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Crosswell, Leanne & Beutel, Denise(2017)21st century teachers: how non-traditional pre-service teachers navigatetheir initial experiences of contemporary classrooms.Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 45(4), pp. 416-431.
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https://doi.org/10.1080/1359866X.2017.1312281
2016-0074.R2
21st century teachers: how non-traditional pre-service teachers navigate their initial experiences of contemporary classrooms
First/Contact Author:
Name Leanne Crosswell
Title Dr
Institution Queensland University of Technology
Phone 3138 3459
Email [email protected]
Postal address Faculty of Education, QUT,
Victoria Park Road, Kelvin Grove QLD. 4059.
Ethics statement included in body of manuscript (if relevant)
The research was conducted after receiving the necessary ethical approval from the university ethics committee.
Four (4) key words Teacher resilience; teacher identitiy; transactional-ecological
Secondary Author:
Name Denise Beutel
Title Associate Professor
Institution Queensland University of Technology
Author Biographies (approx. 25 words each)
Denise Beutel Denise Beutel is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of
Education at QUT. Her research interests include pre-service
teacher education, teacher professional learning and teacher
mentoring.
Leanne Crosswell Leanne Crosswell is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Education
at QUT. Her research interests include teacher resilience and
wellbeing, transition to teaching and mentoring.
21st century teachers: how non-traditional pre-service teachers navigate their initial experiences of contemporary classrooms Abstract
In the twenty-first century, teachers’ work has become more complex with high levels of accountability
(Price & McCallum, 2015), increased bureaucratic responsibilities and unprecedented levels of public
scrutiny (Hargreaves, 2010). However, teaching fundamentally remains a caring profession, requiring
well-developed social skills and emotional labour to successfully engage and motivate students. Teachers
need resilience to thrive in these environments of intense and often conflicting pressures. Drawing on a
transactional-ecological model (Sameroff, 2010) this qualitative study explored the resilience and teacher
identity development of a cohort of pre-service career-change teachers as they navigated their initial
experiences in contemporary classrooms. The findings indicate that this cohort arrived to teacher
education with teacher identities strongly aligned with a broad conceptualisation of care as active practice
(Held, 2006). This paper discusses how their identities and capacities for resilience were challenged and
reviewed during their classroom experiences and the implications for teacher education and the
profession.
Introduction
In the twenty-first century, the teaching landscape has been dominated by neo-liberal agendas that have
focussed on teacher accountability and the use of performance indicators as evidence of improved student
learning. In this environment, teachers’ work has become more increasingly regulated and prescribed,
with intensified bureaucratic responsibilities and keen public scrutiny (Hargreaves, 2010; Price &
McCallum, 2015). At the same time, teaching remains fundamentally a caring profession, focussed on
looking after other people and requiring high levels of social skills and emotional labour to successfully
engage and motivate students, as well as maintain effective relationships with the broader school
community (Aspfors & Bondas, 2013). The combination of these intense and at times competing
occupational demands requires teachers to demonstrate both a well-developed capacity for resilience (Gu
& Day, 2013; Johnson, Down, Le Cornu, Peters, Sullivan, Pearce & Hunter, 2014; Mansfield, Beltman,
Broadley & Weatherby-Fell, 2016) and a robust professional identity (Beltman, Glass, Dinham, Chalk &
Nguyen, 2015; Day & Lee, 2011). Concomitantly, the demographic profile of teachers continues to
change internationally with a growing proportion of aspiring teachers taking non-traditional pathways to
teaching, notably people with degrees outside of education who are seeking to join the profession.
Career-changers bring their ‘real world’ experience, substantive discipline knowledge and collective life
wisdom to the teaching profession (Donaldson, 2012; Tigchelaar, Brouwer, & Korthagen, 2008;
Varadharajan, 2014). As such, this cohort of new teachers potentially contributes to the broader
profession in positive ways. However, their entry to teaching is often through shorter, alternate programs
with little consideration for the unique learning needs and expectations of career-changers (Varadharajan,
2014) and with limited time and opportunities to develop their identities as teachers.
Career-changers: Defining the term
Three key terms dominate the literature in referring to this group of aspiring teachers: the lesser used
terms of ‘mid-career entrants’ (Marinell & Johnson, 2014) and ‘second career teachers’ (Tigchelaar,
Vermunt, & Brouwer, 2014); and the more widely adopted ‘career-changers’ (Laming & Horne, 2013;
Watters & Diezmann, 2012; Varadharajan, 2014; Varadharajan, Carter, Buchanan, & Schuck, 2016). In
this paper we adopt the term ‘career-changers’ to acknowledge that the group’s previous career histories
are at best ‘fuzzy’, ranging from minimal experience in another career, to a rich portfolio of careers or
even a previous career of substantial length (and success).
Prior research of career-changers to teaching includes studies into their motivations for coming to the
profession (Watt et al., 2012), their prior assumptions about teaching (Tigchelaar, Brouwer & Korthagen,
2008), and their lived experiences in schools (Varadharajan, 2014). While this population has always
been present in the teaching profession, international numbers reveal that currently around a third of new
graduates are career-changers (Reiter, 2008), while here in Australia that figure is closer to 47% in the
primary schooling sector (McKenzie et al., 2014). This is of particular interest to us as the participants in
this study are career-changers undertaking a Graduate Diploma of Education - Primary.
The significance of experience: the contemporary classroom context
Experiencing the contemporary classroom context offers aspiring teachers the opportunity to ‘reality
check’ their choice to become teachers. It is only through school-based experiences that career-changers
can test their personal assumptions about teaching against the realities of the classroom. Formal field
experience is often described as the most significant learning period (Ferrier-Kerr, 2009) and the most
stressful component (Chaplain, 2008) within initial teacher preparation programs. During this time pre-
service teachers are expected to meet the demands and expectations of their students, host teacher, school
context and university supervision staff while publicly undertaking the developmental transformation of
moving from being a student to teacher themselves (Klassen & Durksen, 2014; Van Rijswijk, Akkerman
& Koster, 2013). It is argued that during field experience is the time when teacher identities are most
unstable (Beauchamp & Thomas, 2011). It can be argued that teacher identity development is even more
intense for career-changers, as they need to navigate the transition from their previous career identity to
reforging a new professional identity as a teacher (Williams, 2010). In doing so, career-changers revert to
a novice professional identity while at the same time benchmarking teaching against their previous career
identities and practices.
The key research question guiding our study was: How do classroom experiences influence the evolving
teacher identity and associated resilience of preservice teachers who are career-changers? Initially, we
explore this group’s anticipatory teacher identity as they arrive to start the program and their revised
notions of teacher identity and lived experiences of teacher resilience following the field experience
components of their one-year program.
Theoretical Framework
The paper adopts a transactional–ecological theoretical framework to guide the study. Originally
emerging from the field of developmental psychology to understand the interplay of nature and nurture
(Sameroff, 2009) the transactional-ecological model has since been more widely adopted to better
understand the ongoing transactions between the individual and the experiences provided by his or her
social settings. From an ecological perspective, every social context or ‘ecology’ contains a number of
social systems that an individual must understand and negotiate. The transactional–ecological framework
comprises bidirectional, person-context transactions (Sameroff, 2010) in which the individual influences
their environment and the environment reciprocally influences the individual.
Typically the process of ‘becoming’ a teacher involves a complex interplay between the aspiring
teacher personally held values and beliefs and various contexts that include the teacher education
program, the field experience classroom and host teacher and education more broadly. Thus,
development as teacher is a product of the continuous, dynamic and reciprocal interactions of the
preservice teacher and their experiences within multiple contexts during teacher education and so is
transactional and ecological in nature. The transactional-ecological framework has been used previously
to investigate both teacher identity (Day, Sammons, Stobart, Kington & Gu, 2007) and teacher resilience
(Day & Gu, 2014; Johnson, et al., 2014; Papatraianou, 2012).
Teacher identity
Teacher identity is understood to be how teachers view themselves as teachers; how teachers view others
with whom they engage professionally; and how teachers perceive others view them in a particular
context at a particular time (Gee, 2000). Teacher identity is social, discontinuous, dialogical and multiple
in nature (Van Rijswijk, Akkerman & Koster, 2013) and continues to evolve over the career span through
a process of interpretation and reinterpretation influenced by a range of personal and contextual factors
(Gee, 2000; Zembylas & Chubbuck, 2014) that interact in a reciprocal way (Beltman, Glass, Dinham,
Chalk & Nguyen, 2015; Cohen, 2010). It is both a product (resulting from multiple influences on the
teacher) and a process (a form of ongoing interaction with teacher development) (Beauchamp & Thomas,
2009) and impacts significantly on classroom practice, professional capacity, wellbeing, commitment and
resilience (Day & Lee, 2011).
During pre-service teacher education, aspiring teachers reflect on the types of teachers they are and want
to be (Schepens, Aelterman & Vlerick, 2009) filtered through their existing beliefs, conceptions and
experiences (Sutherland, Howard & Markauskaite, 2010). This active identification or ‘anticipatory
identity’ (Amiot & Jaspal, 2014) sees the pre-service teacher adjust their sense of self by drawing on their
personal experiences and existing stereotypes of teachers. A strong awareness of self as teacher
contributes to a powerful teacher identity which has a decisive influence on teacher retention, teacher
resilience and teacher effectiveness particularly in the early years of teaching (Beltman, et al., 2015). In
essence, being able to successfully negotiate a teacher identity is pivotal to becoming a resilient teacher
(Papatraianou & Le Cornu, 2014).
Teacher resilience
There has been heightened interest in teacher resilience in recent years (see Gu & Day, 2013; Johnson, et
al., 2014; Mansfield et al., 2016) arguably in response to high rates of teacher attrition, the intensification
of the work of teaching and the increasing casualisation of the teaching workforce. Earlier beliefs were
that resilience was an innate element of an individual's personality. However, the current view of
resilience is that it is a dynamic, multidimensional, developmental construct that is influenced by
individual circumstance, situation and environment (Day & Gu, 2014). An individual’s capacity for
resilience is reliant not only on their previous experiences, social networks and personal internal assets
such as temperament, confidence and agency, but also by their socio-cultural contexts and the
relationships within these contexts. While resilience more generally can be defined as the process an
individual undertakes to adapt in positive ways to challenging circumstances (Fletcher & Sarkar, 2013),
Gu and Day (2013) have defined teacher resilience to be “the capacity to maintain equilibrium and a
sense of commitment and agency in the everyday worlds in which teachers work” (p. 26). It is this
definition of teacher resilience that is drawn on throughout this paper.
A transactional approach to teacher resilience requires exploration of the protective processes that inform
resilience and how these are mediated by context and culture (Theron & Donald, 2012). Wider contextual
influences on teacher resilience include school culture, school leaders (Mansfield, et al., 2016) and
resources that are available within social networks (Gu & Day, 2014; Le Cornu, 2013). Personal internal
resources that enhance resilient behaviours include, intrinsic motivation or “inner drive” (Hong, 2012), a
sense of self-belief (Le Cornu, 2013) and efficacy (Mansfield, et al., 2016). Additional to these, personal
support networks can also support resilience (Le Cornu, 2013). The capacity to be resilient in difficult
circumstances can be enhanced or inhibited by the nature of the context, in which individuals are
immersed, the people in those settings with whom individuals associate and the strength of an
individual’s beliefs or aspirations (Day, Kington, Stobart & Sammons, 2006). As such, the field
experience context and the supervising teacher will play a critical role in the resilience of all aspiring
teachers. This paper explores the impact of Field Experience contexts and the relationships associated
with these contexts on the resilience and teacher identity development of a cohort of career-changers.
The study design
The study investigates the impact of initial classroom experiences on a cohort of prospective career-
changers who enrolled in a graduate-entry teacher education program in a large urban university in
eastern Australia. In particular, we explore the transactions between individuals and their contexts, and
the personal and contextual impacts of these experiences on their developing identities as teachers and on
their teacher resilience. In this qualitative study, we draw on data from the cohort over the duration of a
Graduate Diploma in Education program. The research was conducted after receiving the necessary
ethical approval from the university ethics committee.
The program
The Graduate Diploma in Education is a one-year full-time graduate-entry teacher education program
designed for people seeking teacher registration who already hold a university level qualification in
another field. This study focuses on the cohort preparing to become primary school teachers and teach
students aged between five and twelve years old. Each semester of the two-semester program comprised a
nine-week on-campus component, followed by formal supervised field experience in a primary school
setting. The first field experience consisted of a 22-day block while the second field experience was for
33 days. The program also included a 5-day non-assessed immersion in a school in mid-semester 1. This
experience gave the career-changers the opportunity to familiarise themselves with the realities of
contemporary classrooms and to start aligning the theoretical and practical components of teaching. This
is significant given that many of the participants had not been in a primary classroom for over twenty
years.
The participants
The entire cohort (n=72) was invited to participate in this study. The participants’ ages ranged from the
early 20s through to over 50 years with a gender distribution of approximately 80% females to 20%
males. The cohort’s prior university qualifications spanned the fields of arts, science, psychology,
business and law.
Data collection
This paper reports on questionnaire data collected at four key milestones over the two semesters. Each
questionnaire included open-ended questions to provide opportunity for detailed responses. The first
questionnaire administered in class on the first day of the program (t1) collected demographic data and
background information of the cohort. Further questions sought to reveal their anticipatory teacher
identity through unpacking the arriving cohort’s current perceptions of themselves as teachers and also by
revealing their preconceived assumptions of others as ‘good’ teachers along with key reasons for wanting
to become teachers, their perceived strengths, and the anticipated challenges of the classroom.
Participants completed the second questionnaire following a 5-day non-assessed immersion (t2) in a
classroom with questions focused on revealing the impact this experience had on the career-changers’
emerging identities as teachers.
The questionnaires following each of the two field experiences focused on how the experiences impacted
on their changing perceptions of themselves as teachers along with perceived successes, challenges, and
sources of contextual and personal stresses and supports. Of 67 enrolled in the program at t4, only 31
preservice teachers completed the final questionnaire as some were still on field experience, having to
make up days lost due to sickness, while others were at interviews for teaching positions.
Data analysis
The researchers coded the data through an inductive process of content analysis (Mayring, 2004) with
broad categories emerging after repeated readings of the data (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015). The data were
analysed horizontally as well as vertically. That is, the complete set of responses for each questionnaire
was examined as well as analysing the whole set of responses for each individual question. In the data
analysis process, each researcher read and re-read the data separately looking for themes. Following the
initial independent analysis, the researchers discussed the themes collaboratively and referred back to the
original data. These themes were reviewed and refined throughout the process (Schreier, 2014) until
agreement was reached on a stable set of categories by both researchers.
Findings
The purpose of this study was to explore how initial experiences of contemporary classrooms might
influence the developing teacher identity and associated teacher resilience for career-changers. In
adopting a transactional-ecological framework, we present the findings in terms of transactions within and
between two key systems of influence: the contextual (the social, cultural and organisational dimensions
of schools and interactions with staff, students, and host teachers) and the personal (individual
characteristics, family and friends) (Day & Gu, 2014; Papatraianou, 2012). We initially map the group’s
anticipatory teacher identity on entry to the program and then explore the subsequent impact of the
classroom experiences on their teacher identity and teacher resilience.
Anticipatory Teacher Identity: initial perceptions
In readiness to take on a new social identity, individuals start to build an ‘anticipatory identity’ (Amiot &
Jaspal, 2014) adjusting their sense of self in line with their personal experiences and existing stereotypes
of the new identity. Aspiring teachers consider who they want to be (and not be) as a teacher (Beijaard,
Meijer, & Verloop, 2013). The data from the initial questionnaire, administered on the first day of the
program (at t1), and prior to any engagement with school classrooms, revealed the cohort’s anticipatory
identity to be heavily focused on the caring work of teaching. It is important to note that the participants
discussed ‘care’ as a broad notion that included a cluster of values such as empathy, sensitivity and
responsiveness. The cohort understood care to be an active practice of teachers that focused on building
relationships to support student growth as well as an ideal that guides teacher judgement and action
(Hamington, 2010; Held, 2006). As such, it could be argued that the participants were conceptualising a
feminist notion of care in that it focussed on the relationships between people and positioned teachers to
value attentiveness, responsibility, competence and responsiveness (Tronto, 2005).
Care as an active practice was evidenced in multiple ways within the data in regards to recognition of and
responding to students. Qualities such as being patient (n=15) with the interrelated adjectives of
compassionate, caring, sensitive and kind featuring prominently as key qualities of ‘good’ teachers. Care
for the needs of each and every student was evident in responses such as “build positive and supportive
relationships with all students”, “understanding students are all different” and “realising the different
personalities and learning styles of each individual and teaching accordingly” and the use of terms such as
tolerance, empathy and understanding. Furthermore, care and support for learners was demonstrated
through a common view that good teachers make learning fun (n=12) and engaging (n=6) while also
being firm (n=13) or fair (n=10). The latter two concepts were often discussed in close association and
generally the cohort understood that for teachers to effectively demonstrate care, then they must provide a
safe and supportive learning environment for their students. While it could be argued that a different
interpretation of these terms (firm and fair) could be conceptualised as control and authority over
students, this interpretation was not apparent within the anticipatory identity data set.
A broad understanding of care as active practice was also evident in the widely held view by the cohort
that good teachers demonstrate high levels of organisation (n=8) along with the capacity to be responsive
to the changing dynamics within the classroom. Terms such as ‘flexible’ (n=5) and ‘adaptable’ (n=5)
demonstrate an awareness of the range of variables that impact on a teacher’s work environment and the
constant adaptations and thinking on their feet that effective teachers take on as part of their job. Care
was also discussed as an emotional attachment to, and excitement about, learning and teaching. Good
teachers were described as genuinely enthusiastic (n=6) and passionate (n=17) and vitalised by their work
and it is this excitement that serves to engage and inspire their students.
The cohort arrived to the teacher preparation program with anticipatory teacher identities strongly
attached to the caring work of teaching (Hamington, 2010; Held, 2006). However, it was the classroom
experiences within the program that allowed the cohort to reality check their prior assumptions about the
day to day work of teachers. This practical contact with schools allowed the career-changers to challenge
and review their anticipatory teacher identities.
Anticipatory Teacher Identity
For many, the first classroom experience in the program provided an opportunity for “ensuring myself
that I've made the right choice in starting this journey”. Feedback on initial classroom experiences ranged
from positive, “I was surprised at how comfortable I was in the classroom with the students and teacher. I
felt right at home” and “I really enjoyed it and cemented that I want to be a teacher” through to the
demoralising message, “other teachers in the school [were] asking, Why the hell do you want to be a
teacher? Get out now!” As such, the experiences in contemporary classrooms and school contexts both
reinforced and challenged the cohort’s anticipatory teacher identities.
1. Reinforced their anticipatory teacher identity
Overwhelmingly the cohort indicated that their initial field experiences reinforced their decision to
change careers to become a teacher. As the cohort’s anticipatory teacher identity was centred on the
notion of care which includes attentiveness to the needs of the students, it was unsurprising to see positive
emotions prominent in responses, “Loved the kids! The kids in my class were all so good, so this may be
an unrealistic introduction to a classroom”, “It was so much fun - the kids were terrible and wonderful
and everything in between”, and “I have made the right decision. Loved it more than I thought I would
and could see myself doing it for a long time”. Positive relationships with others in the school
community also featured prominently, “[I felt] very supported by the teacher and Deputy Principal”,
“They were incredibly supportive, warm, gave lots of feedback, developed friendly relationships” and
“My teacher welcomed me into the classroom and treated me not as a prac. student but as a teacher and
person”.
2. Challenged their anticipatory teacher identity
While many of the career-changers were bolstered by their interactions with students, they were also
confronted by the intensity and complexity of the teachers’ workload (Amiot & Jaspal, 2014; Watters &
Diezmann, 2015). Many were taken aback by the unrelenting time demands, “[I was surprised by] the
workload and how tiring it can be”. Some of the cohort had not fully appreciated the multi-layered nature
of teaching, “Having to do something that required me to focus on multiple things and also manage 26
students at the same time”. Adding to these pressures, the career-changers were “Having to spend the 6
hours at school and then coming home to work for hours to prepare lessons. I also have to work to pay my
rent and eat so the field experience was extremely intensive.” However, by their final field experience
many of the career-changers had started to normalise these aspects of teaching, “Always trying to put in
150% effort to make lessons innovative, interesting and engaging for students”. While the career-
changers grew in confidence in their final field studies (“[I was given] more responsibility and freedom
to try new things with my class”), the increased pressures and responsibilities placed on them from
within the schooling contexts (“I knew more and was accountable for absolutely everything”) challenged
their emerging identities and resilience.
Teacher resilience
Field experience has been identified as the most stressful component of initial teacher education
(Chaplain, 2008), and our data validated this with all participants reporting moderate to high levels of
stress during classroom experiences. The key stressors appeared to be contextual in origin: the work
involved in learning how to teach (“huge workload, challenging class in terms of behaviour, wide range
of learning needs”, and “Overwhelmed by what I needed to learn”) and the expectations or attitude of the
host teacher (“as a grad dip I was expected to be in line with 4th year students”, “host teacher expected
more”, “lack of positive attitude to learning from the teacher”). Stressors stemming from personal factors
emerged from their own expectations of their own performance (“the pressure of being watched and being
too critical on myself”, “my own self-demands ie. planning and performance” and “my own need to plan
everything to the nth degree”) and attempting to juggle multiple responsibilities (“juggling family, work
and planning”, “new baby, running a business”).
As discussed earlier, this paper adopts a transactional-ecological framework through which to analyse the
data. Like others researching teacher resilience (see Day & Gu, 2014; Johnson, et al., 2014) we consider
teachers’ work to exist in an ecosystem in which contextual and personal elements work in relation to
each other. Table 1 outlines the positive and the negative influences that exist within the contextual and
personal systems of influence as reported by the career-changers.
INSERT Table 1 HERE
Positive influences on Resilience
Contextual and personal factors enabling resilience were identified. In terms of contextual support, the
cohort commented on the positive influence of having a supportive relationship with their host teacher
(eg. “The host teacher made a place for me to sit, assist her in teaching … I was treated as if I were a
member of the teaching team”, “talking through my performance with my teachers and acting on that
feedback”), a positive school culture (eg. “Good students, good culture between colleagues, strong
student leadership program, good behavioural expectations”) and accessing formal support from
university staff (“meeting with my university liaison who I credit with helping me and reducing my
stress”). From the personal system, many career-changers discussed the benefit of having supportive
family and friends. “Thankfully I have a wonderfully understanding and supportive family” and “my
husband … always listened to my problems and helped me to cope with stress”. Specific coping strategies
included adopting a pragmatic approach (“just got on with it, I knew it would come to an end eventually”,
“remained realistic and focussed on one day at a time”), self-care (“eating well, exercise and sleep”, and
“prayer”), personal support networks (“debriefed with other grad dip students”). As such, this group
demonstrated resilient behaviours (Mansfield, et al., 2016) such as establishing personal boundaries and
self-initiating strategies to navigate the stresses inherent in the transition to teaching.
Negative Influences on Resilience
In some instances, the transactions between career-changers and their supervising teachers challenged the
resilience of the career-changers. Some supervising teachers “[voiced] criticism of the [one-year] Grad
Dip program and strong bias against it” while another “compared my university with X university and
said it [the other university] was a lot better”. Such comments indicated that these career-changers faced
an added challenge of needing to navigate the supervisory teacher’s [lack of] confidence in the quality of
the teacher preparation program and by association the individual career-changers readiness to teach.
Further negative influences emanated from supervising teachers who were “too busy to give guidance”
while another would “skim read my lesson plan the morning of my teaching with no suggestions or
recommendations”. One participant perceived that the supervising teacher “didn’t seem to like my
enthusiasm”, while another appeared “very unsupportive and rude” with several participants lamenting
that they were given inadequate opportunities to teach. From a personal perspective, key constraints were
centred around the difficulties in juggling family responsibilities with the intense workload of field
experience with typical comments such as “[I really struggled] managing full time work with family
commitments”. Other negative contextual influences included the intense assessment load of the teacher
education program which coincided with getting prepared for field experience and the added pressure of
employment processes (submitting applications and undertaking interviews) during their final field
experience.
Discussion
The aim of this research was to explore how the initial classroom experiences of a cohort of career-
changers contributed to their developing teacher identities and resilience. A transactional–ecological
theoretical lens (Sameroff, 2009) was used to better understand the ongoing transactions between the
individual and the social context of the classroom.
First, the career-changers’ emerging teacher identities were adaptable and responsive to the challenging
workloads and expectations of classroom teaching. Like other aspiring teachers (see Furlong, 2013) they
arrived with idealistic views of what teaching would be like and articulated an anticipatory identity
around a broad notion of care. While the cohort enjoyed their initial classroom experiences, they also
reported a sense of ‘reality shock’ (Kim & Cho, 2014), in relation to the complexity and intensity of the
work of being a teacher. While some of the requirements of teaching (such as being organised and
flexible) had been anticipated, the multiple demands and the actual workload had been severely
underestimated by the group. It was evident from the transactions during the first semester classroom
experiences that the cohort needed to significantly adjust their understanding of the work of teachers and
their personal expectations of themselves. Yet, by the final field experience (four months later) most of
the group had normalised the intense demands of the workload. While this response may demonstrate the
successful navigation of the complex transactional-ecological demands of teaching, a commitment to the
profession, or indeed a dedication to completing the one-year teaching degree, the rapid adaptation to the
unexpected and intense demands should be viewed with some caution.
The cohort was initially surprised by the intense daily demands of teaching and the one-year program
allows them only two formal classroom experiences to develop their teaching practice and adjust to these
workload requirements. It is well acknowledged that the workload intensifies for beginning teachers in
their first years of practice (Price & McCallum, 2015). While this cohort seems to have swiftly
normalised complex workload during discrete periods of practicum, successfully managing these may
become an issue as ongoing and continuous demands increase. Excessive workloads for teachers have
been linked to disenchantment (Kelchtermans, 2006), burnout (Day & Gu, 2014) and early attrition from
the profession (Watt & Richardson, 2013). An associated concern is that this cohort is heavily invested in
teaching as caring work, and it will be critical that they learn to balance the energy they invest into caring
for others with developing adequate and ongoing self-care strategies (Zembylas, Bozalek & Shefer,
2014). While some participants explicitly discussed how they attempted to ensure self-care during
practicum, many more identified this as an area that they struggled with especially as they were already
juggling other commitments such as family and child rearing responsibilities. Therefore, while the level
of flexibility and adaptation in regards to their teacher identity is impressive, we question that maintaining
continuously intensive workloads will be sustainable for many of the participants.
Second, the career-changers were agentic in self-activating resilience strategies when faced with
challenging circumstances. To illustrate this we draw attention to how the cohort responded to the
support offered (or not) by supervising teachers. Supportive supervising teachers gave regular and
consistent feedback, guided planning and resourcing and facilitated extended professional networks
within the school community. They were discussed as positive resources for both teacher identity and
teacher resilience which supports current literature (Keogh, Garvis, Pendergast, & Diamond, 2012). An
unexpected story emerged from the career-changers who were paired with unsupportive supervising
teachers. The career-changers’ response to the lack of support was to draw deeply on their individual
motivations to become a teacher and rely on their own self-belief in regards to their teaching skills and
capacity. While this group turned to family, friends and peers for emotional support, they demonstrated a
robust sense of self which has been discussed as a requirement for ongoing teacher identity and resilience
(Le Cornu, 2013). This group was clearly proactive in self-initiating coping strategies through support
networks beyond the schooling context and through this, demonstrated deep commitment and passion for
teaching. These positive dispositions are critical to teacher resilience and intentions to remain in the
profession (Le Cornu, 2013). While a toxic work environment may hinder the ability to call on
colleagues for support (Day & Gu, 2014), it does challenge an individual’s capacity to form supportive
and resilience building relationships in spite of these conditions (Jordan, 2006).
This research highlights the well-developed individual resources that the successful career-changers had
access to as they navigated the initial classroom experiences. It was also evident that the career-changers
focussed on the broader systemic system only at two key points (prior to their classroom experiences and
at the end of the program when employment concerns dominated). While strong and trusting relationships
are central to teacher resilience (Mansfield et al., 2016), the classroom and school context offered
inconsistent resources and support for these participants. However, this cohort’s substantial personal
resources assisted them to effectively reframe and adapt their developing teacher identity and self-activate
resilient behaviours during the classroom experiences. It is evident that there is a need for teacher
education programs and associated school communities to better support and differentiate for our career-
changers. Rather than treating all preservice teachers as inexperienced school leavers, there is a need to
acknowledge the experiences and unique skills the career-changers bring to the teaching profession and
ensure they are supported by empathetic supervising teachers. Currently the onus is on the individual
preservice teacher to advocate at a personal level. However, further consideration needs to be given to
how teacher education can better respond to the need of career-change preservice teachers and highlight
the positive impact these career-changers can have on the wider teaching profession. Research into
career-changers who remained in the teaching profession for three years indicates they are seeking both
acknowledgement of their expertise, support in improving their instructional skills and the development
of positive professional relationships in the situated system of the school context (Watters & Diezmann,
2015). Not all of these were evident even in the initial classroom experiences for these career-changers.
Conclusions and recommendations
This study used a transactional-ecological lens through which to explore the initial classroom experiences
of a cohort of career-changers transitioning to teaching via a one-year graduate entry teacher education
program. Shorter alternate programs have been criticised for the limited time that preservice teachers have
to develop their teacher identities and capacities for resilience. This is especially significant in the current
environment in which the complexity of teachers’ work has increased exponentially and teachers are
under enormous pressures as they attempt to manage increased bureaucratic responsibilities and high
levels of public scrutiny as well as meeting the demands of highly performative cultures (Hargreaves,
2010; Price & McCallum, 2015). Although limited to one cohort, this research contributes to developing a
deeper understanding of career-changers’ initial experiences in the classroom and of the impact on their
emerging teacher identities and resilience.
In this study, throughout their transactions with schools, the career-changers demonstrated highly agentic
behaviours about their own development as teachers with consistent evidence of adaptable teacher
identity and self-initiated resilient behaviours (Mansfield, et al., 2016). Both of these capabilities are
critical for all new teachers transitioning into the profession. It appears that this cohort had well-
developed capacities in these areas prior to enrolling in this program. However, we are uncertain how
long these capacities would be sustained especially if the career changers continued to meet intense and
unexpected challenges in their transition to teaching post-graduation.
In light of our findings, this chapter puts forward several recommendations for teacher education and
schooling contexts and for future research. First, while we have reiterated that teaching is a caring
profession, both schooling and teacher education contexts appear to fall short in preparing preservice
teachers for the emotional demands of teaching and the ensuing requirement for ongoing and consistent
self-care. In particular, further exploration is needed of how teacher education programs could assist
preservice teachers to develop coping strategies to manage the tensions between working in a caring
profession while at the same time working in such a performative culture. Investigating how career-
changers can be better transitioned into and supported through teacher education programs is a critical
avenue for program development and for future research.
Like other researchers researching resilience (Mansfield et al., 2016) and utilising a transactional-
ecological framework, we would like to highlight that, while career-changers continue to be a growing
demographic in our graduate population, schooling and teacher education contexts appear to be
unresponsive to the diversity of backgrounds and experiences that career-changers bring to the profession.
Certainly, for this cohort of career-changers, there was a deafening silence in terms of any
acknowledgement and utilisation of their prior skills and expertise of in their transactions with both
contexts. Further consideration needs to be given to how teacher education and schooling contexts can
capitalise on the strengths that career changers bring to the profession and how self-care and teacher
wellbeing can be incorporated into an already crowded teacher education program.
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Table 1: Contextual and personal influences
System Positive Influences Negative Influences
Contextual A supportive host teacher Positive feedback Positive school culture Positive support from university staff Acknowledgement and support from school leadership
Mismatch between the classroom and the Grad Dip program. Managing diverse learning needs and student behaviours Lack of support, feedback or direction from host teacher
Personal Having the support of family and friends Self-care, eating well, exercise, sleep, and prayer
Managing the conflicting demands on time and energy.
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