International Portal of Teacher Education
The online resource of academic content on teacher training and teacher education
Search results for: Teacher recruitment
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35 items
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This article examines the career trajectories of recent college graduates and career changers who became mathematics teachers in hard-to-staff schools through New York City Teaching Fellows (NYCTF).
The goal is to understand the main patterns in their careers before, during, and after teaching.
The study provides a portrait of the career trajectories and decision-making of more than 600 NYCTF mathematics teachers over a nine-year period.
The study incorporates survey and retention data collected as part of a longitudinal research project on NYCTF mathematics teachers.
The analysis of the teachers’ career trajectories is illuminated by descriptive statistics and qualitative analyses of teachers’ open-ended survey responses.
The article deepens our understanding of teachers’ career decision-making as it unfolds over time.
For example, it documents that the leavers emphasized different reasons for leaving NYC public schools, depending on when they left.
The study also challenges conventional understandings of teacher turnover by finding consequential amounts of midyear and involuntary turnover and by demonstrating the stochastic nature of some teachers’ trajectories.
It further shows that, although in many ways similar, the career trajectories of the career changers and recent college graduates differed in key regards; for example, although the career changers seem to have had greater trouble adjusting to teaching, they were more likely to remain in the district a decade after entry than the recent graduates.
The discussion focuses on the implications of the study for recruitment and retention strategies that can ameliorate pressing teacher turnover and shortage issues.
It posits that, given the high rates of turnover among NYCTF mathematics teachers, recruitment strategies focused on recruiting high-achieving recent graduates and professional career changers will not solve long-standing teacher turnover issues in districts such as NYC public schools.
As such, districts need to focus on retention strategies.
These would include, for example, training and induction tailored to meet the different needs and career goals of career changers and recent graduates.
Published: 2021
Updated: Jan. 29, 2022
2
This article explores the experiences of four individuals who changed careers into early childhood teaching in Victoria, Australia and later left the profession.
The study was conducted with a narrative inquiry approach and reveals insight into motivations for becoming an early childhood teacher (ECT), experiences of being an ECT and factors that lead to un-becoming an ECT.
Participants were motivated by pragmatic reasons such as career advancement and family-work compatibility alongside intrinsic interest when becoming an ECT.
They entered the profession eager to support children’s learning and development.
However, their experiences compromised their health and wellbeing and inhibited them from teaching as they envisioned.
The findings of the study hold implications for policy makers, employers and higher education in effort to retain and sustain ECTs.
Published: 2019
Updated: Nov. 18, 2020
3
This study addresses how teacher candidates committed to a social-justice-oriented urban teacher residency programme articulate and reflect why they want to be teachers in high-need public schools and what they expect from teaching so as to ascertain what they expect to do.
The participants of this study included 77 graduates who participated in four cohorts of an urban teacher residency programme from 2010 through 2014.
Employing a qualitative case study design, the authors analysed 77 sets of admissions essays, which were completed as part of the residency application process.
Building on their analysis of candidates’ admissions essays through inductive coding, the authors find that candidates’ reflections on why they want to be teachers in high-need public schools and what they expect to do, stem from their beliefs in their role as a teacher and their beliefs about the role of education.
Such reflections are grounded in beliefs of teacher activism, pupil activism, and advocacy for pupils who have been marginalised due to systemic inequalities.
The study illuminates committed teachers’ reasons for entering the teaching profession so as to inform better recruitment strategies, and has implications for how initial teacher education (ITE) programmes could specifically improve their professional preparation and practices to recruit and retain qualified teachers who intend to stay.
Published: 2019
Updated: Jun. 14, 2020
4
Troops to Teachers (TtT) is a UK governmental scheme introduced in 2013 to facilitate ex-military service personnel to re-train as teachers.
This narrative study explores the accounts of a sample of new TtT trainees at the onset of their training and considers their motivations for career changing, potential transferable attributes and skills, aspirational teacher identities and anticipated challenges.
Emerging from these rich narratives is a strong, shared commitment to the trainees’ chosen new career.
Self-discipline is identified as a professional quality to take into teaching from military service, whilst maintaining discipline in the classroom is more commonly regarded as an area of concern and challenge, rather than as a transferable skill set, challenging core governmental expectations of the Troops to Teachers initiative.
However, the importance of and a desire and commitment to continue to ‘serve’, is widely held, reflecting a particular narrative refraction of the TtT trainees.
This provides potential for further, perhaps longitudinal study, as the troops become teachers.
The study affirms the potential for further investment in a wider recruitment strategy for career-change teachers more generally, as providing an experienced and motivated professional workforce for schools.
Published: 2019
Updated: Jan. 05, 2020
5
Faced with declining numbers of students in teacher education programs, policymakers in many states are considering new actions that might increase teacher supply.
One approach that has gained increasing popularity is community colleges beginning to offer 4-year degrees in teacher education.
This study explores state adoption of these programs and its effect on the number and diversity of students earning bachelor’s degrees in teacher education.
Overall, the authors find no effect of these programs; however, in the limited case of a state with widespread use of community college baccalaureate (CCB) teacher education programs they find that degree production increased, yet the diversity of the graduates declined.
Published: 2018
Updated: Aug. 11, 2019
6
In this study, the authors examine the impact of a community service learning course on undergraduate students’ decisions to pursue careers as special education teachers or related service providers.
134 participants completed a course involving volunteer service with persons with disabilities in the local community and were surveyed as to whether they were interested in pursuing a career in special education upon graduation.
Their findings indicated that contact with a person with a disability through community service learning was a factor in influencing participants’ willingness to enter the field of special education.
Published: 2018
Updated: Jul. 29, 2019
7
In this study, the researchers analyzed data from an apprenticeship-style teacher preparation program to understand the relationship between a measure of preservice teacher quality—student teachers’ observational scores—and their decisions to (a) enter into the profession, and (b) stay in the profession within the first 2 years after graduation. They found that more qualified student teachers are more likely to enter into the profession and stay in the profession, even after controlling for student teachers’ demographic characteristics and their academic achievement.
Published: 2019
Updated: Jun. 02, 2019
8
This study examined relationships between the recruitment practice and contexts for recruitment to initial teacher education (ITE). The authors found that policy makers in England have recently shifted the balance of responsibility for recruitment from higher education institutes (HEIs) to schools. The policy makers in Wales are considering a similar change, but at present their recruitment is firmly in the control of HEIs. The authors found that the recruitment to ITE in Northern Ireland remains firmly in the control of HEIs whilst policymakers in Scotland remain committed to its partnership of HEIs and local authorities in recruiting to ITE.
Published: 2016
Updated: Nov. 15, 2018
9
This study examines the role of race in teacher hiring process. The findings reveal that the Hispanic and Asian teachers were hired proportionally to the rate at which they applied. This finding suggests that the low numbers for these groups may indeed reflect a supply problem. The findings show that while Black candidates submitted 13 percent of applications, a proportion greater than the percentage of Black students in the district, their chances of getting hired were low.
Published: 2017
Updated: Jul. 04, 2018
10
This study explores how Canadian employment advertisements in teacher education are constructed as mediating artefacts in the relationship between potential candidates and their goal of gaining an academic position. The present study reveals both similarities and differences with concurrent WoTE (Work of Teacher Education) investigations in UK, Australian and New Zealand contexts. The authors argue that Canadian education faculties appear to be preserving a commitment to the conceptualisation and enactment of teacher education as a distinctive field of research and teaching. They emphasize, however, recruiting and retaining new or senior teacher educators should be of significant concern for the public and for prospective teachers.
Published: 2016
Updated: Mar. 25, 2018