Conference Agenda

Teacher attraction and retention in the face of teacher shortages is a global issue (Craig, 2017). The literature provides multiple reasons for this shortage. They include work/life balance, increased surveillance of teachers, deficit constructions of the profession in the media and by government, school culture and climate, school leadership, access to high quality professional development, requirement to teach out of field, student-teacher relationships and lack of preparation for working with high need students (see for example, Schaefer, Long & Clandinin, 2012; Towers & Maguire, 2017; De Neve & Devos, 2017; Vale & Drake, 2019). Building on this literature, the symposium will explore this shortage from the perspectives of those working in ‘hard-to-staff’ schools, and from the perspective of those at different stages in their careers.

Underpinning this symposium is a recognition that schools are not just places of learning but also workplaces and the issue of teacher attraction and retention is a social justice issue that affects the nature and context of teachers’ work. Whilst the symposium is principally concerned with teachers and their well-being in relation to matters of social justice, teacher attraction and retention also has equal social justice implications for students in terms of continuity and quality of teacher-student relationships and quality of pedagogy (Allen & McInerney, 2019; White, 2021). Most schools that are hard-to-staff are in marginalised communities where the lack of a stable teaching staff can compound educational disadvantages. Unfortunately, many of these communities suffer from stigmatisation that makes teaching in them seem like an unattractive proposition. As Allen and McInerney (2019, p.5) say in relation to England and the deficit views of certain communities held by many, ‘reputation matters’ for teacher recruitment.

The symposium consists of papers from four projects, three based in Australia and one located in England, concerned with teacher shortages. The papers are all shaped by theoretical considerations of social justice. The global significance of the issue will ensure that the symposium has international and European relevance beyond the country locations of the different studies. Two of the Australian studies are focussed on ‘hard to staff’ schools located in marginalised communities. One project examines the issue from the perspective of those teachers who remain in schools located in these communities. The other has a focus on early career teachers in these locations. The third Australian study focus is on the induction policies for teachers in precarious employment (casual and short-term contracts), especially as they relate to student behaviour. The English study draws on the importance of linking high quality teaching with teacher retention and recruitment.

Kelchtermans (2017), in a response to a special issue of the journal Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, on teacher attrition and retention, argued that many concerns about teacher attrition and retention are ‘meaningless’ if they do not also address ‘what constitutes good education or good teaching’. He defines the problem as ‘the need to prevent good teachers from leaving the job for the wrong reasons’. A key focus of this symposium then will be to address questions related to teachers’ motivations and reasons for remaining in or leaving the profession, what they understand to be good education and appropriate professional practice, and their attitudes towards students, families and communities.

Teacher shortages are affecting multiple countries. In Europe, it has been reported that France, Germany, Portugal, Sweden and Italy are all facing major recruitment issues that are only going to get worse (Euronews, 2022). The issue is not solely European, education systems in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are having to confront similar problems. Shortages are not uniform across each jurisdiction though – within each there are areas where schools can be regarded as ‘hard to staff, these tend to be in rural, regional, remote and low socio-economic areas. Such issues are not new, as indicated by the OECD’s (2005). Teachers Matter: Attracting, developing and retaining effective teachers. However, globally there have been many recent and urgent policy responses to these shortages, some have sought to improve the number of people entering and staying in the teaching profession generally, others more targeted at improving the attraction and retention of teachers in specific schools and locations (e.g., rural and remote schools), and others have been multi-purposeful. This paper provides document analyses of three diverse international approaches and responses to this policy problem: England’s DfE (Department for Education) (2019) Teacher recruitment and retention strategy; the Australian Commonwealth Government’s (2022) The National Teacher Workforce Action Plan: December 2022; and the US Whitehouse (2022) set of Actions to Strengthen Teaching Profession and Help Schools Fill Vacancies. The analyses of these documents contain lessons for all countries facing issues of teacher recruitment and retention.   The documents are analysed through Bacchi’s (2009) ‘What’s the problem represented to be?’ approach. This methodology, drawing on a Foucauldian genealogy, works to identify the presuppositions or assumptions underlying a representation of a problem, how the problem has come into being, the effects of a problem representation, what has been left unsaid about a problem and how it can be thought about differently (Bacchi 2009, p. 2). The analyses of these documents demonstrate how the problem has been variously represented as, amongst other representations, a problem of ‘teacher education’, ‘student behaviour’ and/or ‘school leadership’. A glaring silence across all of these documents is an understanding of social justice. The paper argues, drawing on the work of Nancy Fraser (e.g., 2009), that the teacher shortage problem needs to also be seen as a social justice problem, and that that will provide new insights into potential policy solutions.

Bacchi, C. (2009) Analysing Policy: What’s the problem represented to be? Frenchs Forest, Pearson . Commonwealth Government (2022). The National Teacher Workforce Action Plan: December 2022. Canberra, Australian Government. DfE (Department for Education). (2019). Teacher recruitment and retention strategy. London: HM Government. Euronews (2022) Teacher shortages worry countries across Europe. https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/11/30/teacher-shortages-worry-countries-across-europe. 30th November, 2022. Accessed 23/1/23 Fraser, N. (2009). Scales of justice: Reimagining political space in a globalizing world. New York: Columbia University Press. OECD. (2005). Teachers Matter: Attracting, developing and retaining effective teachers. Paris: OECD. US Whitehouse (2022) FACT SHEET: Biden-⁠Harris Administration Announces Public and Private Sector Actions to Strengthen Teaching Profession and Help Schools Fill Vacancies. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/08/31/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-announces-public-and-private-sector-actions-to-strengthen-teaching-profession-and-help-schools-fill-vacancies/ 31st August, 2022. Accessed 23/1/23

While extensive research has already been done on why teachers leave the profession (See et. al., 2020) very little research has been conducted on the consequences or impact of teacher attrition on the school leaders and teachers who are left behind in schools that have high teacher turnover or ‘teacher churn’. These consequences relate to areas such as well-being and emotional labour (Day & Hong, 2016), workload issues including teaching ‘out of field’ (Du Plessis 2019), the future and changing nature of teachers’ work (Stacey et. al., 2020), teacher burn-out (Rajendran et al., 2020), teachers’ job satisfaction and career aspirations and trajectories. Each of these areas relates in some way to teachers’ retention and allows us to examine more closely a topic of both great urgency and one that is currently under-researched. In this paper we examine the impact of teaching shortages on three teachers who have remained in their jobs while many of their colleagues have left. These initial interviews form part of a larger study collecting work stories from teachers in schools that have experienced more than 10% teacher turnover over a period of twelve months to understand how teaching shortages have impacted on their daily work including the flow-on effect of teacher shortages on individual teachers, their classroom practice and on system functions, such as their abilities to teach effectively, their sense of efficacy and satisfaction, curriculum, human resources, workforce planning, relationships, well-being, and accountability, and how and why, despite these conditions, they have stayed. When combined and brought together these interviews constitute “purposeful conversations” (Edwards, 1999) and give a sense of a ‘day in the life’ of these teachers in high-turnover schools. As such they enable us to look beyond merely the classroom practices of those interviewed for these teachers were invited to interpret their daily work through narrative and the introspective provision in the form of “telling and retelling experiences they have lived, and are living” (Clandinin et al., 2011 p. 34). The use of narrative analysis (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990, Huber et al 2013) is critical in this process for this enabled us to closely analyse these teachers’ discourses, their own retelling of daily movements and practices and their work habits in and out of the classroom and allow us to document their retelling/enactment of their work in challenging high-turnover school settings.

Clandinin, J., Huber, J., Steeves, P. , Li, Y. (2011). Becoming a Narrative Inquirer. In S. Trahar (Ed.) Learning and Teaching Narrative Inquiry. John Benjamins Publishing Company. Connelly, F.M., & Clandinin, D.J. (1990). Stories of experience and narrative inquiry. Educational Researcher, 1(5), 2-14. Day, C., & Hong, J. (2016). Influences on the capacities for emotional resilience of teachers in schools serving disadvantaged urban communities .Teaching and Teacher Education, 59, 115-125. Edwards, J. (1999). Stories from the field: reflections on conducting interviews as “purposeful conversations.” Opinion, 28(2), 15–28. Du Plessis, A., Gillies, R., & Carroll, A. (2015). Out-of-field teaching and professional development: A transnational investigation across Australia and South Africa. International Journal of Educational Research, 66, 90 - 102. Rajendran, N., Watt, H.., & Richardson, P. W. (2020). Teacher burnout and turnover intent. Australian Educational Researcher, 47(3), 477–500. See, B. H., et al.. (2020). What works in attracting and retaining teachers in challenging schools and areas? Oxford Review of Education, 46(6), 678 Stacey, M., Wilson, R., & McGrath-Champ, S. (2020). Triage in teaching: the nature and impact of workload in schools. Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 1–14.

This paper reports on a systematic review of academic literature examining the experiences and needs of substitute teachers, also known as casual or relief teachers. This occupational group are an essential part of education systems, allowing release time for other teachers to participate in professional learning, complete administrative duties, and attend to personal matters (Liu et al., 2022). However, little is known about their work conditions, motivations, experiences, and support. As the focus of dedicated research, substitute teachers have been largely neglected, mirroring what Collins (1982) described as the “awkward” positioning of substitute teachers in the education community. This review brings together international research which has examined the experiences and needs of substitute teachers. Through synthesising findings, this process allowed the research team to go beyond single studies to highlight the breadth of experiences and conditions reported by substitute teachers, thereby providing policy makers and other relevant stakeholders with some degree of cumulative knowledge (Davies, 2000). We employed a mixed-methods research synthesis approach (Heyvaert et al., 2013), where data came from published qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods research. Thirty-one peer-reviewed studies and dissertations that examined the experiences and needs of substitute teachers in primary/elementary, middle, and secondary/high schools were examined. Our research questions included determining who substitute teachers are, the nature of their work, and how they experience substitute teaching, including the types of supports provided and other supports they might need. The findings provide three important insights into the experience of substitute teaching. Firstly, they clarify the terms and definitions used when describing teachers who are working in this way, including their employment conditions, and who substitute teachers are (e.g., early career teachers). Secondly, the findings outline the varying experiences of substitute teachers, including the professional reality of substitute teaching, the behavioural and relational issues faced within the classroom, and the marginalisation and sense of invisibility they feel within the school community. Thirdly, the findings explore the supports which are provided to substitute teachers, including: resources, induction, professional learning, documenting accreditation status and mentoring. The study concludes that, although substitute teachers are a heterogeneous group, their conditions and experiences are less than satisfactory, and this is often exacerbated by a lack of targeted support. Education systems should consider professionalising this occupational group further. In addition, systems should develop policies and practices that improve substitute teachers’ work and provide the support they need to work effectively in the classroom.

Collins, S. H. (1982). Substitute teaching: A clearer view and definition. Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues and Ideas, 55(5), 231–232. Davies, P. (2000). The relevance of systematic review to educational policy and practice. Oxford Review of Education, 26(3–4), 365–378. Heyvaert, M., Maes, B., & Onghena, P. (2013). Mixed methods research synthesis: Definition, framework, and potential. Quality & Quantity, 47, 659–676. Liu, J., Loeb, S., & Shi, Y. (2022). More than shortages: The unequal distribution of substitute teaching. Education, Finance and Policy, 17(2), 285–308.

Research suggests that teacher quality is a key influence on pupil attainment (Coe et al., 2020), second only to pupil background (OECD, 2015) and that sustained access to high quality teachers is a significant challenge. In England 30% of teachers leave the profession within the first five years and 40% leave within 10 years (Long & Danechi, 2022). Recruiting and retaining high quality teachers in disadvantaged schools is a particularly urgent need (see also Tereshchenko et al., 2020 and House of Commons, 2017). Recent systematic reviews of quantitative studies of teacher quality (Bradford et al., 2021) and on ‘what works in attracting and retaining teachers in challenging schools and areas’ (See et al., 2020) have evaluated where the strongest evidence currently exists. In this paper, we will present findings of a conceptual review that set out to scope opportunities for new research in this area and to find and recommend promising leads for future studies. The review takes a Rapid Evidence Assessment approach, focusing on recent grey literature and review articles, and peer-reviewed articles identified from a targeted search of relevant databases. The review identified 25 proxies or measures for teacher quality used in the literature. These proxies were categorised as Professional Capital, Qualification and Training (8 proxies), Interpersonal and psychosocial (8 proxies), and those to do with School and Environment (9 proxies). 28 factors associated with recruitment and/or retention of teachers in disadvantaged schools were identified and classified as being system-level (5 factors), school-level (15 factors) or individual-level (8 factors). Key messages from the review include the importance of manageable workload, induction support and mentoring, effective principals, relationships within and beyond the school and teacher agency and autonomy. Challenges for this area include the lack of high quality research relevant to the English context and the limited amount of research addressing both high quality teachers and recruitment or retention of teachers in disadvantaged schools.

Bradford, K., Pendergast, D., & Grootenboer, P. (2021). What Is Meant By ‘Teacher Quality’ In Research And Policy: A Systematic, Quantitative Literature Review. Education Thinking, 1(1), 57–76. Coe, R., Rauch, C. J., Kime, S., & Singleton, D. (2020). Great Teaching Toolkit Evidence Review. Evidence Based Education. https://assets.website-files.com/5ee28729f7b4a5fa99bef2b3/5ee9f507021911ae35ac6c4d_EBE_GTT_EVIDENCE%20REVIEW_DIGITAL.pdf?utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.greatteaching.com%2F House of Commons. (2017). Recruitment and retention of teachers fifth report of session 2016-2017. HCC 199. Long, R., & Danechi, S. (2022). Teacher recruitment and retention in England. House of Commons Library. OECD (2018), Effective Teacher Policies: Insights from PISA, PISA, OECD Publishing. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264301603-en See, B.H., Morris, R., Gorard, S. & El Soufi, N. (2020) What works in attracting and retaining teachers in challenging schools and areas?, Oxford Review of Education, 46:6, 678-697, DOI: 10.1080/03054985.2020.1775566 Tereshchenko, A; Mills, M; Bradbury, A; (2020) Making progress? Employment and retention of BAME teachers in England. UCL Institute of Education: London, UK.