Conference Agenda

The transition of early career teachers into the teaching job has been a major topic of interest for researchers as well as policy makers over the past three decades. The transition has been described as challenging and posing particular problems (hence ‘practice shock’). As a consequence, in many countries specific support initiatives (professional development) have been set up. However, the issue has not been solved (Ingersoll & Strong, 2011). Both research and support initiatives have been criticized for not being effective and even counterproductive, due to the deficit approach they represent (early career teachers are most often conceived of as individual professionals lacking particular competencies which need to be remedied)(Kelchtermans, 2019). Furthermore, significant numbers of early career teachers continue to leave the profession only shortly after entering it, thus intensifying the teacher attrition and aggravating teacher shortage in many countries (see a.o. Craig, 2017).

Both the insights from research and the practical experiences with support programs for early career teachers have shown that surviving the transition into the job and the immediate practice shock in relation to running one’s classes is only part of the issue. The challenges of the induction phase clearly go beyond teachers’ individual competencies in the classroom (i.e. classroom management, didactics and teaching skills). There is growing research evidence that the complexities of becoming a member of the school as an organization are at least as challenging, if not more: negotiating one’s position in the school team and the organizational culture of the school, dealing with the school leadership and different colleagues, carrying the burden of complex and time-consuming administrative work that comes with the responsibilities for one’s students. All this while at the same time developing expertise and sense of identity, keeping up moral commitment and dealing with the emotions and power processes that go with the job. In other words, to properly understand and conceptualize teacher induction, more research is necessary that seeks to unpack the complex interplay between the individual early career teacher and the working conditions (social, infrastructural, cultural, micropolitical). Furthermore, this research should also include more longitudinal methodological designs to document, analyze and understand these processes as they develop over time.

All papers in this symposium aim at contributing to deeper understanding of the contextualized nature of teacher induction, conceiving of context both in its spatial and its temporal dimension. All of them make a contribution to unpacking the complexities of teacher induction and as such contribute to a more valid and appropriate knowledge base to design and implement induction support (professional development).

The papers represent a wide variety of national contexts (Belgium, Czech Republic, Portugal, Sweden), as well as a diversity of theoretical and methodological approaches to teacher induction. At the same time they also exemplify cases of international collaboration. As a discussant, Anna Sullivan, not only brings yet another national perspective to the matter, but also her solid expertise, overviewing the international research (see a.o. Sullivan et al., 2019).

Workplace conditions play a central role in teachers’ professional development as well as in their morale and career choice commitment. Research has shown the importance of space and place in the construction and negotiation of beginning teachers’ subjectivities (lisahunter, Rossi, Tinning, Flanagan, & Macdonald, 2011), and the role of micro-political literacy on new teachers’ professional development (Kelchtermans & Ballet, 2002). This paper draws on data from a longitudinal study carried out in Portugal with new teachers as they develop as teachers in the early years of teaching and beyond. Data were collected in different moments through email conversations and semi-structured interviews. A narrative approach (Kelchtermans, 1995; Clandinin, Pushor, & Orr, 2007; Elliott, 2003) was used. In total, 14 teachers participated in the study. Data reported in this paper were collected with the same teachers in different moments during their career and analysed according to a thematic analysis. The longitudinal design permitted to look beyond the very first experiences in the job -often framed as a ‘practice shock’- but reveal the complex ways in which the macro policy context and the micropolitics at school level impacted early career teachers’ experiences. Findings reveal how the shift in the macro context marked by an economic crisis and a shift from a teacher surplus to a teacher shortage led to changes at policy level in terms of school governance, school curriculum and teacher evaluation, which eventually had important consequences for teachers’ identities as well as their operation at the classroom level. Furthermore, the (changes in) the working conditions at the meso-level of the school as organisation were also found to be of crucial importance for a thorough understanding of the induction phase in teacher’s career. The findings deepen our understanding of the essentially relational nature of teaching: the relationships with students, parents and colleagues as well as the way leadership is enacted through social interactions. More in particular the study unpacks how teachers navigate the complexity of their workplace conditions and negotiate their roles as teachers as well as their identities. The paper concludes with discussing a) the consequences for the design and enactment of induction support and professional development opportunities for teachers in their early career; b) how the findings contribute to a more refined and balanced understanding of the complex processes of turnover and teacher attrition in relation to the organisational working conditions.

Clandinin, D. J., Pushor, D., & Orr, A. M. (2007). Navigating sites for narrative inquiry. Journal of Teacher Education, 58(1), 21–35. Elliott, J. (2005). Using narrative in social research. Qualitative and quantitative approaches. London: Sage. Kechtermans, G., & Ballet, K. (2002). Micropolitical literacy: Reconstructing a neglected dimension in teaching development. International Journal of Educational Research, 37, 755–767. Kelchtermans, G. (1995) A utilização de biografias na formação de professores. Aprender, 18, 5-20 lisahunter, Rossi, T., Tinning, R., Flanagan, E., & Macdonald, D. (2011). Professional learning places and spaces: The staffroom as a site of beginning teacher induction and transition. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 39(1), 33–46.

Entering the job as early career teachers (ECTs) has often been described with dramatic metaphors such asbeing in a‘sink or swim‘ situation (Ulvik, Smith & Helleve, 2009), in which ECTs not only find their expertise challenged, but also often experience the ‘emotional rollercoaster’ (Lindqvist et al. 2021) of intense rewarding as well as troubling emotions simultaneously (Wu & Chen, 2018). Although many forms of induction support programs have been put in place, it remains unclear what happens in the time after the first practice shock. Hobson and Ashby (2012) describe reality aftershock, when the support systems end after the first year. In their second year teachers are confronted with the need to stand on their own feet. The aim of the study is to explore how beginning teachers deal with these structural changes in their second year to more fully understand the actual processes following teacher induction over time. Building on symbolic interactionism as the conceptual framework the study focuses on ECTs’ sense-making interactions within their professional context. Special attention is given to the role of emotions as conveyers of meaning and ‘messages’ of what is (morally) at stake in the reality aftershock. Interview data were collected from 23 beginning Swedish teachers at the end of their second year in the job. In line with the theoretical framework, Constructivist Grounded Theory (CGT) was used as a methodological approach for data-analysis, involving coding (initial, focused and theoretical coding), memo-writing and constant comparison to analyze the data (Charmaz 2014). The findings show that the second-year teachers draw on their experiences from the first year as biographical evidence that they have indeed survived the practice shock: “I have been there and ‘done’ it”. This operates as a resource for motivation and stamina to deal with the challenges of the second year. Beyond the agenda of agentic mastery of the daily challenges in the classroom practice, the analysis also shows how these experiences are also reflected in their developing self-understanding as teachers (Kelchtermans, 2009). Critical experiences in this process included classroom management, negotiating of the task perception, building functional and rewarding professional relationships with peers, and appropriate organizational working conditions facilitated by the school leadership. Finally, the findings demonstrate the interplay of the technical, moral and emotional dimensions of the teaching profession and the need to take these into account in the design and implementation of induction programs.

Charmaz, K. (2013). Constructing Grounded Theory. London: Sage. Hobson, A., & Ashby, P. (2012). Reality aftershock and how to avert it: Second-year teachers’ experiences of support for their professional development. Cambridge Journal of Education, 42(2), 177-196. Kelchtermans, G. (2009). Who I am in how I teach is the message: self‐understanding, vulnerability and reflection. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and practice, 15(2), 257-272. Lindqvist, H., Weurlander, M., Wernerson, A., & Thornberg, R. (2023). The emotional journey of the beginning teacher: Phases and coping strategies. Research Papers in Education, 38(4), 615-635. Ulvik, M., Smith, K., & Helleve, I. (2009). Novice in secondary school–the coin has two sides. Teaching and teacher education, 25(6), 835-842. Wu, Z., & Chen, J. (2018). Teachers’ emotional experience: insights from Hong Kong primary schools. Asia Pacific Education Review, 19(4), 531-541.

Much of the research on the high turnover rates during teacher induction assumes that teachers are retained or pushed out of the profession by a particular and static set of factors, either internal in the individual or external in the working conditions (Guarino et al., 2006). In our study we take a different approach, conceiving of turnover (or retention) as the outcome of a decision-making process that reflects the meaningful interactions between individual and context. While not denying the possible relevance of personal characteristics or formal working conditions, we assume that a proper understanding of teacher turnover requires the acknowledgement of ECTs‘ discretionary agentic competences of decision making. The paper starts by building the case for this conceptualisation of attrition/retention drawing on the concept of interpretative negotiation that was developed in recent research on school development and educational innovation (Kelchtermans, 2017; Vermeir & Kelchtermans, 2021). Next, we present the findings of a longitudinal single case study of a Czech primary school teacher, who first decided to leave the profession, later reconsidered her choice and returned to the job, yet eventually left again over the time span of three years. Since this type of career dynamics over time in teacher induction has received only limited research attention (Grissom & Reiniger, 2012; Moyer, 2022), we purposefully selected this case study from a larger study, which reconstructs career trajectories of Czech primary school teachers who decided to quit teaching. The data for the case were collected in line with the narrative-biographical research tradition, drawing on multiple semi-structured interviews (Seidman, 2013), complemented by an interpretative analysis of relevant documents (teacher portfolio and school documentation). The data analysis consisted of reconstructing the career story around its key moments and phases, and subsequently elaborating the story through the lens of Kelchtermans’ personal interpretive framework (2009). In this specific case, an interplay between the task perception and self-esteem was found to create a vicious cycle of doubts, subsequently lowering the teacher’s job motivation. Negotiation between this teacher and the work conditions led to dissonance, and to an ambiguous relationship to the profession, causing her to quit and return repeatedly. In the discussion we address the consequences of these findings for future research and theory development on teacher attrition and retention during the induction phase, as well as for the necessary rethinking and redesign of effective support to prevent teacher attrition

Guarino, C. M., Santibañez, L., & Daley, G. A. (2006). Teacher recruitment and retention: A review of the recent empirical literature. Review of Educational Research, 76(2), 173–208. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543076002173. Grissom, J.A. & Reininger, M. (2012). Who Comes Back? A Longitudinal Analysis of the Reentry Behavior of Exiting Teachers. Education Finance and Policy, 7, 425–454. Moyer, A. (2022). Has “Who Comes Back” Changed? Teacher Reentry 2000–2019. Educational Researcher, 51, 544-546. Kelchtermans, G. (2017). ‘Should I stay or should I go?’ Unpacking teacher attrition/retention as an educational issue. Teachers and Teaching: Theory & Practice, 23, 961-977. Kelchtermans, G. (2019). Early Career Teachers and Their Need for Support: Thinking Again. In: Sullivan, A., Johnson, B., Simons, M. (eds) Attracting and Keeping the Best Teachers. Professional Learning and Development in Schools and Higher Education, vol 16. Springer, Singapore. Seidman, I. (2013). Interviewing as Qualitative Research: A Guide for Researchers in Education and the Social Sciences. New York: Teachers College Press Vermeir, K. & Kelchtermans, G. (2022). Unpacking the support practices of educational advisors: congruency, loyalty, legitimacy, and urgency. Journal of Educational Change, 23, 473–495.

Over the last 10 years, we can observe an increased focus in teacher induction research on the importance of supporting early-career teachers (ECTs) for the organizational dimension of their work, especially in high-need schools (Johnson et al., 2012). Nevertheless, there is limited research that reveals the interaction between the ECT, the organization, and the urban context, and what this means for their overall induction process (März & Kelchtermans, 2020). Avoiding a deficit approach (Kelchtermans, 2019) and guided by the notions of resilience (individual) and working conditions (school and urban context), we followed the induction process of 8 ECTs over their first school year as they entered the teaching profession in an urban setting (i.e., Brussels). Following ECTs surrounded by diverse working conditions (e.g., different employment contracts, with some working full-time in a single organization, and others holding contracts in multiple schools), our paper addresses two research questions: 1) How do early-career teachers experience their socialization into the organizational dimension of teachers’ work; and 2) How can these experiences be explained in terms of the interplay between individual sense-making (agency) on the one hand and organizational working conditions (structure) on the other? Data are being collected through multiple semi-structured narrative interviews (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) in a three-year longitudinal qualitative design (of which the paper presents only the findings of year 1, with two interviews conducted at the beginning and the end of their first school year). The presentation of the findings will focus on the specific way in which the particular urban context as well as organizational working conditions impact the induction process of the ECTs and their retention/attrition.

Clandinin, D., & Connelly, F. (2000). Narrative inquiry: Experience and story in qualitative research. John Wiley & Sons. Johnson, S., Kraft, M., & Papay, J. (2012). How context matters in high-need schools: The effects of teachers’ working conditions on their professional satisfaction and their students’ achievement. Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education, 114(10), 1‑39. https://doi.org/10.1177/016146811211401004 Kelchtermans, G. (2019). Early career teachers and their need for support: Thinking again. In A. Sullivan et al. (Eds.), Attracting and Keeping the Best Teachers. Issues and Opportunities (pp. 83‑99). Springer. März, V., & Kelchtermans, G. (2020). The networking teacher in action: A qualitative analysis of early career teachers’ induction process. Teaching and Teacher Education, 87, 1‑15. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2019.102933