Sound Advice from Teachers to Future and Practicing Teachers

The aim of the present study is to investigate early career teachers’ professional agency in the classroom. In addition, the association between early career teachers’ professional agency in the classroom and the burnout they experienced was examined. In this study, 779 early career teachers, teaching in primary and junior secondary schools in China, responded to the study survey in 2021. The Mplus statistical package (version 8.4) was used to conduct the analysis and the data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The results indicated that early career teachers’ professional agency in the classroom consists of three elements: motivation, self-efficacy beliefs, and skills to manage new learning, which entails building a collaborative environment by transforming teaching practices and reflection in the classroom. The results also showed that early career teachers’ professional agency in the classroom was negatively related to their burnout.

The development of supervision, monitoring, and support actions constitute relevant assistance for early career teachers since there are varied limitations of initial training and difficulties at the beginning of this professional activity. Given this scenario, the Hybrid Mentoring Program (HMP) works as an action to induce teaching in a constructive-collaborative research project that aims to offer early career teachers monitoring and support through a process called mentoring, in which an experienced teacher - with more than ten years of professional experience - accompanies early career teachers with a maximum of five years of experience, assisting them in the development of their professional skills, as well as in the foundation of new competence practices. In this article, we sought to identify and understand the training needs presented by early career teachers participating in a mentoring program. The theoretical frameworks involved early career teachers’ challenges, difficulties, and training needs. The research is qualitative, with interpretative descriptive analysis of digital narratives produced through the dialogue between two early career teachers and their respective mentors via different tools in HMP’s Moodle environment. The categories emerged from the readings of the data set, and the results indicate that the mentoring actions developed in the HMP made it possible to capture how the participants report their difficulties at the beginning of their teaching careers and how these configured as training needs to be worked on by the mentor-beginner dyad.

The 21st century has emerged as an era of accountability and standardisation for the teaching profession (Mikulec & Miller, 2012). The current research is comprised of 4 interrelated empirical studies which measure and explore individual differences in perceptions of teacher-student boundaries in the secondary school context from an ethical perspective. This research is timely given it has been 8 years since the Teacher Code of Conduct was introduced in Victoria (The Institute, 2008). While the relationship between teachers and their students has been recognised as a powerful contributor to learning, engagement, and development, the professional limitations of teacher-student interactions have been relatively unexplored. Further, technological advances in the last decade have created new environments that potentially expose teachers to new possibilities and vulnerabilities such as Social Networking Sites (SNS). Within a contingency framework for ethical decision-making (Ferrell & Gresham, 1985) the current research employs a mixed-methods approach and a cross-sectional design. Participants were preservice secondary teachers (N = 288) enrolled at a Victorian university and early career secondary teachers (N = 227) registered in Victoria. All participants completed a questionnaire during class time (preservice) or online (early career) which took approximately 40 minutes. In the absence of a measure of attitudes towards teacher-student interactions and behaviours, the Professional Interactions and Behaviours Scale (PIBS) was developed and validated in Study A. Based upon the Victorian Teacher Code of Conduct, (The Institute, 2008), 5 types of teacher-student interactions were educed from the items; emotional support, physical support, teacher disclosure, connectivity, and befriending. Although average endorsement was modest, early career teachers reported higher endorsement of teacher disclosure and preservice teachers provided greater approval of connectivity and befriending. An opportune international collaboration enabled further comparisons with preservice secondary teachers in Norway (N = 227), who demonstrated greater endorsement of the provision of physical support to students than Victorian preservice teachers. Differences in reported ethical training provided during teacher education are also noted and considered as a context for the development of attitudes toward professional behaviour. Utilising a person-centred approach, Study B explored profiles of trait-like characteristics among the Victorian preservice teachers through cluster analysis. This study proposed that individual differences in personality (Mc Crae & Costa, 2003) and attachment style as defined by Bartholomew (1990) may relate to other personal characteristics such as the need for popularity, domains of contingent self-worth and perceptions of professional behaviour as measured by the PIBS. Preservice teachers described as “responsive resilient” in personality were more likely than “curious & sensitive ambiverts” to endorse teacher provision of emotional support to students. Further, securely attached individuals were more likely to endorse the provision of physical support than dismissive individuals. Study C utilised a mixed-methods approach to explore profiles of teacher-student interactions styles in early career secondary teachers and their responses to ethical dilemmas relating to teacher-student boundaries. Four profiles emerged; “sparing investors”, “reserved professionals”, “relational enthusiasts”, and “supportive ambitious” and in terms of interpersonal goals, professional expectancies and values, burnout, career satisfaction and career aspirations. Few quantitative differences were observed between profiles in terms of ethical decision-making, yet thematic analysis highlighted contextual considerations and protective behaviours as key considerations of early career teachers. Study D explored current and prospective social networking behaviour and found both preservice and early career teachers were highly engaged with SNS, with preservice teachers reporting greater usage. Almost half of participants in both the preservice and early career samples reported negative experiences as a result of online social networking such as bullying or workplace issues. In relation to connecting with students, early career teachers were more likely to accept a friend request from a past student than preservice teachers. Taken together, these studies explore individual differences in teacher-student boundaries as they are perceived by preservice and early career teachers in Victoria. The PIBS is presented as a valid contemporary measure of perceptions towards teacher-student interactions, and differences of experience and culture considered. Implications of the findings are considered in relation to teacher selection processes, the ethics curriculum in teacher education, and regulation of the teaching profession in Australia.

Aims: This study explores the mentorship of Early Career Teachers (ECTs) and its impact on student success in Appalachia, Ohio, by systematically reviewing existing literature. The critical role of mentorship in the professional development and retention of ECTs in rural educational settings is examined. Conceptual Framework: Situated Learning Theory (SLT) was adopted to guide the investigation into the challenges faced by ECTs in rural Appalachia and the significance of structured mentorship programs. Methodology: This study employs a systematic literature review approach, analyzing findings from existing research on the mentorship of ECTs. A rigorous search, selection, and synthesis of relevant studies were conducted to identify key themes and patterns. Results: The study revealed significant challenges for ECTs in Appalachia, including professional isolation, lack of resources, and socio-economic barriers. Structured mentorship programs were found to be crucial in enhancing ECTs’ instructional practices, resilience, and professional growth. The bi-directional benefits of mentorship were highlighted, showing positive impacts on both teachers and students. Conclusion: Effective mentorship is essential for the retention and professional development of ECTs in rural Appalachia. Comprehensive mentorship programs can significantly improve educational outcomes, reduce teacher attrition, and foster a supportive learning environment. Educational leaders and policymakers should prioritize tailored mentorship programs to address the unique challenges of rural settings. Additionally, investing in professional development and increasing access to resources for ECTs are essential for their sustained success and resilience.

Teacher retention in England continues to be in a state of decline, with early career teachers (ECTs) most at risk of leaving the profession. High attrition rates create an unstable and unsustainable workforce, which negatively affects the educational development of young people. The purpose of this paper was to explore the career‐related push and pull factors for ECTs in England. The paper also explores the way in which ECTs' experiences shape career decision‐making, and the extent to which their motivational needs are being met. Previous studies have considered workplace retention; however, little is known about the motivational needs and perspectives of ECTs. This paper explores the experiences of 20 ECTs in state‐funded primary, secondary and special schools in England. All participants had less than 5 years' teaching experience and were selected through purposive sampling. Participants took part in semi‐structured online interviews with data analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Five themes were constructed from the data: complexity, belonging, emotional impact, professional identity and relentlessness. Findings show that these themes are interrelated and combine to create a clear ‘tipping point’ where ECTs begin to find the job unmanageable. From a motivation perspective, we found that autonomous motivation reduces quitting intentions and that the need for relatedness and positive professional identities is particularly important for retaining teachers in the first 5 years of their careers.

Early career teachers (ECTs) face great stress arising from the demands of the teaching job which are translated into everyday challenges. This article reports a mixed-methods study which examined teacher buoyancy, focusing on how ECTs harness personal and contextual resources when facing the everyday challenges of teaching. The quantitative data analysis showed six factors which constituted the personal and contextual dimensions of teacher buoyancy. The qualitative findings offered an in-depth understanding of these dimensions. ECTs counted on the emotional, cognitive, and behavioural emphases of personal resources in making immediate to short-term responses to everyday challenges. Striving for professional growth and Taking care of one’s well-being were distal personal resources that enhanced ECTs’ potential to manage these challenges. Accessibility to contextual resources and ECTs’ utilisation of these resources constituted the dual facets of the contextual dimension of teacher buoyancy. Implications for initial teacher education and induction of ECTs are discussed.

This article focuses on a small part of original doctoral research conducted at the University of Sheffield and presents the perceptions of three Early Career Teachers (ECTs) and how their identities as professionals developed over time in response to personal and professional factors they were exposed to during the first 3 years of teaching. ECTs in this study projected multiple identities that morphed throughout their early careers. Controlling which identities to project at any one time, supported teachers to deal with challenges within three different dynamic primary school environments. ECTs articulated hierarchies of power and recognised a gap between their aspirations and expectations of more experienced others; six aspects were categorised: personal, organisational, social, cultural, political, and historical. This article demonstrates how the six aspects interact dynamically with ECTs’ identities, which morph under pressure and over time in multifaceted circumstances. This research introduces a context-specific historical aspect of teachers’ lives underpinned by tried and tested ways of working ingrained in education systems. Findings further the debates about the importance of supporting ECTs with high-quality ongoing professional development, increasing confidence and competence and sense of professional identity, supporting aspirations to maintain motivation and retaining ECTs in careers for the longer term.

This article examines the accounts of actions undertaken by Early Career Teachers (ECTs) recently graduated from a social justice-oriented Initial Teacher Education (ITE) program and employed in complex school settings with high levels of student diversity, disadvantage, and poverty. The study drew on theories of teacher agency and agency more broadly to examine the workshadowing observations of the teachers’ practice in classrooms augmented by their reflective accounts in interviews. The study found that the ECTs’ agency, or contextualised social action, can be conceptualised as temporally embedded social engagement directed at addressing their students’ cultural, social and academic needs. The teachers drew on past learnings from their ITE program, committed to future-oriented innovations in teaching, and made in-the-present decisions about actions to resolve emergent contingencies such as resource shortages. We argue that these understandings are usefully enhanced by recognising contingency, consciousness, criticality and creativity as additional features of the teachers’ deliberative programs of action.

School improvement efforts rely on teachers’ capacity for professional development and learning. We investigate the kind of roles taken by early career teachers (ECTs) with a master’s degree from a research-based teacher education programme in relation to professional learning and school development in Norwegian schools after five years in the profession. The conceptual framework includes research of professional learning and trust. Semi-structured interviews of 26 ECTs were analysed using reflective thematic analysis. The findings illustrate four different roles that ECTs take: creators, translators, drivers and passengers. All the ECTs become creators, as they were enquiry-oriented and collaborated with colleagues to promote bottom-up professional learning, in order to improve teaching. Translators capture the ECTs’ ability to translate a new curriculum into deep-learning and student-active teaching. Drivers obtain formal positions and promote professional learning in schools. Passengers take a passive role, and they are critical of the school system that introduces and performs a high number of top-down school-development projects. We discuss how ECTs want to develop relational trust, while the system may strengthen relational and structural trust.

Early Career Teachers’ Burnout: A Latent Profile Analysis on Early Career Teachers’ Burnout and Experiences

Given the current climate of high levels of teacher attrition, it is critically important that we understand what keeps early career teachers in the profession. This paper reports early findings from a project addressing the question: ‘What conditions are conducive to promoting teacher resilience and retention in the first two years of teaching?’ The research aims to identify the internal strengths and external strategies that promote resilience in early career teachers. School leaders and first year teachers from 59 schools across two states in Australia contributed to in-depth, open-ended interviews in which they talked about the experiences of beginning teaching. From this data, narrative portraits were developed and emerging themes documented and analysed. A strong emerging theme is how relationships with principals influence teachers’ feelings of personal and professional well-being, with both negative and positive effects reported. This paper uses portraits of two early career teachers to examine this theme. The findings provide important insights for principals who wish to foster resilience in early career teachers.

Teacher quality is not often defined but can be understood through the way that policies and expectations for teaching quality are talked about and talked into being. How do early career teachers (ECTs) navigate high expectations of becoming quality teachers, especially when there are several discourses of quality, some prominent and others less so? Data from interviews with 13 Australian ECTs five years after their graduation from selective quality teacher preparation degrees were analysed to identify how ECTs discerned, deliberated and dedicated themselves to quality teaching in their diverse contexts. ECTs drew from concepts of effectiveness and responsibility when they focused on their students, yet their emphasis on relational priorities and the importance of reflexive dialogue points to a practice-based approach. While dominant discourses of teacher quality do not highlight relational or collective approaches, these ECTs showed how professional standards, effectiveness and responsibilisation approaches were recontextualised. Importantly, the systemic conditions of time to talk, and opportunities for attending to relationships, as well as the skills of reflexivity underpin this alternative approach.

Given the multiple transitions that early career teachers (ECTs) experience in the initial years of their careers, navigating a sense of belonging can be particularly challenging. Using data from a series of phenomenological interviews with seven ECTs in the southeastern United States, this article investigates the role of school leaders in shaping and supporting ECTs’ sense of belonging. Major findings suggest that school leadership practices that encouraged ECTs’ psychological safety, visibility within their schools, and social connection with colleagues strongly influenced their sense of belonging. Prioritizing a sense of belonging enables school leaders to foster confidence and effectiveness, thus supporting ECTs’ retention and effectiveness.

Around the globe there are concerns about the quality and retention of early career teachers. Teacher education programs play a significant part in these discussions because of their role in preparing future teachers. Particularly in teacher education these concerns have focused on how teachers are being prepared to connect theory, research and practice and the impact of deficit views of teacher candidates (pre-service teachers) and early career teachers (teachers within their first few years of teaching) on their later retention. Teacher education programs have been described as suffering from a disconnect between theory, practice and research. This chapter addresses these issues by exploring the dominant discourses, the shared languages that are used that promote particular values, that inform teacher education. In doing so it problematises the experiences of teacher candidates and argues for a new collaborative model for teacher candidates, mentor teachers and university lecturers as an ethical alternative to current approaches. Connecting theory, research and practice supports teacher candidates’ transition into the field and early career teachers’ retention within the field. This chapter proposes a collaborative model that challenges the deficit views of pre-service teachers by positioning teacher candidates, mentor teachers and university lecturers as co-learners and co-educators through a university and field site collaborative project.

An early career sixth grade classroom teacher and a teacher educator undertook a qualitative inquiry to investigate implementing the Common Core Writing standards. Using Feiman-Nemser’s (2001) theoretical framework of Central Tasks of Learning to Teach, this article closely examines supportive factors that can sustain and contribute to early career teachers’ learning and their commitment to the teaching profession. Data included teacher pre- and postinterviews, transcripts of monthly meetings, and teacher reflection. Findings revealed that a collaborative partnership between classroom teachers and teacher educators can help to anchor early career teachers in reform-minded teaching through coherent, connected learning opportunities, to afford talk with like-minded colleagues to study one’s own teaching practices, to sustain learning and cultivate an ongoing disposition toward reflective practice, and to encourage questions that matter as integral to their intellectual work. Implications for continuing teacher development for early career via partnerships between schools and universities are discussed.