John Buchanan

• University of Technology Sydney

This literature review examines strategies and sets out recommendations for recruiting, engaging and retaining experienced and qualified professionals working in STEM-related industries to teach in classrooms in NSW public schools. The review, prepared for the NSW Department of Education, forms part of a research project undertaken by UNSW’s Centre...

This paper reports on the findings of a research project which investigated how a sample of New South Wales government primary schools understand and implement the Australian Curriculum’s general capabilities. The project sought to identify specific factors which facilitated or hindered the degree to which primary school teachers implemented the GC...

This chapter examines career change teachers’ classroom teaching methods, examples of teaching practices and the type of knowledge they bring and share to improve student learning. It proceeds to question the extent to which and ways in which teachers draw upon their various skills and their ability to connect these skills and expertise suitably an...

Our education system, including schools, bears a critical responsibility in creating enabling conditions and opportunities so that staff from diverse backgrounds enter teaching, allowing students to be exposed to varying and rich experiences and to prepare them well for the future. This chapter will examine some of the requisite skills and attribut...

Career change individuals’ motivations for choosing teaching later in life are complex and personal. However, there is a common thread in their search and decisions to embark on a teaching career, which are often made with much reflective thought, purposeful inquiry and questioning. This chapter utilizes phenomenological inquiry to examine the tran...

People change careers for a variety of reasons. Career changers to the teaching profession are no different. This chapter explores career change teachers from the literature and studies that have been conducted so far, in terms of who they are, where they come from, what factors play a role in their career change decision, the attributes and charac...

This chapter begins by outlining in more depth the methodology that has guided the book. The rationale and significance of choosing phenomenology and interpretive inquiry to examine career change teachers' lives is discussed, providing the ground work for a deeper exploration in Chap. 7. The second part of the chapter introduces the four career cha...

This concluding chapter discusses recommendations for various stakeholders in the teaching profession, with an emphasis on practical strategies that can be implemented to attract, value and retain career changers. Based on previous research by the authors, the chapter points to the attributes that career changers are likely to bring to their pre-se...

This book tells the story of career changers in the teaching profession. Set in Australia, the book sheds light on why individuals switch to teaching and what unique experiences they bring to schools. It also examines the impediments career changers face, as well as the factors that facilitate their transition into teaching. The book offers hope an...

The chapter examines the complexity of the world for which we are preparing our school students, acknowledging some of the world's current problems that were raised earlier. This forms a basis for discussing implications for education in twenty-first Century schools and what this might mean for teacher recruitment and retention and the demands plac...

This chapter sets forth the landscape of school education and classrooms of today. It presents an overview of current issues governing the provision of teacher workforce, focusing on Australia. More specifically, it explores the problematics of the attractiveness of teaching from the viewpoint of those in other professions. In doing so, it looks in...

Career change student teachers (CCSTs) enter teacher education programs with different needs, capabilities and aspirations from those of their school-leaver counterparts. This chapter seeks to understand how they navigate the journey of being a student teacher, particularly during professional experience. The reader will be able to glean the charac...

Career change teachers with STEM expertise can bring unique insights into the classroom. In this chapter, based on a study jointly conducted in the Netherlands and Australia, the contributions and expertise that career change teachers with STEM backgrounds bring to the classroom and the broader implications for attracting this cohort in education a...

This book examines the lives and contributions of career change teachers: individuals who have switched careers to become classroom teachers. Their leadership experiences, industry connections, ways of embedding real world applications in classroom teaching practices and diverse skills sets are investigated in the context of their contributions to...

Career change student teachers enter teacher education programmes with different needs, capabilities and aspirations from those of their school-leaver counterparts. These differences come into stark contrast during professional experience, when student teachers spend extensive periods in schools as part of their teacher education programme. This ar...

Career changers form a substantial proportion of teacher education (TE) students. They bring a broader set of life and work experiences than do their younger, school-leaving counterparts. This paper investigates the needs and concerns of career change student teachers (CCSTs) in Australia. The study on which this article reports analysed survey dat...

In 1945 Japan had to adjust very rapidly to sudden defeat, to the arrival of the American Occupation and to the encounter with the English language, together with a different outlook on many aspects of society and government. This scholarly book is based on in-depth interviews with people, now aged, who were school students at the time of the Occup...

Teaching students about global citizenship remains a critical challenge for schools and communities, especially in a developed country like Australia. With increasingly difficult national and international contexts and its marginal place in the school curriculum, there is an urgent need to help maintain support for global citizenship education. Rec...

As members of a global community, we cohabit a metaphorically shrinking physical environment, and are increasingly connected one to another, and to the world, by ties of culture, economics, politics, communication and the like. Education is an essential component in addressing inequalities and injustices concerning global rights and responsibilitie...

The article reports on career change student-teachers’ (CCSTs) views and experiences regarding their teacher education programs in Australia. Data were collected through an online survey distributed to universities for dissemination to enrolled CCSTs in teacher education programs. The responses from over 500 CCSTs were analysed using an interpretiv...

The task of supporting beginning teachers has received considerable attention in recent years, and numerous initiatives have been implemented. In this article we investigate the experiences of early career teachers (ECTs) in New South Wales, Australia, at a time when their employing authority mandated the provision of mentors and a reduction in fac...

International mobility programmes and opportunities have enthusiastically been embraced by universities as part of a growing demand for graduates with global, international and intercultural capital on the part of graduates. In this project, we take two universities, one Australian and one Indonesian, as illustrative case studies of some of the com...

In a world where we are being confronted with seemingly ever more distressing images of our inability or unwillingness to exercise and extend our humanity to one another, this paper discusses global development aid, and how education, and, more specifically, syllabus and policy documents, can contribute to a more informed and empathic response to p...

The mandate for living sustainably is becoming increasingly urgent. This article reports on the Climate Clever Energy Savers (CCES) Program, a student-centred, problem- and project-based program in New South Wales, Australia, aimed at enabling school students to identify ways of reducing their schools’ electricity consumption and costs. As part of...

Using a discrete choice experimental approach and associated Scale-Adjusted Latent Class Model (SALCM), we quantify the relative value early career teachers (ECTs) place on various types of support in the form of affirmation, resources, collegial opportunities, mentoring, and professional development. ECTs with intentions to depart the profession,...

The place of education for and about human rights within the school curriculum remains contested and this paper reports on the first national crosssectoral investigation of its place in Australian curricula and more specifically in national and state History curriculum documents. Opportunities for the inclusion of human rights based studies were ex...

This chapter reports on an external evaluation of a statewide Education for Sustainability program conducted in Australia. The Climate Clever Energy Savers Program, conducted by the NSW Department of Education and Communities, invited students in primary and secondary schools (from Years 3 to 10), to participate in projects with their teachers' sup...

Many countries report high attrition rates among beginning teachers. The literature cites many factors that influence a teacher's decision to remain in the profession. These include remuneration, workload, support, administration and parents. It is unclear, however, which factors matter most to teachers and, consequently, where best to direct limit...

The provision and maintenance of quality teachers is a matter of priority for the profession. Moreover, teacher attrition is costly to the profession, to the community and to those teachers who leave feeling disillusioned. There is a need to investigate the experiences of early career teachers to consider how these issues contribute to decisions ab...

Sustainability education competes for curricular space, both in schools and in teacher education. Opportunities and barriers for the inclusion of sustainability education in an Australian university primary teacher education program are examined in this article. The study focused on the roles, practices and perceptions of teacher educators in promo...

Teacher attrition is a cost to the community and, often, to the teachers concerned. One ready potential source of teachers is those having left the profession, particularly recently, and who may be willing to return. For this article, 22 former teachers were interviewed about their journey into and out of teaching. Understanding what made teachers...

In this conceptual paper we discuss the value of doubt in teacher education for ourselves and, by implication, more broadly. We develop an argument for the value of doubt in teacher education that grows out of the recognition of the complexity of teaching. We interrogate meanings of doubt in this context and debate the value of doubt and certainty....

This chapter brings to a close our exploration of stories from beginning teachers. We have been writing for two particular audiences, school leaders and teacher educators, but we hope this book also speaks to beginning teachers who are embarking on their careers in teaching. In this chapter, we revisit the perspectives offered in the preceding chap...

Digital environments are playing an increasing part in people’s lives. They provide a variety of experiences ranging from virtual worlds to simple avenues for communication. Young people often engage extensively with these technologies, and this engagement has implications for education and the ways in which young people learn. Furthermore, digital...

There has been a tendency to describe each generation in terms of how it differs from the previous generation that spawns it. Comparisons often portray more recent generations as somehow lacking the morality, diligence and intellectual capability of older generations. Much has been written about Generations X, Y and Z, their characteristics and edu...

The first years of teaching usually include an extended induction or probation period with varying degrees of support and accountability. At its conclusion, a teacher receives approval to enter the profession and continue a career as a teacher or, in a small minority of instances, is dismissed from employment or barred from the profession. Over the...

The new teacher faces countless professional challenges in the early years of a teaching career. Everything about the classroom is familiar, yet moving from the student’s to the teacher’s side of the desk makes everything strange. Three stories in this chapter shed light on the nature of these professional challenges and how beginning teachers resp...

Substitute teachers deserve a special place in any efforts to protect the profession against high rates of attrition and to protect individuals against a demoralising and embittered departure from the profession. This chapter focuses on some of the difficulties peculiar to substitute teachers and also touches on some of the flexibilities and afford...

This chapter introduces the book’s theme: the experiences of beginning teachers and how these can be read and understood. It situates the book in related literature and research, describing major issues reported recently. The chapter provides a rationale for studying and explaining beginning teachers’ experiences. While retention rates in many area...

This chapter describes the first months of teaching. It introduces relevant literature about these early days and then discusses the first months from the perspective of three beginning teachers. It traces their experiences from the days when they first visit their new schools to the end of the first term of their appointment. The accounts of these...

The chapter investigates understandings of mentoring in the literature. Stories with a mentoring theme are provided, both from the perspective of mentor and of novice teacher. The role of the mentor, and the way that support is requested, received or not available is the focus of these stories. The value of mentoring from the mentor’s perspective i...

This chapter explores the joys and frustrations of learning and mastering something new. The chapter draws on just one extended narrative of a beginning teacher who had to contend not just with the demands of teaching but also with life in a small community, stripped of the privacy and anonymity that protected him in the city. In some ways, this is...

This chapter investigates the onset of a teaching career in terms of an intercultural experience, with all the attendant opportunities for and barriers to learning for the beginning teacher. The chapter draws on a parallel between encountering a new culture and encountering a new language. The ‘grammar’ of a culture being encountered for the first...

The experiences of the first years of new teachers' professional lives are critical to their decisions about embracing or leaving the teaching profession. Writ large, these experiences have the potential to either underpin or undermine the growth and development of the teaching profession. This book offers a research-based account of beginning teac...

TEACHER ATTRITION COMES AT A PROFESSIONAL, social and individualcost. The seeds of professional contentment or discontent are potentially sown early in one's career. Of the considerableresearch into teacher attrition, and into the early years of teaching, little appears to have investigated the dual transitions into teaching, and out of teaching in...

Considerable research has been conducted into teacher retention. Less is known of ex-teachers' circumstances: salary, workload, working conditions, “job prestige”. For this study, telephone interviews were used to ask 21 ex-teachers about their journey from teaching, and views on their current working conditions by comparison. This paper focuses on...

Australia continues to develop as a multicultural society with levels of immigration increasing significantly over recent years as a result of government policies. More recently, the new period of financial turmoil, continuing threats from terrorism and environmental concerns, have all exacerbated the challenges of dealing with difference in our so...

Considerable research has been conducted into teacher retention and attrition (Huberman, 1989; Dinham, 1995; Ewing & Smith, 2002). Little is known, though, of the circumstances of ex-teachers, in terms of factors such as salary, workload, working conditions and 'job prestige'. For this paper, telephone interviews were conducted with 22 ex-teachers,...

Considerable research has been conducted into teacher retention. Substantially less is known, however, of the extent to which, and ways in which, teacher-borne skills, knowledge and expertise transfer to other occupations when teachers leave their profession. For this study, telephone interviews were conducted with 22 ex-teachers, asking what led t...

In this discussion paper we seek to challenge prevailing wisdoms in higher education regarding the value of measuring teaching quality, prescribing standards for professionalism and using student satisfaction as an indicator of teaching effectiveness. Drawing on the literature, we explore and probe four wisdoms in an attempt to identify and problem...

Universities in many western nations are experiencing increasing performance measures for academic accountability. This paper maps the pitted pathway that has led Australian universities from mentoring to monitoring and from performance enhancement to performance evaluation, and reviews implications for teaching and learning in higher education. We...

The paper discusses the value of peer observation followed by professional learning conversations for the professional development of teacher educators. The authors analyse their shared learning experiences and articulate what challenged them in these experiences. They discuss the ways in which their perceptions of this process differed or were sim...

Some entities, such as sport, can be measured in terms of higher, stronger, faster. With the arts, however, such as music, opinion may be more divided on whether they have improved, deteriorated, or simply changed in the past century or so. It seems to me that teaching has elements of both, with some constituent elements measurable and others not,...

The paper discusses the experiences, needs and concerns of newly appointed teachers in four separate studies conducted by UTS teacher educators over the years 1999-2006. Newly appointed teachers were invited to participate in an online support network in each of the studies. The studies were all small in scale, and allowed teachers to express their...