Towards a sociology of teacher labour markets

The existing sociological literature on teachers has tended to either centre on reified concepts of the teacher's role, the processes of becoming a teacher or the status of the profession and the determinants of its pay. There is very little discussion of the structure of the profession as such and the implications of that structure for the professional identity of the teacher. It is the argument of this paper that a model of the teacher labour market is of importance both to a theoretical understanding of the teaching profession and to an appreciation of the structural changes that face teachers in what appears will be the dismal decade of the eighties.