Conference Agenda

The pressures of the pandemic, combined with unresolved legacy issues marking the teaching profession such as relatively low remunerations compared to other professions, heavy workloads, and in more recent years, growing bureaucratic and administrative regimes, have had irrefutable adverse impacts on teacher morale and their sense of career optimism, paving the way for some to decide to exit the teaching workforce. This exit decision has contributed to a teacher shortage crisis in many parts of the world prompting governments to seek ‘effective’ solutions to attract and retain teachers.

The intensity of the teacher shortage problems is greater in schools serving socio-economically marginalised communities. In these historically hard-to-staff schools, material poverty, geographical isolation, over-representation of historically under-served students combined with inadequate funding, resource stretch and understaffing create more complex working conditions for teachers. Many of these schools have limited access to resources and generate higher teacher stress levels associated with meeting the diverse and more complex needs of marginalised students and their families (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2020). This presents unique challenges for teachers who are called upon to address deeply entrenched historical, social and economic inequalities through everyday teaching practices and classroom relationships. Addressing structural inadequacies individually can cause ‘de-moralisation’ for teachers and lead to their exit decisions (Santoro, 2018).

This symposium focuses on teacher shortages in historically hard-to-staff schools. While the challenges associated with working in hard-to-staff schools are well-documented, less is known about the enabling conditions that can help build teacher satisfaction/capacity and improve retention of teachers in these school settings. This symposium draws on diverse conceptual and methodological approaches to identify effective policy responses, initiatives, and support mechanisms that can reduce teacher turnover in schools that serve the most marginalised students. In addition to a critical approach that examines the adequacy of existing policy frameworks and practices in improving teacher retention, this symposium focuses on effective responses to teacher shortages in hard-to-staff school settings from Europe and internationally. The overarching aim is to address the following inter-related questions through a synthesis of conceptual and empirical studies:

1. What are the challenges that teachers face in historically hard-to-staff school settings?
2. What are the major policy responses to these challenges in various national contexts within Europe and internationally?
3. What principles can help attract, prepare, and retain teachers in the schools that need them most?
4. How can this emerging scholarship help inform a more coherent response to teacher shortage problems in historically hard-to-staff schools?

Teacher shortages have emerged as a key policy area of concern in Australia. The Australian Federal Government estimate shows that the demand for Secondary teachers will exceed the supply of new graduate teachers by around 4100 by 2025 (Department of Education, 2022). With teaching shortages at an all-time high, employment-based teacher education programs have become increasingly common, especially to address chronic teacher shortages in schools considered ‘hard to staff’. These employment-based programs are attractive to government and teacher education providers because of the opportunities they provide for universities to partner closely with schools with the promise of ‘immediate’ employment to graduates. Yet, the impatience (Biesta, 2019) and fast policies (Hardy, Jakhelln & Smit, 2021) that emerge in times of crisis also put pressure on university-based teacher education providers, all competing for preservice teachers in a climate of declining enrolments and persistent teacher shortages. The pressure to prioritise employment-based teacher education also creates tensions for their professed equity and social justice imperative. In this presentation, we examine what happens when teacher education shifts focus from preparing teachers as change agents to focusing on employability (Burridge & Buchanan, 2022). We address the implications of these shifting priorities for the less visible work of critical educational practice and unpack how embedding ‘employment’ in Initial Teacher Education presents opportunities and risks to the equity and social justice imperative.

Biesta, G. J. J. (2019). What kind of society does the school need? Redefining the democratic work of education in impatient times. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 38(6), 657–668. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-019-09675-y Burridge, N. & Buchanan, J. (2022). Teachers as Change-makers in an age of uncertainty. In Heggart, K., & Kolber, Steven. (2022). Empowering Teachers and Democratising Schooling : Perspectives from Australia. Springer. Department of Education (2022). Issues paper: Teacher Workforce shortages. Canberra: Commonwealth. Australian Government. Hardy, I., Jakhelln, R., & Smit, B. (2021). The policies and politics of teachers' initial learning: the complexity of national initial teacher education policies. Teaching Education (Columbia, S.C.), 32(3), 286–308. https://doi.org/10.1080/10476210.2020.1729115

The issue of teacher shortages, failed recruitment targets and increasingly high levels of attrition have reached crisis point in England. After failing to meet recruitment targets for many years (saving only a short Covid-related reprieve), education policy appears to be making the situation worse. Following on from the controversial ITT Market Review, the enforced (re)accreditation process has left parts of the country as “cold spots” with no established providers and the formation of new national “super-providers” with no track record or experience of initial teacher education. We argue that this policy initiative is an urgent issue of spatial injustice, exacerbating teacher recruitment and supply issues in areas already suffering from educational isolation (Ovenden-Hope and Passey, 2019), but also having broader spatial effects. The provision of education, and by extension teacher education, can be seen as an issue of spatial justice (Soja, 2010), one which has been made worse since the pandemic, with some areas being disproportionately affected due to access to and provision of local services which serve disadvantaged students and their communities. Soja argues that spatial justice reflects how spatial location and distribution can produce and reproduce justices and injustices, so cycles of advantage are enabled to persist, and indeed become mutually constructive. In this paper we use spatial justice as a lens for looking at the spatial effects of the teacher recruitment and retention policies, and question to what extent policy has exacerbated the problem of teacher support and retention in high-needs schools. Our analysis reveals six policy effects which each have a spatial impact: from narrowing the focus of teacher education only to classroom practice, to locating the power and influence on teacher education provision to government and large-scale providers in and around London and the South East. The analysis of these combined factors shows an increasing marginalization of (particularly rural) universities who find themselves reduced to the role of delivery partners rather than thought leaders.

Ovenden-Hope, T. and Passy, R. (2019) Education Isolation: A challenge for schools in England. Plymouth Marjon University and University of Plymouth. Plymouth, Plymouth Marjon University. Soja, E. 2010. Seeking Spatial Justice. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Research on the retention of teachers often focuses on challenges related to school climate, job satisfaction, and perceptions of self-efficacy (Aldridge & Fraser, 2016; Yost, 2006). Recently a study of rural teachers in the US focused on why teachers stay, versus the problems driving teachers out (Seelig & McCabe, 2021). In this study, researchers found that relationships were central to teachers’ decisions to stay and suggested that relationships with students, connections to community and personal and professional ties were critical for teachers staying along with opportunities for leadership and collaboration. In the context of a world “on the move” (Suárez-Orozco, et al., 2010, p. 535) and a shifting, volatile and uncertain global, political, ideological, and cultural landscape (e.g., pandemic, war in Ukraine, misinformation campaigns, rise in ethnonationalism/fascism, etc.), the development of the kinds of relationships that Seelig and McCabe (2021) found helpful for teacher retention are difficult to develop and sustain in increasing diverse classrooms and communities where political, economic, and social division play intensifying roles. Therefore, this study centers diversity, perceptions of it and orientations towards it, that can improve teacher retention. We collected qualitative data from focus groups and observations with 55 participants from K-12 schools where various forms of diversity (multilingualism, immigration, socio-economic, religious, etc.) are impacting teaching and learning contexts across four European countries: England, Norway, Germany, and Finland. Research participants were teachers, students, and administrators’ who shared their perspectives on creating a positive climate for diversity in schools. We found that orienting climate policy and practice decisions around agency, curiosity, creativity, openness, and interconnectedness as principles positively captured participants’ thinking about diversity in classrooms and across schools. Study participants also felt that intentionally centering diversity policy and practical support would expand the possibilities and benefits of diversity in school settings. Using educator and student perspectives, we draw implications for addressing the challenge of teacher retention in high-need schools and outline a framework for generating a shared vision of school culture and climate that values diversity and centers equity.

Aldridge, J. M. & Fraser, B. J. (2016). Teachers’ view of their school climate and its relationship with teacher self-efficacy and job satisfaction. Learning Environment Research, 19, 291-307. DOI 10.1007/s10984-015-9198-x Seelig, J. L. & McCabe, K. M. (2021). Why teachers stay: Shaping a new narrative on rural teacher retention. Journal of Research in Rural Education, 27(8). https://doi.org/10.26209/ jrre3708 Suárez-Orozco, M. M., Suárez-Orozco, C., & Sattin-Bajaj, C. (2010). Making migration work. Peabody Journal of Education, 85(4), 535-551. doi:10.1080/0161956X.2010.518053 Yost, D. S. (2006). Reflection and self-efficacy: Enhancing the retention of qualified teachers from a teacher education perspective. Teacher Education Quarterly, 33(4), 59-76.