Source: Teaching Education, Volume 26, Issue 1, 2015, pages 1-16
This study considered early career teacher attrition as an identity making process that involves a complex negotiation between individual and contextual factors.
The participants were forty second- and third-year teachers in rural, urban, and suburban boards across Alberta, Canada, who taught at different grade levels.
The participants were interviewed about their experiences with attention to their future intentions.
The seven themes, developed inductively, were:
(1) support;
(2) an identity thread of belonging;
(3) tensions around contracts;
(4) new teachers will do anything;
(5) balancing composing a life: Working hours;
(6) the struggle to not allow teaching to consume them; and
(7) can I keep doing this? Is this teaching?
The results prompted questions about how beginning teachers might be sustained by considering each person’s storied life, as well as about how teachers might be sustained on both their personal and professional knowledge landscapes.