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Crosswell, Leanne & Beutel, Denise(2017)21st century teachers: how non-traditional pre-service teachers navigatetheir initial experiences of contemporary classrooms.Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 45(4), pp. 416-431.

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https://doi.org/10.1080/1359866X.2017.1312281

2016-0074.R2

21st century teachers: how non-traditional pre-service teachers navigate their initial experiences of contemporary classrooms

First/Contact Author:

Name Leanne Crosswell

Title Dr

Institution Queensland University of Technology

Phone 3138 3459

Email l2.crosswell@qut.edu.au

Postal address Faculty of Education, QUT,

Victoria Park Road, Kelvin Grove QLD. 4059.

Ethics statement included in body of manuscript (if relevant)

The research was conducted after receiving the necessary ethical approval from the university ethics committee.

Four (4) key words Teacher resilience; teacher identitiy; transactional-ecological

Secondary Author:

Name Denise Beutel

Title Associate Professor

Institution Queensland University of Technology

Author Biographies (approx. 25 words each)

Denise Beutel Denise Beutel is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of

Education at QUT. Her research interests include pre-service

teacher education, teacher professional learning and teacher

mentoring.

Leanne Crosswell Leanne Crosswell is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Education

at QUT. Her research interests include teacher resilience and

wellbeing, transition to teaching and mentoring.

21st century teachers: how non-traditional pre-service teachers navigate their initial experiences of contemporary classrooms Abstract

In the twenty-first century, teachers’ work has become more complex with high levels of accountability

(Price & McCallum, 2015), increased bureaucratic responsibilities and unprecedented levels of public

scrutiny (Hargreaves, 2010). However, teaching fundamentally remains a caring profession, requiring

well-developed social skills and emotional labour to successfully engage and motivate students. Teachers

need resilience to thrive in these environments of intense and often conflicting pressures. Drawing on a

transactional-ecological model (Sameroff, 2010) this qualitative study explored the resilience and teacher

identity development of a cohort of pre-service career-change teachers as they navigated their initial

experiences in contemporary classrooms. The findings indicate that this cohort arrived to teacher

education with teacher identities strongly aligned with a broad conceptualisation of care as active practice

(Held, 2006). This paper discusses how their identities and capacities for resilience were challenged and

reviewed during their classroom experiences and the implications for teacher education and the

profession.

Introduction

In the twenty-first century, the teaching landscape has been dominated by neo-liberal agendas that have

focussed on teacher accountability and the use of performance indicators as evidence of improved student

learning. In this environment, teachers’ work has become more increasingly regulated and prescribed,

with intensified bureaucratic responsibilities and keen public scrutiny (Hargreaves, 2010; Price &

McCallum, 2015). At the same time, teaching remains fundamentally a caring profession, focussed on

looking after other people and requiring high levels of social skills and emotional labour to successfully

engage and motivate students, as well as maintain effective relationships with the broader school

community (Aspfors & Bondas, 2013). The combination of these intense and at times competing

occupational demands requires teachers to demonstrate both a well-developed capacity for resilience (Gu

& Day, 2013; Johnson, Down, Le Cornu, Peters, Sullivan, Pearce & Hunter, 2014; Mansfield, Beltman,

Broadley & Weatherby-Fell, 2016) and a robust professional identity (Beltman, Glass, Dinham, Chalk &

Nguyen, 2015; Day & Lee, 2011). Concomitantly, the demographic profile of teachers continues to

change internationally with a growing proportion of aspiring teachers taking non-traditional pathways to

teaching, notably people with degrees outside of education who are seeking to join the profession.

Career-changers bring their ‘real world’ experience, substantive discipline knowledge and collective life

wisdom to the teaching profession (Donaldson, 2012; Tigchelaar, Brouwer, & Korthagen, 2008;

Varadharajan, 2014). As such, this cohort of new teachers potentially contributes to the broader

profession in positive ways. However, their entry to teaching is often through shorter, alternate programs

with little consideration for the unique learning needs and expectations of career-changers (Varadharajan,

2014) and with limited time and opportunities to develop their identities as teachers.

Career-changers: Defining the term

Three key terms dominate the literature in referring to this group of aspiring teachers: the lesser used

terms of ‘mid-career entrants’ (Marinell & Johnson, 2014) and ‘second career teachers’ (Tigchelaar,

Vermunt, & Brouwer, 2014); and the more widely adopted ‘career-changers’ (Laming & Horne, 2013;

Watters & Diezmann, 2012; Varadharajan, 2014; Varadharajan, Carter, Buchanan, & Schuck, 2016). In

this paper we adopt the term ‘career-changers’ to acknowledge that the group’s previous career histories

are at best ‘fuzzy’, ranging from minimal experience in another career, to a rich portfolio of careers or

even a previous career of substantial length (and success).

Prior research of career-changers to teaching includes studies into their motivations for coming to the

profession (Watt et al., 2012), their prior assumptions about teaching (Tigchelaar, Brouwer & Korthagen,

2008), and their lived experiences in schools (Varadharajan, 2014). While this population has always

been present in the teaching profession, international numbers reveal that currently around a third of new

graduates are career-changers (Reiter, 2008), while here in Australia that figure is closer to 47% in the

primary schooling sector (McKenzie et al., 2014). This is of particular interest to us as the participants in

this study are career-changers undertaking a Graduate Diploma of Education - Primary.

The significance of experience: the contemporary classroom context

Experiencing the contemporary classroom context offers aspiring teachers the opportunity to ‘reality

check’ their choice to become teachers. It is only through school-based experiences that career-changers

can test their personal assumptions about teaching against the realities of the classroom. Formal field

experience is often described as the most significant learning period (Ferrier-Kerr, 2009) and the most

stressful component (Chaplain, 2008) within initial teacher preparation programs. During this time pre-

service teachers are expected to meet the demands and expectations of their students, host teacher, school

context and university supervision staff while publicly undertaking the developmental transformation of

moving from being a student to teacher themselves (Klassen & Durksen, 2014; Van Rijswijk, Akkerman

& Koster, 2013). It is argued that during field experience is the time when teacher identities are most

unstable (Beauchamp & Thomas, 2011). It can be argued that teacher identity development is even more

intense for career-changers, as they need to navigate the transition from their previous career identity to

reforging a new professional identity as a teacher (Williams, 2010). In doing so, career-changers revert to

a novice professional identity while at the same time benchmarking teaching against their previous career

identities and practices.

The key research question guiding our study was: How do classroom experiences influence the evolving

teacher identity and associated resilience of preservice teachers who are career-changers? Initially, we

explore this group’s anticipatory teacher identity as they arrive to start the program and their revised

notions of teacher identity and lived experiences of teacher resilience following the field experience

components of their one-year program.

Theoretical Framework

The paper adopts a transactional–ecological theoretical framework to guide the study. Originally

emerging from the field of developmental psychology to understand the interplay of nature and nurture

(Sameroff, 2009) the transactional-ecological model has since been more widely adopted to better

understand the ongoing transactions between the individual and the experiences provided by his or her

social settings. From an ecological perspective, every social context or ‘ecology’ contains a number of

social systems that an individual must understand and negotiate. The transactional–ecological framework

comprises bidirectional, person-context transactions (Sameroff, 2010) in which the individual influences

their environment and the environment reciprocally influences the individual.

Typically the process of ‘becoming’ a teacher involves a complex interplay between the aspiring

teacher personally held values and beliefs and various contexts that include the teacher education

program, the field experience classroom and host teacher and education more broadly. Thus,

development as teacher is a product of the continuous, dynamic and reciprocal interactions of the

preservice teacher and their experiences within multiple contexts during teacher education and so is

transactional and ecological in nature. The transactional-ecological framework has been used previously

to investigate both teacher identity (Day, Sammons, Stobart, Kington & Gu, 2007) and teacher resilience

(Day & Gu, 2014; Johnson, et al., 2014; Papatraianou, 2012).

Teacher identity

Teacher identity is understood to be how teachers view themselves as teachers; how teachers view others

with whom they engage professionally; and how teachers perceive others view them in a particular

context at a particular time (Gee, 2000). Teacher identity is social, discontinuous, dialogical and multiple

in nature (Van Rijswijk, Akkerman & Koster, 2013) and continues to evolve over the career span through

a process of interpretation and reinterpretation influenced by a range of personal and contextual factors

(Gee, 2000; Zembylas & Chubbuck, 2014) that interact in a reciprocal way (Beltman, Glass, Dinham,

Chalk & Nguyen, 2015; Cohen, 2010). It is both a product (resulting from multiple influences on the

teacher) and a process (a form of ongoing interaction with teacher development) (Beauchamp & Thomas,

2009) and impacts significantly on classroom practice, professional capacity, wellbeing, commitment and

resilience (Day & Lee, 2011).

During pre-service teacher education, aspiring teachers reflect on the types of teachers they are and want

to be (Schepens, Aelterman & Vlerick, 2009) filtered through their existing beliefs, conceptions and

experiences (Sutherland, Howard & Markauskaite, 2010). This active identification or ‘anticipatory

identity’ (Amiot & Jaspal, 2014) sees the pre-service teacher adjust their sense of self by drawing on their

personal experiences and existing stereotypes of teachers. A strong awareness of self as teacher

contributes to a powerful teacher identity which has a decisive influence on teacher retention, teacher

resilience and teacher effectiveness particularly in the early years of teaching (Beltman, et al., 2015). In

essence, being able to successfully negotiate a teacher identity is pivotal to becoming a resilient teacher

(Papatraianou & Le Cornu, 2014).

Teacher resilience

There has been heightened interest in teacher resilience in recent years (see Gu & Day, 2013; Johnson, et

al., 2014; Mansfield et al., 2016) arguably in response to high rates of teacher attrition, the intensification

of the work of teaching and the increasing casualisation of the teaching workforce. Earlier beliefs were

that resilience was an innate element of an individual's personality. However, the current view of

resilience is that it is a dynamic, multidimensional, developmental construct that is influenced by

individual circumstance, situation and environment (Day & Gu, 2014). An individual’s capacity for

resilience is reliant not only on their previous experiences, social networks and personal internal assets

such as temperament, confidence and agency, but also by their socio-cultural contexts and the

relationships within these contexts. While resilience more generally can be defined as the process an

individual undertakes to adapt in positive ways to challenging circumstances (Fletcher & Sarkar, 2013),

Gu and Day (2013) have defined teacher resilience to be “the capacity to maintain equilibrium and a

sense of commitment and agency in the everyday worlds in which teachers work” (p. 26). It is this

definition of teacher resilience that is drawn on throughout this paper.

A transactional approach to teacher resilience requires exploration of the protective processes that inform

resilience and how these are mediated by context and culture (Theron & Donald, 2012). Wider contextual

influences on teacher resilience include school culture, school leaders (Mansfield, et al., 2016) and

resources that are available within social networks (Gu & Day, 2014; Le Cornu, 2013). Personal internal

resources that enhance resilient behaviours include, intrinsic motivation or “inner drive” (Hong, 2012), a

sense of self-belief (Le Cornu, 2013) and efficacy (Mansfield, et al., 2016). Additional to these, personal

support networks can also support resilience (Le Cornu, 2013). The capacity to be resilient in difficult

circumstances can be enhanced or inhibited by the nature of the context, in which individuals are

immersed, the people in those settings with whom individuals associate and the strength of an

individual’s beliefs or aspirations (Day, Kington, Stobart & Sammons, 2006). As such, the field

experience context and the supervising teacher will play a critical role in the resilience of all aspiring

teachers. This paper explores the impact of Field Experience contexts and the relationships associated

with these contexts on the resilience and teacher identity development of a cohort of career-changers.

The study design

The study investigates the impact of initial classroom experiences on a cohort of prospective career-

changers who enrolled in a graduate-entry teacher education program in a large urban university in

eastern Australia. In particular, we explore the transactions between individuals and their contexts, and

the personal and contextual impacts of these experiences on their developing identities as teachers and on

their teacher resilience. In this qualitative study, we draw on data from the cohort over the duration of a

Graduate Diploma in Education program. The research was conducted after receiving the necessary

ethical approval from the university ethics committee.

The program

The Graduate Diploma in Education is a one-year full-time graduate-entry teacher education program

designed for people seeking teacher registration who already hold a university level qualification in

another field. This study focuses on the cohort preparing to become primary school teachers and teach

students aged between five and twelve years old. Each semester of the two-semester program comprised a

nine-week on-campus component, followed by formal supervised field experience in a primary school

setting. The first field experience consisted of a 22-day block while the second field experience was for

33 days. The program also included a 5-day non-assessed immersion in a school in mid-semester 1. This

experience gave the career-changers the opportunity to familiarise themselves with the realities of

contemporary classrooms and to start aligning the theoretical and practical components of teaching. This

is significant given that many of the participants had not been in a primary classroom for over twenty

years.

The participants

The entire cohort (n=72) was invited to participate in this study. The participants’ ages ranged from the

early 20s through to over 50 years with a gender distribution of approximately 80% females to 20%

males. The cohort’s prior university qualifications spanned the fields of arts, science, psychology,

business and law.

Data collection

This paper reports on questionnaire data collected at four key milestones over the two semesters. Each

questionnaire included open-ended questions to provide opportunity for detailed responses. The first

questionnaire administered in class on the first day of the program (t1) collected demographic data and

background information of the cohort. Further questions sought to reveal their anticipatory teacher

identity through unpacking the arriving cohort’s current perceptions of themselves as teachers and also by

revealing their preconceived assumptions of others as ‘good’ teachers along with key reasons for wanting

to become teachers, their perceived strengths, and the anticipated challenges of the classroom.

Participants completed the second questionnaire following a 5-day non-assessed immersion (t2) in a

classroom with questions focused on revealing the impact this experience had on the career-changers’

emerging identities as teachers.

The questionnaires following each of the two field experiences focused on how the experiences impacted

on their changing perceptions of themselves as teachers along with perceived successes, challenges, and

sources of contextual and personal stresses and supports. Of 67 enrolled in the program at t4, only 31

preservice teachers completed the final questionnaire as some were still on field experience, having to

make up days lost due to sickness, while others were at interviews for teaching positions.

Data analysis

The researchers coded the data through an inductive process of content analysis (Mayring, 2004) with

broad categories emerging after repeated readings of the data (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015). The data were

analysed horizontally as well as vertically. That is, the complete set of responses for each questionnaire

was examined as well as analysing the whole set of responses for each individual question. In the data

analysis process, each researcher read and re-read the data separately looking for themes. Following the

initial independent analysis, the researchers discussed the themes collaboratively and referred back to the

original data. These themes were reviewed and refined throughout the process (Schreier, 2014) until

agreement was reached on a stable set of categories by both researchers.

Findings

The purpose of this study was to explore how initial experiences of contemporary classrooms might

influence the developing teacher identity and associated teacher resilience for career-changers. In

adopting a transactional-ecological framework, we present the findings in terms of transactions within and

between two key systems of influence: the contextual (the social, cultural and organisational dimensions

of schools and interactions with staff, students, and host teachers) and the personal (individual

characteristics, family and friends) (Day & Gu, 2014; Papatraianou, 2012). We initially map the group’s

anticipatory teacher identity on entry to the program and then explore the subsequent impact of the

classroom experiences on their teacher identity and teacher resilience.

Anticipatory Teacher Identity: initial perceptions

In readiness to take on a new social identity, individuals start to build an ‘anticipatory identity’ (Amiot &

Jaspal, 2014) adjusting their sense of self in line with their personal experiences and existing stereotypes

of the new identity. Aspiring teachers consider who they want to be (and not be) as a teacher (Beijaard,

Meijer, & Verloop, 2013). The data from the initial questionnaire, administered on the first day of the

program (at t1), and prior to any engagement with school classrooms, revealed the cohort’s anticipatory

identity to be heavily focused on the caring work of teaching. It is important to note that the participants

discussed ‘care’ as a broad notion that included a cluster of values such as empathy, sensitivity and

responsiveness. The cohort understood care to be an active practice of teachers that focused on building

relationships to support student growth as well as an ideal that guides teacher judgement and action

(Hamington, 2010; Held, 2006). As such, it could be argued that the participants were conceptualising a

feminist notion of care in that it focussed on the relationships between people and positioned teachers to

value attentiveness, responsibility, competence and responsiveness (Tronto, 2005).

Care as an active practice was evidenced in multiple ways within the data in regards to recognition of and

responding to students. Qualities such as being patient (n=15) with the interrelated adjectives of

compassionate, caring, sensitive and kind featuring prominently as key qualities of ‘good’ teachers. Care

for the needs of each and every student was evident in responses such as “build positive and supportive

relationships with all students”, “understanding students are all different” and “realising the different

personalities and learning styles of each individual and teaching accordingly” and the use of terms such as

tolerance, empathy and understanding. Furthermore, care and support for learners was demonstrated

through a common view that good teachers make learning fun (n=12) and engaging (n=6) while also

being firm (n=13) or fair (n=10). The latter two concepts were often discussed in close association and

generally the cohort understood that for teachers to effectively demonstrate care, then they must provide a

safe and supportive learning environment for their students. While it could be argued that a different

interpretation of these terms (firm and fair) could be conceptualised as control and authority over

students, this interpretation was not apparent within the anticipatory identity data set.

A broad understanding of care as active practice was also evident in the widely held view by the cohort

that good teachers demonstrate high levels of organisation (n=8) along with the capacity to be responsive

to the changing dynamics within the classroom. Terms such as ‘flexible’ (n=5) and ‘adaptable’ (n=5)

demonstrate an awareness of the range of variables that impact on a teacher’s work environment and the

constant adaptations and thinking on their feet that effective teachers take on as part of their job. Care

was also discussed as an emotional attachment to, and excitement about, learning and teaching. Good

teachers were described as genuinely enthusiastic (n=6) and passionate (n=17) and vitalised by their work

and it is this excitement that serves to engage and inspire their students.

The cohort arrived to the teacher preparation program with anticipatory teacher identities strongly

attached to the caring work of teaching (Hamington, 2010; Held, 2006). However, it was the classroom

experiences within the program that allowed the cohort to reality check their prior assumptions about the

day to day work of teachers. This practical contact with schools allowed the career-changers to challenge

and review their anticipatory teacher identities.

Anticipatory Teacher Identity

For many, the first classroom experience in the program provided an opportunity for “ensuring myself

that I've made the right choice in starting this journey”. Feedback on initial classroom experiences ranged

from positive, “I was surprised at how comfortable I was in the classroom with the students and teacher. I

felt right at home” and “I really enjoyed it and cemented that I want to be a teacher” through to the

demoralising message, “other teachers in the school [were] asking, Why the hell do you want to be a

teacher? Get out now!” As such, the experiences in contemporary classrooms and school contexts both

reinforced and challenged the cohort’s anticipatory teacher identities.

1. Reinforced their anticipatory teacher identity

Overwhelmingly the cohort indicated that their initial field experiences reinforced their decision to

change careers to become a teacher. As the cohort’s anticipatory teacher identity was centred on the

notion of care which includes attentiveness to the needs of the students, it was unsurprising to see positive

emotions prominent in responses, “Loved the kids! The kids in my class were all so good, so this may be

an unrealistic introduction to a classroom”, “It was so much fun - the kids were terrible and wonderful

and everything in between”, and “I have made the right decision. Loved it more than I thought I would

and could see myself doing it for a long time”. Positive relationships with others in the school

community also featured prominently, “[I felt] very supported by the teacher and Deputy Principal”,

“They were incredibly supportive, warm, gave lots of feedback, developed friendly relationships” and

“My teacher welcomed me into the classroom and treated me not as a prac. student but as a teacher and

person”.

2. Challenged their anticipatory teacher identity

While many of the career-changers were bolstered by their interactions with students, they were also

confronted by the intensity and complexity of the teachers’ workload (Amiot & Jaspal, 2014; Watters &

Diezmann, 2015). Many were taken aback by the unrelenting time demands, “[I was surprised by] the

workload and how tiring it can be”. Some of the cohort had not fully appreciated the multi-layered nature

of teaching, “Having to do something that required me to focus on multiple things and also manage 26

students at the same time”. Adding to these pressures, the career-changers were “Having to spend the 6

hours at school and then coming home to work for hours to prepare lessons. I also have to work to pay my

rent and eat so the field experience was extremely intensive.” However, by their final field experience

many of the career-changers had started to normalise these aspects of teaching, “Always trying to put in

150% effort to make lessons innovative, interesting and engaging for students”. While the career-

changers grew in confidence in their final field studies (“[I was given] more responsibility and freedom

to try new things with my class”), the increased pressures and responsibilities placed on them from

within the schooling contexts (“I knew more and was accountable for absolutely everything”) challenged

their emerging identities and resilience.

Teacher resilience

Field experience has been identified as the most stressful component of initial teacher education

(Chaplain, 2008), and our data validated this with all participants reporting moderate to high levels of

stress during classroom experiences. The key stressors appeared to be contextual in origin: the work

involved in learning how to teach (“huge workload, challenging class in terms of behaviour, wide range

of learning needs”, and “Overwhelmed by what I needed to learn”) and the expectations or attitude of the

host teacher (“as a grad dip I was expected to be in line with 4th year students”, “host teacher expected

more”, “lack of positive attitude to learning from the teacher”). Stressors stemming from personal factors

emerged from their own expectations of their own performance (“the pressure of being watched and being

too critical on myself”, “my own self-demands ie. planning and performance” and “my own need to plan

everything to the nth degree”) and attempting to juggle multiple responsibilities (“juggling family, work

and planning”, “new baby, running a business”).

As discussed earlier, this paper adopts a transactional-ecological framework through which to analyse the

data. Like others researching teacher resilience (see Day & Gu, 2014; Johnson, et al., 2014) we consider

teachers’ work to exist in an ecosystem in which contextual and personal elements work in relation to

each other. Table 1 outlines the positive and the negative influences that exist within the contextual and

personal systems of influence as reported by the career-changers.

INSERT Table 1 HERE

Positive influences on Resilience

Contextual and personal factors enabling resilience were identified. In terms of contextual support, the

cohort commented on the positive influence of having a supportive relationship with their host teacher

(eg. “The host teacher made a place for me to sit, assist her in teaching … I was treated as if I were a

member of the teaching team”, “talking through my performance with my teachers and acting on that

feedback”), a positive school culture (eg. “Good students, good culture between colleagues, strong

student leadership program, good behavioural expectations”) and accessing formal support from

university staff (“meeting with my university liaison who I credit with helping me and reducing my

stress”). From the personal system, many career-changers discussed the benefit of having supportive

family and friends. “Thankfully I have a wonderfully understanding and supportive family” and “my

husband … always listened to my problems and helped me to cope with stress”. Specific coping strategies

included adopting a pragmatic approach (“just got on with it, I knew it would come to an end eventually”,

“remained realistic and focussed on one day at a time”), self-care (“eating well, exercise and sleep”, and

“prayer”), personal support networks (“debriefed with other grad dip students”). As such, this group

demonstrated resilient behaviours (Mansfield, et al., 2016) such as establishing personal boundaries and

self-initiating strategies to navigate the stresses inherent in the transition to teaching.

Negative Influences on Resilience

In some instances, the transactions between career-changers and their supervising teachers challenged the

resilience of the career-changers. Some supervising teachers “[voiced] criticism of the [one-year] Grad

Dip program and strong bias against it” while another “compared my university with X university and

said it [the other university] was a lot better”. Such comments indicated that these career-changers faced

an added challenge of needing to navigate the supervisory teacher’s [lack of] confidence in the quality of

the teacher preparation program and by association the individual career-changers readiness to teach.

Further negative influences emanated from supervising teachers who were “too busy to give guidance”

while another would “skim read my lesson plan the morning of my teaching with no suggestions or

recommendations”. One participant perceived that the supervising teacher “didn’t seem to like my

enthusiasm”, while another appeared “very unsupportive and rude” with several participants lamenting

that they were given inadequate opportunities to teach. From a personal perspective, key constraints were

centred around the difficulties in juggling family responsibilities with the intense workload of field

experience with typical comments such as “[I really struggled] managing full time work with family

commitments”. Other negative contextual influences included the intense assessment load of the teacher

education program which coincided with getting prepared for field experience and the added pressure of

employment processes (submitting applications and undertaking interviews) during their final field

experience.

Discussion

The aim of this research was to explore how the initial classroom experiences of a cohort of career-

changers contributed to their developing teacher identities and resilience. A transactional–ecological

theoretical lens (Sameroff, 2009) was used to better understand the ongoing transactions between the

individual and the social context of the classroom.

First, the career-changers’ emerging teacher identities were adaptable and responsive to the challenging

workloads and expectations of classroom teaching. Like other aspiring teachers (see Furlong, 2013) they

arrived with idealistic views of what teaching would be like and articulated an anticipatory identity

around a broad notion of care. While the cohort enjoyed their initial classroom experiences, they also

reported a sense of ‘reality shock’ (Kim & Cho, 2014), in relation to the complexity and intensity of the

work of being a teacher. While some of the requirements of teaching (such as being organised and

flexible) had been anticipated, the multiple demands and the actual workload had been severely

underestimated by the group. It was evident from the transactions during the first semester classroom

experiences that the cohort needed to significantly adjust their understanding of the work of teachers and

their personal expectations of themselves. Yet, by the final field experience (four months later) most of

the group had normalised the intense demands of the workload. While this response may demonstrate the

successful navigation of the complex transactional-ecological demands of teaching, a commitment to the

profession, or indeed a dedication to completing the one-year teaching degree, the rapid adaptation to the

unexpected and intense demands should be viewed with some caution.

The cohort was initially surprised by the intense daily demands of teaching and the one-year program

allows them only two formal classroom experiences to develop their teaching practice and adjust to these

workload requirements. It is well acknowledged that the workload intensifies for beginning teachers in

their first years of practice (Price & McCallum, 2015). While this cohort seems to have swiftly

normalised complex workload during discrete periods of practicum, successfully managing these may

become an issue as ongoing and continuous demands increase. Excessive workloads for teachers have

been linked to disenchantment (Kelchtermans, 2006), burnout (Day & Gu, 2014) and early attrition from

the profession (Watt & Richardson, 2013). An associated concern is that this cohort is heavily invested in

teaching as caring work, and it will be critical that they learn to balance the energy they invest into caring

for others with developing adequate and ongoing self-care strategies (Zembylas, Bozalek & Shefer,

2014). While some participants explicitly discussed how they attempted to ensure self-care during

practicum, many more identified this as an area that they struggled with especially as they were already

juggling other commitments such as family and child rearing responsibilities. Therefore, while the level

of flexibility and adaptation in regards to their teacher identity is impressive, we question that maintaining

continuously intensive workloads will be sustainable for many of the participants.

Second, the career-changers were agentic in self-activating resilience strategies when faced with

challenging circumstances. To illustrate this we draw attention to how the cohort responded to the

support offered (or not) by supervising teachers. Supportive supervising teachers gave regular and

consistent feedback, guided planning and resourcing and facilitated extended professional networks

within the school community. They were discussed as positive resources for both teacher identity and

teacher resilience which supports current literature (Keogh, Garvis, Pendergast, & Diamond, 2012). An

unexpected story emerged from the career-changers who were paired with unsupportive supervising

teachers. The career-changers’ response to the lack of support was to draw deeply on their individual

motivations to become a teacher and rely on their own self-belief in regards to their teaching skills and

capacity. While this group turned to family, friends and peers for emotional support, they demonstrated a

robust sense of self which has been discussed as a requirement for ongoing teacher identity and resilience

(Le Cornu, 2013). This group was clearly proactive in self-initiating coping strategies through support

networks beyond the schooling context and through this, demonstrated deep commitment and passion for

teaching. These positive dispositions are critical to teacher resilience and intentions to remain in the

profession (Le Cornu, 2013). While a toxic work environment may hinder the ability to call on

colleagues for support (Day & Gu, 2014), it does challenge an individual’s capacity to form supportive

and resilience building relationships in spite of these conditions (Jordan, 2006).

This research highlights the well-developed individual resources that the successful career-changers had

access to as they navigated the initial classroom experiences. It was also evident that the career-changers

focussed on the broader systemic system only at two key points (prior to their classroom experiences and

at the end of the program when employment concerns dominated). While strong and trusting relationships

are central to teacher resilience (Mansfield et al., 2016), the classroom and school context offered

inconsistent resources and support for these participants. However, this cohort’s substantial personal

resources assisted them to effectively reframe and adapt their developing teacher identity and self-activate

resilient behaviours during the classroom experiences. It is evident that there is a need for teacher

education programs and associated school communities to better support and differentiate for our career-

changers. Rather than treating all preservice teachers as inexperienced school leavers, there is a need to

acknowledge the experiences and unique skills the career-changers bring to the teaching profession and

ensure they are supported by empathetic supervising teachers. Currently the onus is on the individual

preservice teacher to advocate at a personal level. However, further consideration needs to be given to

how teacher education can better respond to the need of career-change preservice teachers and highlight

the positive impact these career-changers can have on the wider teaching profession. Research into

career-changers who remained in the teaching profession for three years indicates they are seeking both

acknowledgement of their expertise, support in improving their instructional skills and the development

of positive professional relationships in the situated system of the school context (Watters & Diezmann,

2015). Not all of these were evident even in the initial classroom experiences for these career-changers.

Conclusions and recommendations

This study used a transactional-ecological lens through which to explore the initial classroom experiences

of a cohort of career-changers transitioning to teaching via a one-year graduate entry teacher education

program. Shorter alternate programs have been criticised for the limited time that preservice teachers have

to develop their teacher identities and capacities for resilience. This is especially significant in the current

environment in which the complexity of teachers’ work has increased exponentially and teachers are

under enormous pressures as they attempt to manage increased bureaucratic responsibilities and high

levels of public scrutiny as well as meeting the demands of highly performative cultures (Hargreaves,

2010; Price & McCallum, 2015). Although limited to one cohort, this research contributes to developing a

deeper understanding of career-changers’ initial experiences in the classroom and of the impact on their

emerging teacher identities and resilience.

In this study, throughout their transactions with schools, the career-changers demonstrated highly agentic

behaviours about their own development as teachers with consistent evidence of adaptable teacher

identity and self-initiated resilient behaviours (Mansfield, et al., 2016). Both of these capabilities are

critical for all new teachers transitioning into the profession. It appears that this cohort had well-

developed capacities in these areas prior to enrolling in this program. However, we are uncertain how

long these capacities would be sustained especially if the career changers continued to meet intense and

unexpected challenges in their transition to teaching post-graduation.

In light of our findings, this chapter puts forward several recommendations for teacher education and

schooling contexts and for future research. First, while we have reiterated that teaching is a caring

profession, both schooling and teacher education contexts appear to fall short in preparing preservice

teachers for the emotional demands of teaching and the ensuing requirement for ongoing and consistent

self-care. In particular, further exploration is needed of how teacher education programs could assist

preservice teachers to develop coping strategies to manage the tensions between working in a caring

profession while at the same time working in such a performative culture. Investigating how career-

changers can be better transitioned into and supported through teacher education programs is a critical

avenue for program development and for future research.

Like other researchers researching resilience (Mansfield et al., 2016) and utilising a transactional-

ecological framework, we would like to highlight that, while career-changers continue to be a growing

demographic in our graduate population, schooling and teacher education contexts appear to be

unresponsive to the diversity of backgrounds and experiences that career-changers bring to the profession.

Certainly, for this cohort of career-changers, there was a deafening silence in terms of any

acknowledgement and utilisation of their prior skills and expertise of in their transactions with both

contexts. Further consideration needs to be given to how teacher education and schooling contexts can

capitalise on the strengths that career changers bring to the profession and how self-care and teacher

wellbeing can be incorporated into an already crowded teacher education program.

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Table 1: Contextual and personal influences

System Positive Influences Negative Influences

Contextual A supportive host teacher Positive feedback Positive school culture Positive support from university staff Acknowledgement and support from school leadership

Mismatch between the classroom and the Grad Dip program. Managing diverse learning needs and student behaviours Lack of support, feedback or direction from host teacher

Personal Having the support of family and friends Self-care, eating well, exercise, sleep, and prayer

Managing the conflicting demands on time and energy.