicing teachers in Australia. The survey included the Factors Influencing Teaching Choice (FIT-Choice) scale, previously used with preservice teachers. The results show that: i) teacher motivations are related to self-perceptions in teaching children/adolescents in the community, ii) threatened by negative social perceptions, and iii) influenced by characteristics such as gender. It is concluded that retention may be undermined by employment practices and social perceptions that erode a teacher’s self-concept. Outcomes inform policy for improving employment practices for the retention of a diverse teaching workforce.     

Slipping through the cracks: teachers who miss out on early career support

This paper presents evidence from a nationally representative sample of early career teachers about those likely to miss out on formal support, and the employment conditions associated with this absence of support. It uses survey data from the Staff in Australia’s Schools Survey. Consistent with existing research, our results suggest a relationship between early career teachers with insecure employment and a lack of support. The findings suggest that, for early career teachers, being unsupported is associated with dissatisfaction with professional relationships and career opportunities; and that this dissatisfaction is associated with an intention to leave the profession.     

Recruiting and retaining secondary mathematics teachers: lessons learned from an innovative four-year undergraduate program

In response to the critical shortage of qualified mathematics teachers in the U.S., the TIME 2000 Program was created with funds from the National Science Foundation, at Queens College of the City University of New York. Now institutionalized, the program is designed to support the recruitment, preparation, and retention of prospective teachers through a close-knit learning community in which participants experience an innovative and multifaceted program for their four years of undergraduate study. This article describes the innovative aspects of the program that show promise of preparing highly competent teachers whose careers span a lifetime. Short- and long-term strategies for recruiting students from high school are described as well as the program components that are designed to increase retention of candidates in the program and in teaching.