Conference Agenda

Teacher shortages constitute a persistent challenge for education systems across Europe, threatening educational quality, equity, and sustainability. In many countries, shortages are driven not only by insufficient inflow into teacher education, but also by high workload, stress, burnout, and early career attrition (Liu & Onwuegbuzie, 2012; Nguyen & Kremer, 2022; Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2018). In response, schools and school networks increasingly turn to human resource management (HRM) as a strategic lever to attract, support, and retain teachers. However, while HRM policies are often carefully designed at system or network level, their effectiveness ultimately depends on how they are implemented in schools and how they are perceived by teachers. This study examines this critical policy trajectory by analysing the intended, implemented and perceived policy (Khilji & Wang, 2006; Piening et al., 2014) in Flemish primary schools participating in a government-supported innovation initiative addressing teacher shortages.

The study builds on two complementary theoretical frameworks. First, the Job Demands–Resources (JD–R) model conceptualises teacher wellbeing and retention as the result of an interplay between job demands (e.g., workload, emotional labour) and job resources (e.g., collaboration, professional development, autonomy) (Demerouti et al., 2001). Second, the strategic HRM implementation chain distinguishes between intended policy (policy design), implemented policy (enactment by school leaders), and perceived policy (teachers’ interpretations and experiences). Prior research demonstrates that misalignment between these levels helps explain why well-intended policies often fail to achieve their desired outcomes (Khilji & Wang, 2006; Piening et al., 2014).

The study addresses four research questions (1) Which changes at the policy level do school networks intend to implement in order to address teacher shortages and to reduce job demands or enhance resources? (2) What JDR do school networks aim to target? (3) Which HR practices are being implemented in schools to address teacher shortages, and how do these relate to job demands or job resources? (4) How do teachers perceive the implemented HR practices and the related changes in their job demands and resources?

Empirically, the study focuses on Flemish primary education, a highly decentralised context characterised by strong school autonomy and network-level governance. Data were collected through a document analysis of policy proposals and an in-depth multiple case study of four school networks. These networks experimented with diverse HRM innovations, including job mobility across schools, the creation of new support roles, mentoring and co-teaching arrangements for second-career teachers, practice-based qualification pathways, and organisational redesigns such as a four-day teaching week.

The findings show that intended HR policies predominantly focus on recruitment and selection, assignment, professional development, and organisational redesign, while evaluation and rewards receive comparatively little attention. Networks primarily aim to strengthen job resources, such as collaboration, learning opportunities, and employment stability, rather than directly reducing job demands. At the implementation level, school leaders play a pivotal mediating role, translating network-level intentions into locally adapted practices. This results in considerable variation across schools, even within the same network. At the perception level, teachers’ experiences are mixed: while many value the increased support, flexibility, and professional learning opportunities, others report additional workload, ambiguity, or disappointment when implementation is partial or inconsistent.

By systematically analysing alignment and misalignment across intended, implemented, and perceived policy, this study contributes to European debates on teacher shortages and educational governance. It demonstrates that HRM policies only become effective retention strategies when strategic design, implementation capacity, and teacher sensemaking are coherently aligned. The findings highlight the importance of leadership, communication, and participation in translating HR innovations into meaningful improvements in teachers’ working conditions and wellbeing.

Between 2010 and 2024, teacher policy in England underwent a significant pivot. At the start of this period, the newly-elected Conservative-led government focused on decreasing direct state control of teachers, instead preferring a ‘high autonomy, high accountability’ approach. Accordingly, over the next few years, accountability policies were developed, and formal regulations pertaining to teacher quality were removed or lessened: the Teachers’ Standards were slimmed down, ITE regulations were reduced, and schools were freed to employ unqualified staff (Burn & Childs, 2016; Furlong, 2013). By the late 2010s, however, an apparent volte face had occurred, with the development of much more prescriptive policies – the Early Career Framework (ECF) and the Core Content Framework (CCF) – that mandated a specific vision of ‘evidence-based teaching’ grounded principally in cognitive science and Randomised Control Trials (RCTs) (Hordern & Brooks, 2023).

This presentation offers an account of why this significant pivot occurred. Specifically, it addresses the research question: Why did England’s teacher policy change so dramatically between the early 2010s and late 2010s, within the lifetime of one government?

To answer this question, it draws on a critical realist framing (Sayer, 2000) combined with insights from Advocacy Coalition Framework theory (ACF) (Jenkins-Smith et al., 2014). As a theoretical orientation, critical realism (CR) holds that empirical phenomena that we directly observe (in this case, specific teacher policy documents) are caused by particular objects, structures and mechanisms that are activated and have certain effects under certain conditions (Sayer, 2000). It therefore offers a way of thinking about policy that allows us to not just analyse, for instance, the content of a policy document or what its underlying ideological orientation might be, but to attend specifically to the origins of a policy by carefully identifying the processes that lie behind its development.

ACF complements CR by offering a specific conceptual grammar for analysing policy development. In particular, ACF’s understands policy change as being driven by different ‘advocacy coalitions’ – networks of actors across government, academia, civil society and other institutions – who are organised around shared belief systems at deep core, policy core, and secondary levels (Jenkins-Smith et al., 2014). This conceptual framing allows the paper to identify key advocacy coalitions and their belief structures as important drivers of policy change.

This paper offers significant insights for European and global audiences. Calls for ‘evidence-based education’ and for teaching to be understood primarily in relation to the findings of fields like cognitive science are not necessarily new (see for example Hargreaves, 1997). However, it appears that globally, new structures and mechanisms – both coming from within government but also from advocates outside of government – have lead to a particularly strong resurgence of this way of thinking about teaching (see for example Marttila, 2020; Mills et al., 2023; Wood & Hughson, 2025). This paper offers a detailed analysis of how these ideas came to rise to prominence in one particular jurisdiction. In doing so, it provides a possible model for future analysis in other jurisdictions, as well as an important point of comparison which will enable an exploration of what ways (if any) reform paths in this space look similar to those taken in England, and in what ways they may differ.

In Switzerland, the education system is highly decentralised, with education primarily falling under cantonal responsibility. At secondary II level (students aged 15 to 20), school-leaving certificates grant direct access to universities and higher education institutions throughout the country. In 2008, an evaluation of secondary II education concluded that the overall quality of education was generally good, while also identifying shortcomings in first language and mathematics learning outcomes.

In response, the intercantonal coordination body for education (CDIP) issued a series of recommendations in 2016, including the policy known as “Évaluation en Commun” (EeC) (literally translated as common assessment). This policy encourages teachers to collaborate with their colleagues to design common assessments. It is embedded in a “soft” accountability logic (Maroz & Voisin, 2014), in which the prescription is deliberately non-binding, and leaves considerable autonomy to cantons, schools, and teaching teams to interpret and implement the policy in practice. Consequently, no clear institutional guidelines or standardized frameworks are provided to support teachers in its implementation. Our previous research (Ochelen, to be published ; Ochelen & Yerly, to be published) shows that this openness can lead to markedly different interpretations of the policy at the school leadership level. For example, across schools, principals may require teachers to implement common assessments or simply encourage them to do so. Given that assessment is a sensitive domain, closely tied to teachers’ professional identities (Brown et al., 2019), and traditionally practised on an individual basis (Allal & Mottier Lopez, 2014), how do teachers make sense of the EeC policy?

Since the 1990s, educational policies and reforms in Western education systems have placed a strong emphasis on teacher collaboration (Dupriez, 2010). More recently, this dynamic has also extended to assessment practices (Yerly, 2021). While collaboration in assessment appears to be an emerging trend, the literature highlights both professional benefits for teachers and less desirable effects, such as interpersonal tensions or power struggles (Ochelen et al., 2024). These contrasting effects raise questions about how meaning is constructed and how educational reforms in assessment are legitimised when implemented in collective contexts.

As research on sensemaking shows (Coburn, 2004; Spillane et al., 2002), teachers do not simply apply policies; they actively construct meaning based on their own perceptions and professional context. According to Draelants (2008), the legitimation of a policy is essential for the sustainable institutionalization of change. Examining forms of legitimation is therefore particularly important, as the fact that a reform is legally legitimate does not guarantee that it will be perceived as legitimate by those responsible for implementing it in practice. Suchman (1995) distinguishes three forms of legitimacy: moral, pragmatic, and cognitive. He suggests that the more a reform is supported by multiple forms of legitimacy, the more likely it is to be accepted and sustained over time. From this perspective, the effects of a reform depend not only on its institutional framework, but also on how teachers perceive its usefulness, feasibility, and concrete benefits in their everyday work.

In this paper, I critically examine the construction of teacher identity in International Baccalaureate (IB) schools in Kazakhstan, a context in which teachers work at the intersection of national education policies and transnational IB institutional expectations.

Multiple institutional actors participate in defining what counts as a “legitimate” teacher, but these discursive constructions are not equally recognised by teachers working in different IB schools within the Kazakhstani schooling field. It remains unclear why certain discursive constructions become legitimised and recognised while others do not, particularly within unequal schooling context. The aim of the study is to critically analyse how discursive constructions of teacher identity are produced, legitimised, and recognised in IB schools in Kazakhstan.

The study addresses the following overarching research question:

How are discursive constructions of teacher identity produced, legitimised, and recognised in IB schools in Kazakhstan, and why are some discursive constructions of teacher identity recognised by teachers while others are not within an unequal schooling field?

The study is grounded in social constructionism and Bourdieu’s theory of practice and conceptualises teacher identity as socially constructed and power-laden knowledge shaped through the dynamic interaction of field, capital, and habitus. Teacher identity is understood as a site of discursive struggle in which symbolic power operates through processes of legitimation and recognition.