Is Teaching Less Challenging for Career Switchers? First and Second Career Teachers’ Appraisal of Professional Challenges and Their Intention to Leave Teaching

Abstract

Teacher attrition is a major problem in many countries. One possible and widely spread counter measure is to recruit persons from other occupational fields to become teachers. Although the existent literature suggests that second career teachers (SCT) have additional resources compared to first career teachers (FCT), empirical data are still scarce on whether SCT are able to transfer prior skills and knowledge into teaching, how this affects the way they deal with professional demands, as well as their intentions to stay in their new profession. On this basis, the present study explores whether FCT and SCT differ in how challenged they feel by typical professional demands associated with teaching, and in what way their challenge appraisals are relevant for the intention to leave the profession. A questionnaire survey was conducted with a sample of 297 teachers, comprising 193 FCT and 104 SCT. Both groups had had regular teacher training, resulting in a full teacher diploma. Professional demands associated with student learning and assessment were rated as most challenging, whereas classroom management, establishing a professional role and cooperation with colleagues were perceived as less challenging. A group difference was found in professional demands concerning student learning and assessment, where SCT felt less challenged than FCT. Also, SCT were more intent to stay in the teaching profession. Further analyses showed that both group differences are mainly attributable to the higher proportion of male teachers among SCT, as well as to their higher general self-efficacy beliefs. Both career background and the degree to which the teachers felt challenged in their job played a subordinate role for the intention to leave the teaching profession. The findings indicate that SCTs’ background as career switchers might be less important for coping with specific professional demands than the existent research literature implies. On the other hand, they indicate that SCT feel nearly as challenged when starting to teach as traditional teachers, and may have the same needs for good teacher induction.

Full text

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH
published: 22 January 2020
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.03067
Edited by:
Caterina Fiorilli,
LUMSA University, Italy
Reviewed by:
Katerina Georganta,
University of Macedonia, Greece
Laura Dal Corso,
University of Padua, Italy
*Correspondence:
Larissa Maria Troesch
larissa.troesch@phbern.ch
†These authors share first authorship
Specialty section:
This article was submitted to
Organizational Psychology,
a section of the journal
Frontiers in Psychology
Received: 06 June 2019
Accepted: 26 December 2019
Published: 22 January 2020
Citation:
Troesch LM and Bauer CE (2020)
Is Teaching Less Challenging
for Career Switchers? First
and Second Career Teachers’
Appraisal of Professional Challenges
and Their Intention to Leave Teaching.
Front. Psychol. 10:3067.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.03067
Is Teaching Less Challenging for
Career Switchers? First and Second
Career Teachers’ Appraisal of
Professional Challenges and Their
Intention to Leave Teaching
Larissa Maria Troesch*†and Catherine Eve Bauer†
Teachers Biography and Professionalization, Institute for Research, Development and Evaluation, Berne University
of Teacher Education, Bern, Switzerland
Teacher attrition is a major problem in many countries. One possible and widely
spread counter measure is to recruit persons from other occupational fields to become
teachers. Although the existent literature suggests that second career teachers (SCT)
have additional resources compared to first career teachers (FCT), empirical data are
still scarce on whether SCT are able to transfer prior skills and knowledge into teaching,
how this affects the way they deal with professional demands, as well as their intentions
to stay in their new profession. On this basis, the present study explores whether FCT
and SCT differ in how challenged they feel by typical professional demands associated
with teaching, and in what way their challenge appraisals are relevant for the intention
to leave the profession. A questionnaire survey was conducted with a sample of 297
teachers, comprising 193 FCT and 104 SCT. Both groups had had regular teacher
training, resulting in a full teacher diploma. Professional demands associated with
student learning and assessment were rated as most challenging, whereas classroom
management, establishing a professional role and cooperation with colleagues were
perceived as less challenging. A group difference was found in professional demands
concerning student learning and assessment, where SCT felt less challenged than
FCT. Also, SCT were more intent to stay in the teaching profession. Further analyses
showed that both group differences are mainly attributable to the higher proportion of
male teachers among SCT, as well as to their higher general self-efficacy beliefs. Both
career background and the degree to which the teachers felt challenged in their job
played a subordinate role for the intention to leave the teaching profession. The findings
indicate that SCTs’ background as career switchers might be less important for coping
with specific professional demands than the existent research literature implies. On the
other hand, they indicate that SCT feel nearly as challenged when starting to teach as
traditional teachers, and may have the same needs for good teacher induction.
Keywords: second career teachers, professional challenges, job demands, teacher attrition, intention to leave
the profession
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Troesch and Bauer Professional Demands in Teachers
INTRODUCTION
Teaching is considered a highly demanding occupation, as it
involves a broad range of job demands that call for multifaceted
skills and a high degree of flexibility (e.g., Frey, 2014;Keller-
Schneider et al., 2018). While student learning and achievement
is often seen as a teacher’s core business, being a teacher
involves many other sometimes underestimated tasks such as
school development, cooperation within and outside the school,
or administrative tasks (Danielson, 2013;Frey, 2014). These
professional tasks and related professional demands are potential
stressors as defined by the transactional stress theory (Lazarus
and Folkman, 1984). Teacher stress is widely recognized as
a primary factor in causing low job wellbeing (Skaalvik and
Skaalvik, 2015) as well as turnover and attrition (McCarthy et al.,
2016). General protective and risk factors for teacher attrition
have been well documented (cf. Kyriacou, 2001;Montgomery
and Rupp, 2005;Borman and Dowling, 2008;Schaefer, 2013),
and in the last decade, research on the association between the
perception of selected job demands and the intention to quit
teaching has been intensified as well (Skaalvik and Skaalvik,
2011, 2018). These questions are of particular interest also
for second career teachers (SCT). In contrast to first career
teachers (FCT), who pursue teaching as a first career after
completing their high school diploma, SCT have completed
at least one professional training prior to becoming teachers.
In many countries, considerable resources are being invested
in the recruitment and training of SCT, often as a measure
to compensate for teacher shortages; yet, there is only scarce
information concerning SCTs’ ability to cope with the demands
of their new profession, and their long-term engagement in
teaching. The existent literature implies that SCT bring skills and
resources into the teaching profession that are highly relevant
for coping with teachers’ professional demands (e.g., Tigchelaar
et al., 2010). But do SCT actually appraise professional demands
differently from FCT, and in what way are their appraisals
connected to their intentions to stay in the profession or leave
teaching again? The present article explores these questions.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Professional Demands as Challenges
Job demands are defined as the physical, social, or organizational
aspects of an individual’s work activities that require effort
and are thus associated with physiological and/or psychological
costs (Demerouti and Bakker, 2011). This definition includes
both general demands that are not bound to a particular
profession, i.e., demands that can occur in every job, such as work
overload or interpersonal conflict, as well as profession-specific
demands (hereafter referred to as “professional demands”),
i.e., the requirement to cope with the profession’s typical
work tasks, calling for specific resources in the form of
professional knowledge and skills. Teaching-related professional
demands require teachers to activate a broad range of adequate
resources; this can lead to feelings of stress, especially in early
career teachers (Voss and Kunter, 2019). On the other hand,
professional demands can be important sources of professional
development, as the gap between situational requirements
and an individual’s resources, if not too wide, fosters the
acquisition of new skills and resources (Keller-Schneider et al.,
2018). Other than the exposure to general job demands such
as work conflict, the mastery of professional demands that
are specific to the teaching profession – demands related to
classroom management or parent conferences, for instance –
will inevitably contribute to the expansion or consolidation of
a teacher’s professional competencies. In this sense, teaching-
related professional demands always imply a potential gain in the
form of professional growth and personal achievement, making
them challenges in the sense of the transactional stress model by
Lazarus and Folkman (1984) or, as LePine et al. (2005) suggest,
challenge stressors as opposed to hindrance stressors.
The transactional stress model (Lazarus and Folkman,
1984) puts appraisals at the heart of the stress process
and considers the individual’s personal resources. The model
explains feelings of stress as the product of a complex
and highly subjective transaction between situational demands
and individual resources that involves two major appraisal
processes: Primary appraisal, evaluating a given situation as
either irrelevant, positive or stressful, and secondary appraisal,
evaluating coping options and resources. The primary appraisal
process leads to stressful appraisals if the situation’s demands
tax or exceed the individual’s resources. A stressful appraisal
can occur in the form of harm or loss, if some sort of physical
or emotional damage has already occurred; in the form of
threat, if the situation exceeds the person’s resources, and bears
the potential of future damage; or in the form of challenge,
if the situation, although taxing the person’s resources, bears
the potential of success and an expansion of resources. The
boundaries between the three forms of stressors are fluid: e.g.,
a challenge, albeit potentially positive, can turn into a negative
stressor if the second appraisal exposes the available resources
as insufficient.
Of the three suggested stressors, challenge has probably been
the least studied so far. As Smith and Kirby (2011) point
out, the transactional model’s definition of stress has often
been interpreted rather restrictively, limiting its occurrence to
situations in which the demands clearly exceed the resources,
precluding challenge-related forms of stress. This interpretation
disregards the crucial role of appraisal in the stress process,
and the fact that an individual’s assessment of a situation as
either threatening or challenging is context-dependent. Indeed,
current stress research – particularly the widely used job
demands-resources framework – regards job demands primarily
as negative stressors, and considers appraisal processes rather
rarely (e.g., Bakker and Demerouti, 2017). Yet, some authors
have chosen a different approach. As mentioned above, LePine
and colleagues suggest a differentiation between hindrance
and challenge job demands (LePine et al., 2005), defining
hindrance job demands as negative stressors that interfere with an
individual’s goals, and challenge job demands as positive stressors
that can promote growth and achievement. Empirical findings
corroborate this approach: As predicted by the transactional
model, challenge appraisals mediate the relationship between
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Troesch and Bauer Professional Demands in Teachers
stressors and outcomes such as job satisfaction or turnover
intentions (Webster et al., 2011;Searle and Auton, 2014), but are
fluid in the sense that stressors can be simultaneously appraised
as both a challenge and hindrance (Webster et al., 2011). These
studies provide evidence that challenge appraisals might be an
important link in the relationship between job demands and
work outcomes such as feelings of stress or turnover intention.
In order to look at teachers’ challenge appraisals and their role
for turnover intentions, it is necessary to first establish what
professional demands are specific to the teaching profession.
Teachers’ Professional Demands
Many international studies have identified a wide range of teacher
job demands over the past decades (e.g., Kyriacou, 2001;Gu
and Day, 2007;Keller-Schneider, 2014). Among the profession-
specific demands that are perceived as most challenging are
discipline problems, low student motivation, ill-defined roles
between members of the teaching staff, difficulties in teamwork
and great diversity of the student body (Hakanen et al., 2006;
Keller-Schneider, 2010;Skaalvik and Skaalvik, 2018). In the first
few years of their careers in particular, mastering job-related
tasks places high demands on teachers (Keller-Schneider, 2014).
In order to be able to examine the ways how teachers appraise
specific professional demands and the way they match their
professional skills, Keller-Schneider developed an empirically
grounded model of the perception of professional demands
(Keller-Schneider, 2008;Keller-Schneider et al., 2018). Based on
interviews with school teachers and supervisors, and pursuing
a factor analytic approach, Keller-Schneider found that the
professional demands teachers experience in their daily work can
be allocated to four major domains (Keller-Schneider et al., 2018):
-Teaching to Meet Individual Students’ Needs
(“Teaching”): Tasks and demands that are directly linked
to student learning and assessment, i.e., the need to choose
instructional approaches and methods that cover a wide
range of student abilities, interests, and individual needs,
including assessment and cooperation with parents.
-Professional Role and Identity (“Professional Role”): Tasks
and demands related to the need to develop a professional
identity, and to establish performance standards for the
individual teacher’s own work.
-Adaptive Classroom Management (“Classroom
Management”): Tasks and demands associated with
the need to find effective ways to lead and guide student
groups and to establish engaging and healthy learning
environments, including lesson structuring and handling
of group dynamics.
-Co-constructive Cooperation Within the School
(“Cooperation”): Tasks and demands linked to a teacher’s
interactions and functions as professional member of
the school community, including collaboration with
colleagues, school principals, and other professionals in
the school system.
Following the transactional stress model outlined above,
Keller-Schneider’s approach suggests that it is not a professional
demand per se, but the affected person’s subjective appraisal
that is crucial for the individual stress response. An empirical
evaluation of the model showed that of these professional
demands, cooperation was appraised as the least challenging
by beginning teachers, whereas teaching, professional role and
identity and adaptive classroom management were rated as
more challenging (Keller-Schneider et al., 2018). To what extent
teachers felt challenged varied with their career phase: Beginning
teachers felt more challenged by the demand to establish their
professional role and identity as a teacher, but less challenged
by cooperation tasks than more experienced teachers, suggesting
that they perceived cooperation with their colleagues more as a
resource than a challenge.
The Role of Professional Demands for
Teacher Attrition
Teachers often do not remain in the teaching profession for their
entire working life. International findings on teacher attrition and
retention are difficult to compare because they often measure
different things. However, there is agreement that many countries
are struggling to train and retain a sufficient number of qualified
teachers, and that the rate of leaving is particularly high among
young teachers (e.g., OECD, 2005;Clandinin et al., 2015).
The significance of work-related demands for teacher attrition
becomes clear in surveys on the reasons for leaving the
profession: Among the most frequently mentioned reasons
for attrition are high demands and job stress in general,
work overload, the desire for better career options, family
responsibilities and lack of administrative support (Kersaint et al.,
2007;Druschke and Seibt, 2016). Skaalvik and Skaalvik have
shown that workload and time pressure are among the job
demands that are most strongly related to the intention to leave
teaching, mediated by low job well-being (Skaalvik and Skaalvik,
2011, 2018). These findings highlight the impact of general job
demands for teacher attrition. Yet, they explain little whether
the many professional demands that are specific to the teaching
profession contribute differently to the intention to leave teaching
again. Is stress related to classroom management more influential
than stress related to cooperation, for instance?
This is a complex question since, as explained above, work-
related demands can be hindrance stressors and challenge
stressors at the same time (Webster et al., 2011). The teaching
profession indeed has the reputation of being both highly
demanding and highly rewarding (Johnson and Birkeland, 2003;
Skaalvik and Skaalvik, 2015). Teachers’ challenge appraisals
might be a crucial factor to explain this supposed discrepancy,
and how it is related to teacher attrition, as professional
challenges imply potential rewards on the one hand, but are on
the other hand a form of stress in the sense of the transactional
model (LePine et al., 2005). Teachers’ appraisals of work-
related demands are influenced by personal resources such as
professional skills, self-efficacy beliefs, goals and expectations
(Kyriacou and Sutcliffe, 1978;Rudow, 1999;Troesch and Bauer,
2017a), and in turn have an influence on job-wellbeing and
eventually the intention to stay in the profession (Skaalvik
and Skaalvik, 2011). The relevance of personal resources
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for the appraisal process indicates that teachers’ individual
biographies might have a substantial impact on how they
perceive professional challenges, and whether they intend to
stay in teaching. A newer discourse, framing teacher attrition
as an identity-making process, points into a similar direction
(Schaefer et al., 2012). Emphasizing the significance of personal
goals and experiences, these authors argue that leaving the
profession can be a deliberate life-making process if teachers
are strongly challenged by their professional role and identity,
and experience a frustrating discrepancy between their original
images of what kind of a teacher they wanted to be, and their
actual experience as teachers.
Against this background, we suggest that a focus on teachers’
biographies is important to gain a deeper understanding of how
challenging specific professional demands are for different groups
of teachers, and how challenge appraisals are connected to the
intention to stay in the profession, or to leave teaching again.
Second Career Teachers (SCT):
Characteristics and Resources
In the last decades, the development of alternative routes into
teaching has expanded considerably in many countries, often
combining academic curricula with work-place learning in order
to efficiently qualify professionals for the teaching profession
(e.g., Tigchelaar et al., 2010;Marinell and Johnson, 2014). As
a measure to compensate for teacher shortages, these programs
offer a way to expand the workforce by tapping a pool of
professionals from other fields. As conditions, standards and
training modalities for career changers vary widely between
countries and even universities, SCT are a very heterogeneous
group of teachers in terms of age, prior educational and
professional background, and duration as well as content of
teacher training. Yet, there are few common characteristics that
will be addressed in the following paragraphs.
Life Experience and Professional Expertise
Having completed at least one professional qualification prior
to switching to teaching, SCT are older than FCT, with the
consequence that they find themselves in a different phase of
their lives, and are more likely to have children of their own (e.g.,
Tigchelaar et al., 2010;Troesch and Bauer, 2017a). From a career
development perspective, SCT have at least once experienced the
novice phase of career entry already, and reached a certain level
of expertise in another domain, making them “expert novices”
when entering the teaching profession (Williams, 2013). Yet,
despite the widespread practice of recruiting professionals to
become teachers, it is not clear whether SCT are actually able
to benefit from their prior training and work experience when
having to deal with teacher professional demands. Findings
of expertise research generally emphasize that expertise is
domain-specific and not easily transferable (Gruber and Mandl,
1996). The accumulation of work and life experiences does not
automatically lead to better teaching skills, but can only translate
into a professional repertoire if reflected upon and purposefully
implemented in the classroom (Freidus and Krasnow, 1991;
Mayotte, 2003). Established knowledge and routines can even
interfere with professional development in the new profession
(Bauer et al., 2017).
Biographical Agency and Self-Efficacy
It is a basic assumption of life-course research that important
personal resources, such as work-related knowledge and control
beliefs, are not only shaped by curricular approaches, but
also by the individual occupational biography (Moen, 2003;
Heinz et al., 2004). Life-course transitions such as career entry
and development, including career changes, can be understood
as processes of self-socialization, built upon the dynamics of
individual agency in varying social contexts over time, when
individuals tackle challenges, pursue their aspirations and try to
cope with disappointment by selecting pathways and solutions
that they perceive as promising. In the context of these processes,
experiences related to work options and conditions are translated
into biographical action orientations, which are part of a strategic
adaptation in order to regain a sense of control, identity and
contingence, and which shape further decision-making.
Sense of control is an important personal resource that is
associated with a higher chance to move into other occupations
or reentering the educational system (Moen, 2003). Starting from
this premise, it should be assumed that SCT do not only have a
headstart concerning age, but also concerning their biographical
agency, and ultimately their control beliefs. Research on SCTs’
self-efficacy beliefs corroborates this theoretical assumption.
Indeed, SCT have been shown to have self-efficacy beliefs
above average compared to teachers in general (Weinmann-Lutz
et al., 2006). Self-efficacy beliefs are defined as an individual’s
conviction about his or her capabilities to accomplish a task when
faced with a challenge (Bandura, 1997). Mastery experiences are
thought to be one of the most important sources of self-efficacy
beliefs. Our own data corroborate that self-efficacy beliefs are
higher in SCT than in FCT, but also suggest that they have a
higher impact on job stress in SCT (Troesch and Bauer, 2017a),
making self-efficacy a crucial control variable in the investigation
of professional demands and work outcomes in SCT.
Other Characteristics
Other studies suggest that there are even more desirable
qualifications and skills associated with career change into
teaching, such as pronounced intrinsic motivations to teach
(Williams and Forgasz, 2009;Zuzovsky and Donitsa-Schmidt,
2014), high empathy and communication skills (Freidus and
Krasnow, 1991), and a great interest in further education and
professional development (Weinmann-Lutz et al., 2006; for an
overview, see Tigchelaar et al., 2010). On these grounds, it
seems safe to assume that SCT bring additional resources into
the teaching profession that might facilitate the ability to cope
with professional demands, leading to less teacher stress in
SCT compared to FCT. Up to now, there is only very limited
research concerning this assumption. Keller-Schneider et al.
(2016) found no significant differences between SCT and FCT
regarding the extent to which they felt challenged by typical
professional demands. However, the SCT in Keller-Schneider’s
study alternatively certified; it seems plausible that potential
benefits of prior career experiences had been outweighed by the
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shortened teacher training. Our own data revealed no significant
differences between SCT and FCT concerning job stress either,
but SCT were more satisfied with their jobs than FCT (Troesch
and Bauer, 2017a).
Concerning SCTs’ long-term retention in the teaching
profession, the scarce empirical data is conflicting: While some
authors suggest that SCT might be particularly prone to switching
jobs or even careers again if working conditions do not meet
their standards (Johnson and Birkeland, 2003), other studies
show higher intentions to leave the profession in FCT than SCT
(Troesch and Bauer, 2017b) or no group differences at all (Boyd
et al., 2011a;Kocher et al., 2019). The inconsistent nature of
these findings might be due to the heterogeneous samples of SCT
involved in the different studies, particularly concerning their
prior careers and qualifications, but also their qualifications as
teachers. Moreover, there is evidence that the nature of teacher
training as well as the previous educational background has an
influence on retention (Zuzovsky and Donitsa-Schmidt, 2017). In
order to learn more about whether a previous career background
per se has any influence on teacher attrition, it would be necessary
to compare SCT and FCT with an identical or similar teacher
training background.
Research Questions
The literature reviewed above shows that due to their career
pathways, SCT might have knowledge and resources that
facilitate the mastery of professional demands, and reduce
attrition from teaching (Tigchelaar et al., 2010). However, there
is little empirical data concerning SCTs’ actual appraisal of
professional demands and how they influence their turnover
intentions. Drawing on the transactional stress model (Lazarus
and Folkman, 1984), professional demands can be conceptualized
as challenges, i.e., a type of stressor that can have positive
consequences in terms of personal and professional growth, but
that can turn into a negative stressor if the challenge is too
high and exceeding the individual’s resources. As work-related
demands and feelings of stress are strong predictors for attrition,
it can be assumed that teachers’ challenge appraisals of their
daily professional tasks are an important influencing factor for
their intentions to stay in the profession. However, it is unclear
whether SCT and FCT react differently to the specific demands
in the teacher profession, and whether different professional
demands have a different impact on the intention to leave the
profession. In order to address these issues, the present study
addresses the following research questions:
1. Challenge appraisals: Do SCT and FCT differ regarding
how challenged they feel by typical professional demands?
2. Intention to leave teaching: Do SCT and FCT differ
regarding their intentions to leave the teaching profession?
3. Relationship between challenge appraisals and intention to
leave the profession:
a. Does the relationship between challenge appraisals
and intention to leave vary for different professional
demands?
b. Do SCT and FCT differ regarding the relationship
between challenge appraisals and intention to leave?
MATERIALS AND METHODS
Participants
The data are based on the project “Professionals as Teachers,”
a Swiss research project investigating first and SCT’ job well-
being and retention (Bauer and Hostettler, 2012;Troesch
and Bauer, 2017a). All teachers belonging to the 2004–2007
graduation cohorts of the Berne University of Teacher Education
(Switzerland) were contacted by questionnaire (912 persons)
7–10 years after graduation, of which 400 took part in the
study. The aim of the present study was to examine challenge
appraisals in the teaching profession. This appraisal requires
current experience in teaching. Therefore, the present analyses
do not include persons who were not working as teachers at
the time of the survey. This led to a sub-sample of 297 persons
who were still working in the teaching profession at that time
(average age = 34.21; SD = 6.54; 229 women). Participants who
had completed a prior vocational training before entering teacher
training, and had thus pursued a prior career, were allocated to
the SCT group; this definition applied to 104 persons. Participants
who had completed teacher training as a first vocational training
were allocated to the FCT group; this definition applied to 193
participants. Although most SCT had entered teacher training via
a specific admission for SCT, including a preparatory course and
entrance exam, all participants had completed regular teacher
training either for kindergarten, primary or secondary education.
In the SCT group, the average amount of work experience in their
previous career was 7.14 years (SD = 7.87). Approximately one
third of the SCT had worked in administrative professions prior
to teacher training; in the other two thirds, most had had prior
careers in health and craft occupations. Sample descriptives are
shown in Tables 1,2.
Instruments
Challenge Appraisal of Professional Demands
The appraisal of challenge when confronted with specific
professional demands were measured using the short scale of
Keller-Schneiders’ Professional Requirement Scales (EABest-k;
Keller-Schneider, 2010, 2014). For this purpose, the respondents
were asked to assess 25 typical teacher professional demands
regarding the extent to which they perceived them as challenging
(“beanspruchend”; 1 = little to 6 = very much). The full scale is
available in Supplementary Material 1. To analyze the structure
of the typical professional demands, Keller-Schneider (2010)
conducted a factor analysis revealing four factors: teaching
to meet individual students’ needs (hereafter referred to as
“teaching”; 8 items, e.g., “implement individualized instruction
in the classroom”), adaptive classroom management (hereafter
referred to as “classroom management”; 6 items, e.g., “Be aware
of and lead classroom dynamics”), cooperation within the school
(hereafter referred to as “cooperation”; 4 items, e.g., “develop a
successful cooperation with the principle”) and professional role
and identity (hereafter referred to as “professional role”; 7 items,
e.g., “taking care of ongoing development”). The mean value of
the corresponding items was used to form the subscales. The
internal consistencies of the subscales of the present study can
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TABLE 1 | Descriptive statistics of study variables.
Variable Min Max Total sample SCT FCT Group comparison1
M (%) SD M (%) SD M (%) SD t df p Hedge’s g
Percentage female 0 100 (77.10) −(62.50) −(84.97) −19.34 1 <0.001 −
Age 28 61 34.21 6.54 39.10 8.47 31.58 2.74 −8.79 115 <0.001 −1.37
Years experience 0 14 7.62 1.57 7.46 1.84 7.70 1.40 1.17 169 0.24 0.15
% Employment 0 110 73.00 25.56 74.02 24.21 72.45 26.30 −0.50 295 0.62 −0.06
Self-efficacy
General 10 40 31.09 3.67 31.67 3.64 30.78 3.66 −2.00 295 <0.05 −0.24
Teacher 10 40 30.63 3.41 30.96 3.57 30.45 3.31 −1.23 295 0.22 −0.15
Challenge appraisals of professional demands
Teaching 1 6 4.33 0.95 4.11 0.93 4.45 0.94 2.96 295 <0.01 0.36
Class. management 1 6 3.97 0.98 3.91 0.99 4.00 0.98 0.72 295 0.47 0.09
Cooperation 1 6 2.86 1.04 2.87 1.05 2.83 1.03 0.31 295 0.76 −0.04
Professional role 1 6 3.88 0.95 3.75 0.96 3.94 0.94 1.66 295 0.10 0.20
Intention to leave21 4 − − 134.672156.722− −2.27 −<0.05 0.13
SCT = second career teachers (n = 104); FCT = first career teachers (n = 193); M = Mean; Class. Management = classroom management. 1X2– statistics for nominal data
(percentage female); Independent Samples Mann–Whitney U-Test/z – statistics and r for ordinal data (intention to leave); 2Instead of means, mean ranks are reported,
median was 2 for the total sample, as well as for SCT and FCT; Analyses with imputed data.
TABLE 2 | Correlation of study variables.
Variable 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
(1) Gender −
(2) Age −0.17**
(3) Years experience −0.00 0.11
(4) % Employment −0.17** −0.02 −0.05
Self-efficacy
(5) General −0.01 0.04 0.00 0.17**
(6) Teacher −0.01 −0.01 −0.07 0.16** 0.50***
Challenge appraisals of professional demands
(7) Teaching 0.21*** −0.17** 0.07 0.03 −0.15** −0.11
(8) Class. management 0.09 0.01 0.03 −0.03 −0.19** −0.26*** 0.59***
(9) Cooperation 0.06 0.05 −0.01 0.03 −0.19** −0.18** 0.42*** 0.54***
(10) Professional role 0.05 −0.05 −0.01 0.05 −0.25*** −0.18** 0.61*** 0.69*** 0.57***
(11) Intention to leave −0.16** −0.03 0.08 −0.02 −0.20** −0.19** −0.06 −0.06 −0.03 −0.03
Gender: 0 = male, 1 = female; Class. Management = classroom management. Analyses with imputed data. N = 297. **p <0.01; ***p <0.001.
be classified as good with α= 0.84 for teaching, α= 0.82 for
classroom management, α= 0.73 for cooperation and α= 0.81
for professional role.
Intention to Leave the Profession
The intention to leave the teaching profession was measured
with a single question: “Can you imagine leaving teaching in the
foreseeable future?” Answering options were 1 = no, 2 = rather
no, 3 = rather yes, and 4 = yes. This means that a higher value
corresponds to a higher intention to leave.
General and Teacher Self-Efficacy
General self-efficacy was assessed with the respective instrument
by Schwarzer and Jerusalem (1999), and teacher self-efficacy
with the respective instrument by Schwarzer and Schmitz (1999).
Both scales contain 10 items which had to be rated on a scale
from 1 = absolutely do not agree to 4 = “I absolutely agree”
(Supplementary Material 1). Examples for general self-efficacy
are “If someone opposes me, I can find the means and ways to
get what I want” and “I can remain calm when facing difficulties
because I can rely on my coping abilities.” Examples of teacher
self-efficacy expectations are "I know that I can maintain a
positive relationship with parents, even when tensions arise"
and "I know that I can motivate my students to participate
in innovative projects." The internal consistencies of the scales
can be described as very good with α= 0.84 for general self-
efficacy and α= 0.74 for teacher self-efficacy. As recommended
by Schwarzer and Jerusalem (1999) and Schwarzer and Schmitz
(1999), all the item scores were summed up to form the total score
with a possible range of 10 to 40.
Analytic Approach
To test for research question 1, multivariate analyses were
calculated with the challenges by professional demands as
dependent variables and career path (SCT/FCT), age, gender,
number of years of teaching experience, degree of employment
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as a teacher in percent and self-efficacy (general and teacher self-
efficacy) as independent variables. For research questions 2 and
3a, an ordinal regression was calculated to intention to leave the
profession. In Model 1, the following independent variables were
introduced: age, gender, number of years of teaching experience,
degree of employment as a teacher in percent, career path
(SCT/FCT) and self-efficacy (general and teacher self-efficacy).
In Model 2, the challenge appraisals of the four professional
demands were introduced. For research question 3b, ordinal
regression analyses were calculated separately for SCT and FCT.
In Model 1, age, gender, number of years of teaching experience,
degree of employment as a teacher in percent and self-efficacy
(general and teacher self-efficacy) were used as independent
variables and intention to leave the profession as dependent
variable. In Model 2, challenge appraisals of the four professional
demands were added.
Missing Values
8.08% of the participants had missing on construct-level. One
possibility to deal with missing values is multiple imputation.
Multiple imputation is regarded as superior to the traditional
way of dealing with missing (listwise deletion; pairwise deletion;
Graham, 2009). To conduct multiple imputations, we followed
the recommendations by Graham et al. (2007) and Newman
(2014). Forty datasets were estimated.
RESULTS
Research Question 1: Group Differences
Regarding Challenge Appraisals
The descriptive analyses show that SCT reported the highest
challenges in relation to teaching tasks in the narrower sense,
which were appraised as rather challenging. Cooperation with
other professionals was appraised as the least challenging, with
classroom management and professional role ranging in between
(Table 1). As the repeated measures ANOVA1showed, SCT
rated teaching as significantly more challenging than cooperation
with other professionals (Mean Difference = 1.28, SE = 0.10,
p<0.001) and professional role (Mean Difference = 0.36,
SE = 0.08, p<0.001), but not more challenging than classroom
management (Mean Difference = 0.20, SE = 0.08, p= 0.10).
However, there was no significant difference in challenge
appraisals between classroom management and professional role
in SCT (Mean Difference = 0.16, SE = 0.07, p= 0.19). Cooperation
with other professionals was rated as less challenging than all
other job demands (all >0.001). A similar picture emerged for
FCT: teaching was rated as most challenging and significantly
more challenging than all other job demands (all >0.001). Also,
cooperation with other professionals was rated as less challenging
compared to all other job demands in FCT (all >0.001).
However, no significant difference was found between challenge
appraisals in classroom management and professional role (Mean
Difference = 0.06, SE = 0.06, p= 1.00). When analyzing the
total sample (SCT and FCT), the job demand teaching was
1Post hoc analyses; Bonferroni adjusted for multiple comparisons.
rated as most challenging and significantly more challenging than
all other job demands (all >0.001). Moreover, there was no
significant difference in challenge appraisals between classroom
management and professional role in the total sample (Mean
Difference = 0.09, SE = 0.05, p= 0.24). Cooperation with other
professionals was rated as less challenging than all other job
demands (all >0.001).
As t-tests revealed, significant group differences between
SCT and FCT were only found concerning teaching tasks,
where FCT felt significantly more challenged than SCT
(Table 1). No significant differences between SCT and FCT
were found concerning classroom management, cooperation and
professional role.
Multivariate analyses revealed that taking important variables
into account, the association between career path (SCT/FCT)
and challenge appraisals was not significant (F(4,286) = 0.23,
p= 0.92, η2partial = 0.00). When the challenge appraisals were
treated separately for different professional demands, career path
had no effect for any of them (all <0.05). However, general self-
efficacy (F(4,286) = 3.09, p<0.05, η2partial = 0.04) and teacher
self-efficacy (F(4,284) = 3.37, p<0.05, η2partial = 0.05) were
negatively related to challenge appraisals; gender was positively
related to challenge appraisals (F(4,286) = 3.33, p<0.05,
η2partial = 0.04). As illustrated in Table 2, gender was particularly
important for challenge appraisal in teaching, with women
feeling more challenged by teaching than men (F(1,289) = 11.24,
p<0.01, η2partial = 0.04). Age, years of experience and work-
time percentage as a teacher, on the other hand, had no significant
effect on challenge appraisals (all >0.05).
Research Question 2: Group Differences
Regarding Intentions to Leave Teaching
An Independent Samples Mann–Whitney U-Test revealed a
significant group difference: FCT showed higher intentions to
leave teaching compared to SCT (see Table 1). The group effect
is small, with both groups expressing a relatively high mean
intention to stay in the profession.
Taking important control variables into account, the difference
between SCT and FCT in intention to leave the profession
disappeared (Table 3). In the first ordinal regression analysis
(Model 1), gender as well as general and teacher self-efficacy
proved to be significant predictors of the intention to leave the
teaching profession. Men were more likely to consider leaving the
profession than women. Teachers with lower general and teacher
self-efficacy reported higher intentions to leave. Age, number
of years of teaching experience and degree of employment as
a teacher were not significant for the intention to leave the
profession. Model 1 explained 13% of the variance.
Research Question 3: Relationship
Between Challenge Appraisals and
Intention to Leave
Difference Between Professional Demands
As the correlational analyses reveal (Table 2), challenge appraisals
of the four different professional demands were not significantly
related to the intention to leave the profession. Moreover, the
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TABLE 3 | Ordinal regression analysis predicting intention to leave the teaching profession, total sample (N= 297).
Predictor Model 1 Model 2
B SE p OR B SE p OR
Gender −1.06 0.27 <0.001 2.88 −0.98 0.28 <0.001 2.66
Age −0.04 0.02 0.08 0.96 −0.04 0.02 0.07 0.96
Years experience 0.07 0.07 0.35 1.07 0.08 0.07 0.27 1.09
% Employment 0.00 0.00 0.87 1.00 −0.01 0.00 0.85 1.00
Career path −0.38 0.28 0.18 1.47 −0.38 0.28 0.19 1.46
Self-efficacy
General −0.07 0.03 <0.05 0.93 −0.07 0.04 0.06 0.94
Teacher −0.08 0.04 <0.05 0.92 −0.09 0.04 <0.05 0.91
Challenge appraisals of professional demands
Teaching −0.12 0.16 0.43 0.88
Class. management −0.26 0.17 0.12 0.77
Cooperation −0.04 0.13 0.75 0.96
Professional role 0.30 0.18 0.10 1.35
OR = Odds Ratio; Gender: 0 = male, 1 = female; Career path: 0 = first career teachers, 1 = second career teachers; Class. Management = classroom management.
Nagelkerke’s R2= 0.13 for Model 1; Nagelkerke’s R2= 0.15 for Model 2. Analyses with imputed data.
correlational coefficients were in a similar range (−0.03 until
−0.06) indicating that there were no differences in the relations
between feeling challenged by specific professional demands and
the intention to leave the profession.
This result was confirmed by the ordinal regression analysis:
As Model 2 shows (Table 3), none of the challenge appraisals
of professional demands reached statistical significance taking
important controls into account. Again, career path, age, number
of years of teaching experience and degree of employment as a
teacher were no significant predictors. Moreover, general self-
efficacy was not significantly related to intention to leave the
profession in Model 2. However, gender and teacher self-efficacy
emerged as relevant predictors. In Model 2, 15% of the variance
in intention to leave was explained.
Group Differences
In a next step, SCT and FCT were analyzed separately (Tables 4,
5). The challenge appraisals for the four professional demands
had no significant effect on intention to leave, neither for SCT
nor for FCT. In SCT, but not FCT, gender and general self-
efficacy played an important role for the intention to leave the
profession. In contrast, teacher self-efficacy played a significant
role for the intention to leave only in FCT. For both groups,
age, number of years of teaching experience and degree of
employment as a teacher were not significant for intention to
leave the profession, It is also noteworthy that the included
variables explained considerably more variance in the SCT than
the FCT group (Model 2: SCT: 29%; FCT: 10%).
DISCUSSION
Due to the increasing flexibilization of educational opportunities
and occupational biographies, as well as recurring teacher
shortages, SCT are a growing teacher group in many countries.
Policy makers who create programs to recruit and train SCT rely
heavily on the assumption that having had a previous career is
associated with transferable skills and knowledge, resulting in
alternative and often shortened training programs for SCT; but in
fact, empirical data corroborating this hypothesis are scarce (e.g.,
Marinell and Johnson, 2014). Findings from mainly qualitative,
small-scale studies suggest that SCT are indeed able to draw on
their prior work experience and knowledge in certain ways (for
an overview, see Tigchelaar et al., 2010). However, there is hardly
any data addressing the question whether these experiences can
be understood as an expanded set of resources that helps to cope
with specific professional demands in the teaching profession.
On this background, the present study aimed to investigate to
what extent second and FCT feel challenged by typical teacher
professional demands and in what way these challenge appraisals
influence the intention to stay in the teaching profession.
Do SCT Feel Less Challenged by
Teacher-Specific Professional Demands?
The answer to this question is complex: SCT do feel less
challenged, but only to a very limited degree, and it seems that
this difference is mainly attributable to SCTs’ personal resources
as well as to the gender distribution in this subgroup of teachers.
In line with earlier findings (Keller-Schneider et al., 2018),
professional demands directly related to student learning and
assessment are rated as most challenging compared to the
job demands classroom management, professional role and
cooperation with other professionals. This finding might be
attributable to the fact that teaching and student assessment
are often regarded as a teacher’s core business, and demand
a great amount of a teacher’s working hours. FCT felt more
challenged by these tasks than SCT, but further analyses showed
that this group difference vanishes when age, gender, years
of experience and work-time percentage as a teacher as well
as general and teacher self-efficacy are being controlled for.
Of these control variables, only gender and general as well
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TABLE 4 | Ordinal regression analysis predicting intention to leave the teaching profession, second career teachers (n= 104).
Predictor Model 1 Model 2
B SE p OR B SE p OR
Gender −1.68 0.41 <0.001 5.34 −1.57 0.43 <0.001 4.78
Age −0.05 0.02 0.06 0.96 −0.05 0.03 0.05 0.95
Years experience 0.05 0.11 0.63 1.06 0.05 0.11 0.62 1.06
% Employment 0.00 0.01 0.81 1.00 0.00 0.01 0.68 1.00
Self-efficacy
General −0.19 0.06 <0.01 0.83 −0.19 0.07 <0.01 0.83
Teacher −0.01 0.06 0.82 0.99 −0.02 0.07 0.75 0.98
Challenge appraisals of professional demands
Teaching −0.25 0.30 0.41 0.78
Class. management 0.04 0.37 0.90 1.04
Cooperation −0.20 0.25 0.41 0.82
Professional role 0.33 0.31 0.29 1.39
OR = Odds Ratio; Gender: 0 = male, 1 = female; Class. Management = classroom management. Nagelkerke’s R2= 0.27 for Model 1; Nagelkerke’s R2= 0.29 for Model
2. Analyses with imputed data.
TABLE 5 | Ordinal regression analysis predicting intention to leave the teaching profession, first career teachers (n= 193).
Predictor Model 1 Model 2
B SE p OR B SE p OR
Gender −0.38 0.38 0.34 1.46 −0.36 0.39 0.36 1.44
Age 0.08 0.06 0.15 1.08 0.07 0.06 0.19 1.08
Years experience 0.06 0.10 0.58 1.06 0.07 0.10 0.52 1.07
% Employment 0.00 0.01 0.79 1.00 0.00 0.01 0.84 1.00
Self-efficacy
General −0.02 0.04 0.71 0.98 −0.01 0.04 0.76 0.99
Teacher −0.12 0.05 <0.05 0.88 −0.14 0.05 <0.01 0.87
Challenge appraisals of professional demands
Teaching −0.01 0.19 0.89 0.99
Class. management −0.33 0.20 0.12 0.72
Cooperation −0.03 0.16 0.86 0.97
Professional role 0.36 0.39 0.23 1.32
OR = Odds Ratio; Gender: 0 = male, 1 = female; Class. Management = classroom management. Nagelkerke’s R2= 0.09 for Model 1; Nagelkerke’s R2= 0.10 for Model
2. Analyses with imputed data.
as teacher self-efficacy were significantly related to challenge
appraisals of professional demands. This leads us to two possible
interpretations: As the percentage of male teachers is higher
in SCT, and males tend to report lower levels of challenge in
teaching, the group difference regarding challenge appraisals
concerning teaching tasks might also be attributable to gender.
On the other hand, SCTs’ lower feelings of challenge might be
a consequence of their higher general self-efficacy beliefs. This
interpretation would be in line with the findings from life-course
research, suggesting that life-course transitions such as career
changes facilitate the development of a strong sense of control
(Heinz et al., 2004).
The finding that establishing a professional role as well as
cooperation with other professionals were perceived as equally
challenging by both groups, is to some extent surprising.
While occupation-specific skills and knowledge from prior
fields of work (e.g., in health or administration jobs) may
not be transferable to the teaching profession, cross-domain
skills should be. Work experiences usually include forms of
collaboration, as well as having to establish a flexible professional
role toward different interaction partners within the respective
work context, i.e., clients, supervisors, colleagues, etc. Moreover,
SCT have been shown to integrate more easily into the school
organization (Tigchelaar et al., 2008). Therefore, it would
have been plausible that establishing a professional role and
cooperation with other professionals are appraised as less
challenging by SCT. On the other hand, interview data from
the same study (Bauer et al., 2017) showed that SCT often
struggled with disappointments as they tended to have high
expectations regarding team work in their new profession, but
also high expectations regarding their own skills and abilities
to cope with professional demands. Teaching differs from many
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occupations – at least in Switzerland – in that teamwork is only
an emerging concept, and that there tend to be less guidelines
than in other occupational fields in terms of regular feedbacks
or performance standards; substantial differences that might
foster disappointments and disorientation in SCT. As SCT are
a growing teacher subgroup, it might be beneficial for future
research to look more closely into the conditions under which
SCTs’ prior work experiences can influence the resources that
help to establish a professional role as a teacher, as well as
cooperation with other professionals in the school environment.
Do SCT and FCT Differ Regarding Their
Intentions to Leave the Profession?
Similar to the results concerning challenge appraisals, our
findings show that FCT had higher intentions to leave the
teaching profession than SCT, and that this group difference
could be attributed mainly to gender and personal resources, as
the group difference between FCT and SCT vanished after taking
these control variables into account.
Self-efficacy and gender emerged as relevant predictors for the
intention to leave the profession. However, the importance of
these predictors differed for SCT and FCT: Among SCT, but not
FCT, men were more open toward leaving the profession than
women. At the same time, teacher self-efficacy was negatively
related to the intention to leave in FCT, but not SCT. The
importance of self-efficacy beliefs in the workplace for teacher
retention has been shown in many studies (for an overview,
see Chambers Mack et al., 2019). Our findings corroborate
these results, with the addition that for SCT, general self-efficacy
is more important regarding their intentions to stay teachers,
while for FCT, teacher-related self-efficacy seems to be more
relevant. One possible explanation for this finding is that SCTs’
cumulative work experiences are reflected in their general self-
efficacy rather than their teacher-related self-efficacy, and that
their higher general self-efficacy beliefs compensate for possible
weaknesses they feel regarding their efficacy as teachers. However,
it might also be attributable to a selective drop-out: teachers
with limited resources are likely to have left teaching long ago,
resulting in them having been excluded from these analyses that
included active teachers only. Thus, it is possible that the rate
of teachers who have already left teaching is different for SCT
or FCT. In order to investigate the connections between career
path, personal resources, feelings of challenge and the intention
to leave the profession more thoroughly, a longitudinal study
would be needed.
On first glance, it might be surprising that gender has an
impact on the intention to leave only in SCT, as earlier studies
have shown a higher interest in professional development for
male teachers in general (Borman and Dowling, 2008). But while
one explanation lies in the higher proportion of males in SCT,
it is also highly plausible that this effect has to do with different
life phases: With a mean age of 40 for SCT and 32 for FCT,
FCT matched the life phase between 30 and 35 when female
Swiss teachers show a distinct rise in attrition from teaching due
to family reasons (SKBF, 2014), leveling the difference between
males and females in this subgroup.
The relationship between work experience prior to teaching
and intention to leave the profession has rarely been studied,
and the findings are inconsistent. On the one hand, a higher age
when entering teaching is associated with a higher probability
of remaining in the profession (Borman and Dowling, 2008).
Because SCT are usually older than FCT, this might indicate that
SCT are more prone to remain in the teaching profession. In
addition, career changers have particularly strong motivations to
teach (Zuzovsky and Donitsa-Schmidt, 2014), which in turn is an
important predictor of career retention (Watt et al., 2014). On
the other hand, SCT have higher general self-efficacy (Troesch
and Bauer, 2017a), which is associated with a higher probability
for further career change (Lent et al., 1994). Moreover, SCT have
their first career as a fallback career in case teaching should not
be as rewarding as anticipated. The present findings corroborate
that SCT might be more intent to stay longer in the teaching
profession – at least if they have a regular teacher’s diploma as
was the case in the present sample. It has to be considered that
the present sample of SCT has a regular, full teacher’s degree
as opposed to an alternative certificate. Attrition intentions are
linked to a subjective cost-benefit-analysis, and the time and
financial investments associated with the completion of often
shortened alternative teacher training programs for SCT are
comparably low (Weinmann-Lutz, 2007). Indeed, teachers with
alternative certificates are more likely to leave the profession
again (Chambers Mack et al., 2019). However, the effect of
alternative certifications on teacher attrition intention might also
depend on the specific curriculum: According to Kocher et al.
(2019), retention rates might be associated with the extent to
which training on the job is part of the alternative certification
program. The degree to which teacher are socialized into their
profession seems to play a role for retention and attrition.
What Is the Role of Teachers’ Challenge
Appraisals for Their Intention to Leave
the Teaching Profession?
The extent to which the teachers felt challenged by typical
professional demands of the teaching profession played a
subordinate role for their intention to leave the profession. None
of the professional demands was a significant predictor in this
regard. This finding is somewhat surprising, as professional
challenges – while being associated with beneficial outcomes –
are still a type of stressor according to the transactional stress
model (Lazarus and Folkman, 1984), and can turn into negative
stressors if the challenge is too high. Yet, our findings suggest that
professional challenges, even if high, are not associated with the
intention to leave the profession. There are several interpretations
of this phenomenon:
The extent to which an individual feels challenged by a
job demand is an indicator for the extent to which relevant
resources have to be considered and made available or, if already
at disposal, activated. This process can put high pressure on
an individual that might be perceived as momentarily stressful.
However, these moments of stress are not the same as the
long-term, health-impairing process of work stress that leads to
exhaustion and attrition due to burnout, as described by many
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studies, mainly within the job demands-resources framework
(Demerouti et al., 2001). As long as teachers are appreciated
by their students and feel that they can accomplish something
through their work, i.e., as long as they have a sense of self-
efficacy, stress and dissatisfaction remain low (Dicke et al., 2018).
Teacher self-efficacy was a relevant predictor for intention to
leave the profession in the present analyses, corroborating that
self-efficacy beliefs buffer the job demands-strain relationship.
From this perspective, our results yield an explanation for the
often-cited finding that teachers feel both highly strained and
highly satisfied at the same time: The professional demands
related to teaching are perceived as moderately to highly
challenging – the latter in the case of tasks concerning student
learning and assessment –, but not to an extent where the career
choice is questioned.
Another possible explanation for the weak association
between challenge appraisals and intention to leave the profession
might be that the perception of professional demands is context-
dependent. Workplace factors such as leadership support,
organizational characteristics or school climate have been
documented as key factors in teacher attrition throughout the
literature (Borman and Dowling, 2008;Kukla-Acevedo, 2009;
Van Droogenbroeck and Spruyt, 2016). High levels of challenge
might lead to a change of workplace – and not the teaching
profession – before excessive demands manifest themselves in
forms of chronic stress and exhaustion. This interpretation is
supported by the study by Boyd et al. (2011b) which showed
that professional demands are related to job turnover but not to
attrition from the profession.
Only about 15% of the variance in intention to leave the
profession could be explained by the personal and individual
characteristics included in the model (including age, gender,
and career path), as well as the perception of professional
demands, indicating that essential predictors were not considered
in this study. Contextual factors such as student composition,
school location or general workplace atmosphere may explain
further variance (see Borman and Dowling, 2008 for a
review). In a recent study based on the job demands resource
model (Demerouti et al., 2001), Skaalvik and Skaalvik were
able to show that perceived professional demands are only
indirectly related to motivation to quit, via low well-being
and engagement (Skaalvik and Skaalvik, 2018). In addition to
the professional demands, teacher well-being and engagement
would probably also explain further variance in the intention to
leave the profession.
Another factor that has to be considered is that stress and
dissatisfaction are not the only reasons for teacher attrition.
While so-called push factors – reasons that push the individual
away from his or her field of work – are highly relevant
for leaving the teacher profession (Ingersoll and Smith, 2003;
Herzog et al., 2007;Borman and Dowling, 2008;Struyven and
Vanthournout, 2014), pull-factors – reasons that attract the
individual to another field – are important as well. Feelings
of challenge when confronted with professional demands may
be a push factor if the necessary resources cannot be activated
to master the challenges. A teacher’s degree yields good
opportunities for further professional development, e.g., in
educational science or special needs education. In order to
explain more variance in the intention to leave the profession,
it might be beneficial to look into the question whether teachers
acknowledge these professional opportunities and how they are
related to teacher attrition.
Limitations and Future Research
The present study addresses several research gaps, but has
limitations that can be seen as guidelines for future research.
Firstly, the present study is based on cross-sectional data that
do not allow any conclusions about the direction of effects, or
about the processes involved. Longitudinal studies could provide
insight in the processes that lead to the intention to leave a certain
workplace, to leave teaching altogether, or to stay in the teaching
profession despite the presence of challenges. Including potential
mediating variables such as job well-being or job engagement
could help to further clarify the relationship between professional
demands, stress and attrition. Secondly, to assess the intention
to leave the profession, only one item was used in this study. In
order to assess attrition intention more comprehensively, a multi-
item scale would be favorable. Thirdly, as the variables included
in the model only explained a limited amount of the variance in
intention to leave the profession (15% for the total sample and
only 10% for FCT), it would be interesting to investigate what
other predictors are related to intention to leave the profession.
We assume that workplace characteristics and pull-factors might
explain further variance (Borman and Dowling, 2008;Ingersoll
et al., 2014). Fourthly, in this study we have examined which
professional demands are challenging for the individual teachers,
but not to which degree they perceive them as relevant and
whether they think they can cope. However, there is empirical
evidence that job demands are only dealt with thoroughly if they
are considered important and manageable, but risk to be ignored
or avoided otherwise (Keller-Schneider, 2010, 2014). For future
research it would be important to consider the extent to which
teachers feel challenged by specific job demands in the context of
their subjective relevance and manageability.
CONCLUSION
In sum, the study shows that SCT are more intent to stay
in the teaching profession than FCT, but experience as many
challenges regarding most professional demands. One exception
are professional demands that are related to student learning
and assessment, where SCT feel less challenged. These group
differences seem to be attributable mainly to the higher
proportion of male teacher among SCT, as well as to their higher
general self-efficacy beliefs. Our findings indicate that persons
who chose teaching as a second or third career – at least if
they are well qualified as teachers – feel as prepared to cope
with professional demands as traditional teachers, although not
distinctly more so. However, although the previous literature
suggests that SCT have additional resources compared to FCT
(e.g., Tigchelaar et al., 2010;Bauer et al., 2017), SCTs’ cumulative
experiences and knowledge do not diminish the challenges that
they encounter when entering the teaching profession. This does
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fpsyg-10-03067 January 27, 2020 Time: 15:22 # 12
Troesch and Bauer Professional Demands in Teachers
not mean that SCTs’ previous professional skills are lost when
they start a new career as teachers; but it indicates that the skills
and knowledge gained in the past are only marginally reflected in
the appraisal of professional demands as teachers. The findings
also imply that SCT need teacher induction as much as any
other teacher, as the professional challenges are high, especially
regarding student learning and assessment.
Teachers’ career backgrounds and challenge appraisals of
professional demands can only explain a small amount of
variance in intentions to leave the profession again. This
corroborates the previous empirical findings that challenge
stressors do not have the negative consequences that are usually
associated with stress, including attrition.
DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT
The datasets generated for this study are available on request to
the corresponding author.
ETHICS STATEMENT
Ethical review and approval was not required for the study on
human participants in accordance with the local legislation and
institutional requirements. The patients/participants provided
their written informed consent to participate in this study.
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
The manuscript was written in close collaboration between the
two authors. LT had the idea for the manuscript and conducted all
analyses. CB wrote most of the Introduction and the Discussion
section. Both authors have contributed to the manuscript to
a similar amount.
FUNDING
The project “Professionals as Teachers” (Bauer and Hostettler,
2012; project nr. 12 s 00501) as well as the present publication
in Frontiers in Psychology have been supported by the Berne
University of Teacher Education, Switzerland.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors would like to thank Dr. Loredana Torchetti for her
statistical advice.
SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL
The Supplementary Material for this article can be found
online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.
2019.03067/full#supplementary-material
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Conflict of Interest: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the
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