Conference Agenda

Teacher shortage is a world-wide problem and the factor and solution are inquired (Ingersoll, 2001; Dorling-Hamond & Podolsky, 2019). To access a new pool of potential teachers, Alternative Certification Programs (ACPs) have been implemented in many counties, and many second-career teachers (SCTs) have been certified through them. However, ACPs for SCTs has issues; SCTs are regarded matured workers and following this, providing only short initial teacher education programs (ITE) is often seen sufficient, although many studies have found that SCTs confront unique problems during in-service professional development processes (e.g. Hoggs et al., 2023).

In Japan, SCTs are expected to bring high quality education into school, rather than to be a solution for teacher shortage. For instance, many parents think SCTs, even lacking proper teacher education, are the most critical means to improve the quality of school education (Cabinet Office, 2005). Although the demands upon them are different between Europe and Japan, they share the same issue; governments setting too high expectations on SCTs. That’s why we need more empirical research on their actual needs for their professional development and what kinds of values of their earlier (work) experiences they can add in the school context (Tigchelaar et al. 2010).

My research focuses on SCTs’ professional development from two perspectives; the reconstruction of a perception of teaching as a profession, and the relationship between SCTs’ professional development and the social expectations upon them. They both contain historical and cultural perspectives on SCTs’ professional development. Especially latter is significant on this research, because it seems to condition the experiences of SCTs in Japan. International research has illustrated that SCTs have high motivations (Ruitenburg & Tigchelaar, 2021), but the motivation decreasing during early induction phase (Goodwin et al., 2019). This phenomenon seems to be connected with too ideal or optimistic images of teachers’ work. After entering a school, they experience tension between these images and the realities in schools (Lassila, 2017). Under the condition where SCTs are expected too much, the ideals SCTs held before entry into school may be influenced by the discourses in their previous workplaces. Simultaneously, the relationships between SCTs and people around them, such as parents, children, residents around the school, may be different from that between first career teachers (FCTs). This difference is related to the micropolitics in/around the school (Kelchtermans & Ballet, 2002). Therefore, it is significance to research how SCTs construct perceptions of teaching as a profession, and how they reconstruct them through their professional development as teacher in micropolitics in/around the school.

I define “a perception of teaching as a profession” as a mixture of observations, norms, and beliefs about teaching as a profession. Teachers construct, sustain, and reconstruct this perception through their own experiences about teaching or school, including the experiences when they were students themselves (Lortie, 1975) and the experiences in previous workplaces (Ikeda & Watanabe, 2018). Such perception consists of three dimensions; job-perception, teachers-characteristic perception and self-perception. These coincide a response to the following questions: what is teaching as a profession like, what should teaching be like as a profession, and what kind of member of the teaching profession do I want to be.

My research aims to reveal the SCTs’ characteristics as professionals, not just as educators. In Japan, SCTs’ unique competences have resulted in vague expectations placed on them. Such expectations may cover the range of responsibilities teachers have to carry out as professionals. Focusing on a perception of teaching as a profession and micropolitics of SCTs in early in-service professional development, I aim to find ways to overcome this issue and help create better practices of educating SCTs.

The international context of declining attractiveness of the teaching profession has prompted a range of policy responses aimed at broadening the recruitment pool (Maroy, 2024). Persistent difficulties in attracting ‘’traditional’’ candidates have led to the progressive opening of the teaching career to ‘atypical’ profiles, particularly individuals with prior experience in other professional sectors. These “second-career teachers” (SCT) (Berger & D'Ascoli, 2011) have become a focus of growing international attention, notably through facilitated access routes and tailored training pathways (Ruitenburg & Tigchelaar, 2021). In France, however, within a civil service system structured around the principle of workforce interchangeability, no specific training framework is formally dedicated to SCT, despite the existence of occasional transitional arrangements.

Existing literature suggests that the diversity of SCTs' professional trajectories and prior experiences may constitute valuable resources for teachers’ professional development (Tigchelaar et al., 2010). However, empirical evidence regarding SCTs’ ability to effectively mobilise and transfer these prior skills into the teaching profession remains limited (Troesch & Bauer, 2020; Den Hertog et al, 2023). Our presentation seeks to address this gap by examining the difficulties encountered by SCT, in order to better capture the specific features of their professional develepment trajectory.

Our analysis is grounded in the field of workplace socialisation (Coppe et al., 2022), understood as the process through which an individual acquires, through learning and adaptation, the knowledge, skills and behaviours required to perform their professional role (Chao, 2012). This process is multidimensional and generally conceptualised as comprising three interrelated domains of socialisation (Perrot & Campoy, 2009). Socialisation into professional tasks primarily relates to the appropriation of the technical and practical dimensions of the profession. In the case of teaching, it encompasses instructional tasks, and more broadly, classroom practices. Secondly, socialisation into the working group concerns relational and collaborative integration within the professional team. Finally, organisation socialisation refers to understanding the functioning, values and culture of the institution, and therefore to teachers’a adaptation to the school as an organisation (Mukamurera et al., 2019).

However, for SCT, these three forms of socialisation may be disrupted by prior socialisation experiences acquired in other professional environments. Sociological approaches distinguish between process of secondary reinforcement socialisation and conversion socialisation (Darmon, 2016), the latter involving mechanisms of deculturation and reculturation that may result in profound transformation of the individual. These processes are nevertheless complex, as they often encounter resistance rooted in dispositions formed through earlier professional socialisation, developed over the long term, and sometimes poorly aligned with the requirements of new occupational contexts. This perspective helps to account for the difficulties that teachers may experience following an initial career in professional environments whose logic differ markedly from those of educational institutions.

Understanding these difficulties is crucial for preventing staff dissatisfaction and limiting teacher turnover (Hogg et al., 2023), particularly as SCT have become a key resource in the renewal of the profession (Charles et al., 2023). The interdependence of the three domains outlined above makes the analysis of barriers to workplace socialisation particularly complex.

While the difficulties identified are not specific to SCT, they tend to be exacerbated by a mismatch between dispositions shaped through early professional experiences and the actual conditions of teaching work. Confrontation with the realities of the profession may profoundly challenge representations that are sometimes based on an idealised or outdated image of a constantly evolving occupation. The ‘entry shock’ into teaching is therefore hightened and compounded by this dispositional mismatch. Our findings highlights the risks associated with insuffisant support for new teachers whose prior professional experiences may constitute a paradoxical source of vulnerability.