21^st 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, increased bureaucratic responsibilities and unprecedented levels of public scrutiny. 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 modelthis 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. 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.

KEYWORDS:

• Teacher resilience
• teacher identitiy
• transactional-ecological

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

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.

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.