Aspiring teachers, financial incentives, and principals’ recruitment practices in hard-to-staff schools

ABSTRACT

The crisis of teacher shortages in Anglophone nation states can no longer be ignored as this long-term issue has been compounded by the pandemic. Growing evidence of the challenges of attracting and retaining a teaching workforce is now foregrounded in education policy internationally. This issue provides increased impetus for studying teacher motivations and principal dispositions particularly in relation to roles in hard-to-staff schools that tend to be in disadvantaged or rural communities in terms of how policies are received and enacted. This mixed methods study examined a teacher financial incentive (TFI) scheme aimed at facilitating the appointment of qualified teachers in hard-to-staff government schools in Victoria, Australia. Although evidence of TFI scheme’s effects and effectiveness as a policy solution to teacher shortages is limited, TFI schemes are widespread internationally. Our study shows that while the Victorian TFI scheme resulted in successful appointments for most participating schools, a financial incentive was only one among many other policy settings, personal and professional factors and other motivations informing teachers’ decisions to apply for a TFI position and the recruitment practices of principals.

KEYWORDS:

• Teacher shortages
• hard to staff schools
• teacher aspirations
• principal dispositions
• Bourdieu

Introduction

The difficulty of attracting suitably qualified teachers to hard-to-staff schools and roles has been well researched in the US, Canada, UK, and Australia over several decades (House of Representatives 2019; Corbett 2020; Cuervo and Acquaro 2018; Darling-Hammond 2017; Lieberman 2021; García and Weiss 2019, White et al., Corbett), with teacher shortages significantly impacting education provision (Sullivan, Perry, and McConney 2013). Teacher shortages are now the focus of both policymakers and the media post-COVID-19. Teachers in the USA, Canada, Australia, and UK who were on the frontline of managing the pandemic and who have experienced significant stress and burnout are exiting the profession (Thomson, Greany, and Martindale 2021; Heffernan et al. 2022) at the same time there are also reduced intakes into teacher education programs. An Australian Education Union (2022) survey indicated almost 90% of government school principals considered they would be unable to fully staff their schools in 2023, with 80% readvertising vacancies and 98% stating there were few applicants. Teacher unions have argued that as a feminised caring profession, improved wages and conditions as well as status of the profession are critical to attracting and retaining teachers, as encapsulated in The Guardian headline: ‘English schools warn of acute teacher shortages without “inflation plus” pay deal’ (Adams 2022). At the same time, there is a baby boom cohort of students entering many school systems, a long-term trend which policymakers have ignored.

Add into this complex mix of demographic and global factors that impact on teacher attraction and retention in Australia, the UK, and USA (Dupriez et al., 2016; Ingersoll et al. 2021; Prince and O’connor 2018), the increasing precariousness of teachers’ work (Melville, Hardy, and Roy 2019; Mindzak 2016), and high teacher turnover leading to difficulties in staffing qualified teachers, particularly in hard-to-staff schools (Ingersoll et al. 2021). Extant research indicates that shortages of qualified teachers lead to significant numbers teaching ‘outside their subject area, a practice called “out-of-field” teaching’ (Hobbs 2013, 271), which is especially prevalent in mathematics and science curriculum areas, and in rural and remote locations (Hobbs and Törner 2019; Ingersoll et al. 2021). In 2016, Weldon reported that in Australia 22% of teachers were teaching out-of-field, and 17% of all classes were taught by out-of-field teachers.

For many schools, teaching out-of-field is considered a ‘solution to a problem’, but it ‘inadvertently masks the extent of teacher shortages’ (Hobbs and Törner 2019, 313), shortages caused by a lack of teachers in particular subject areas, unequal distribution of teachers within and across education sectors and schools, or recruitment practices that preference qualities other than teacher specialisations (Hobbs and Törner 2019). Hobbs et al. (2022) assert that strategies are needed to address the range of issues that lead to the need for out-of-field teaching. In particular, attracting and retaining teachers in hard-to-staff schools, including many schools in rapidly expanding outer suburban areas and special schools (catering for students with some form of disability) (Dally et al. 2019; Cuervo and Acquaro 2018), is therefore a key workforce planning issue with implications for both supply and demand sides of the teacher labour market not only in Australia (National Teaching Workforce Dataset Working Group 2014) but also internationally (Donista-Schmidt and Zuzovsky 2016; Ní Ríordáin and Hannigan 2009). This paper focuses on one government’s policy response of a financial incentive scheme to attract and retain teachers to hard-to-staff schools in Victoria, Australia.

Factors contributing to certain schools, roles, and subjects being hard-to-staff are complex, multi-faceted, and interconnected, and until recently under-researched, particularly in the Australian context (Rice, Richardson, and Watt 2017). While the literature identifies significant personal and professional challenges that some teachers can face in rural, regional and remote locations (Fraser, Beswick, and Crowley 2019), these contexts are highly diverse, with different strengths and needs, adding to the complexities of staff recruitment (Halsey 2018). Attracting and retaining a teacher workforce in hard-to-staff schools is exacerbated by deficit discourses about teaching in rural schools, special schools and in disadvantaged communities (Dally et al. 2019; Reid et al. 2010; Sharplin 2002). The extant literature on the role of incentives in recruiting and retaining qualified teachers in hard-to-staff schools, largely focused on the US and Australia, offers few examples of comprehensive evaluations as to the effectiveness of incentive policies and programs (e.g. Feng and Sass 2015). Despite this, financial incentive programs are relatively common (Halsey 2018).

This paper explores the role of financial incentives for recruiting teachers to hard-to-staff schools in Victoria, Australia, and reports the results of a small-scale mixed methods evaluation of the initial roll-out of a teacher financial incentive (TFI) scheme (2019–20) prior and into the Covid pandemic, which also exacerbated the shortage crisis. The aim of the TFI scheme was specifically to address shortages of qualified teachers in government schools in certain regional and remote areas, certain subject areas, and disadvantaged schools. The Victorian Department of Education and Training (DET) provided financial incentive payments of up to $50,000 Au (pre-tax) to encourage teachers to apply for up to 50 hard-to-staff positions in participating schools (DET 2020). Eligible recipients, determined on a case-by-case basis, received an initial payment of between $9,000 and $50,000 (pre-tax) to take up a hard-to-staff position in a Victorian government school identified by DET once they met the criteria of geographical position of school and applicant, as well as principal’s selection criteria for the role they were to fill. An annual retention payment of $9,000 (pre-tax) was paid at the conclusion of the second, third, and fourth years of employment as well as relocation costs.

In the TFI, rural, regional, and remote locations were defined as being outside major metropolitan centres (AIHW 2019), varying according to their relative access to services and therefore included outer-suburban schools, a distinction which confused many applicants (ABS, 2018). Outer suburban hard-to-staff schools are highly complex, being commonly located in rapidly expanding communities on the metropolis fringe with high levels of cultural and linguistic diversity and tending towards being in a lower socioeconomic area. Also, special schools require very specific teaching capabilities (Dally et al. 2019). The study considered factors leading to both successful and unsuccessful recruitment of teachers for hard-to-staff roles and how teacher aspirations ‘fit’ principal recruitment needs. We argue in this paper first that policies and the literature focusing only on teacher training and disciplinary qualifications ignore the complexity of the mix of aspirations, familial relationships, educational context, and career stage of which financial incentives are only one factor informing the decision-making of teacher applicants. Secondly, by focusing on all aspects of the teacher and school markets which impact on attracting, recruiting and retaining teachers, we focus on the neglected aspect of the recruitment process involving factors informing principals’ decision-making.

A Bourdieusian perspective on teacher aspirations and ‘best fit’

A Bourdieusian perspective offers useful tools to analyse the complex dynamic between teacher aspirations for teaching in particular schools and roles, their personal and professional circumstances as well as principal perceptions of ‘the best teacher’ for the school and role. Teacher career aspirations are understood as arising from personal dispositions and being informed by and informing the habitus or what Bourdieu described as ‘systems of durable, transposable dispositions’, which both organise and generate practice, including teaching practice (Bourdieu 1977, 72). The habitus is produced through processes of pedagogic work over time and the classed experiences of familial and peer relationships, as well as the education system and others, which mould or shape aspirations and expectations and predispose thought and action so that within specific fields, or intersecting contested social spaces, an agent is more likely to behave in certain ways rather than others (Bourdieu and Passeron 1977). That the habitus sits below the level of consciousness means there is no obvious explanation of purposeful actions, so we take the view that what drives practice is ‘irreducible to one’s conscious intentions’ (Mead 2016, 58). Consequently, unconscious bias may be in play when decisions are made by either applicants applying for the TFI or principals in selecting from applicants.

Habitus can be both individual and collective (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992), which means that dispositions held by a specific person can also be shared by a group to which that person belongs arising from common experiences or histories (Bourdieu 1990) or by way of being similarly positioned within the same field (Wacquant 2016); for example, a collective teacherly habitus (Blackmore 2010). Capital takes various forms such as cultural (qualifications, experience) and social (professional networks etc.) (Bourdieu 1986) and is generated through the practices that take place in specific fields (Rowlands and Gale 2017). There are national, state, and local fields of education, amongst others, where local refers to a field of specific education sectors as in Australia (public, Catholic, and independent schools) or a subfield that comprises a specific school. Teachers are variously positioned and compete for capital within these fields in response to their relative holdings of which capitals that are most highly valued in those fields and subfields.

Struggles to maintain or improve relative positioning within a specific field by way of increasing the amount or worth of capitals that are valued within that field, combined with individual or shared dispositions such as a sense of professionalism comprising the habitus, are a strong motivating force to achieve distinction (Bourdieu 1986), and are therefore a driver of aspiration. However, motivation is also generating for the agent a degree of investment in the game (where game is a metaphor for practice) of a particular field (Aarseth 2018). These motivational forces have the potential to significantly influence decisions teachers make about their careers by, for example, driving the desire to have an impact through teaching students from less advantaged backgrounds, the seeking of a leadership position or the proclivity to gain enjoyment from teaching particular subjects.

But aspirations are also informed by personal as well as professional circumstances, and conditions of possibility within the field of education to mobilise accumulated capitals such as experience as well as the positioning of the field of education more generally. The status of teaching as a profession and education as a field relative to other social fields which impact on it such as fields of politics and media also matters for teachers’ sense of being valued. Teaching is a numerically feminised profession with salaries relatively low compared to other professions exacerbated by a lack of a more differentiated career path that offers promotional opportunities. Teachers, and women in particular, may therefore experience both systemic discrimination and also unconscious bias which impacts on their professional sense of worth (Nolan and Sonnemann 2019) which can be reinforced or undermined through the recruitment process where the rules of the game are not clear with regard to particular policies such as the TFI. Teacherly habitus is also shaped, reshaped and mobilised within the field of education, characterised by decades of reform moving towards greater school autonomy, increased competition, and differentiation between education sectors, schools, and students in quasi-market relations that have arguably made some schools (predominantly in the government sector) harder to staff than others (Keddie et al. 2020) and where being distinctive for schools and individuals is increasingly important. The TFI is a policy intervention which assumes financial incentives can change the rules of the game for teachers and schools. The changing nature of the teacher labour market or social field with increased shortages suggests different forms of capital are now valued. That is, all forms of disciplinary expertise or capital are valued regardless of the position. While the TFI seeks to intervene in the education market on the supply side, these same market relations also inform principal decision-making in developing position descriptions and recruitment criteria, which is under researched.

The policy context: why the TFI now?

The Victorian ‘Government Schools Funding Review’ (DET 2015) recognised that the supply of teachers within the professional labour market was affected by multiple factors, many outside the field, that were shaping the workforce: the relative attractiveness of the profession, quality of teacher education, movement in and out of other professions, age profile, dual careers, experience, and retirement of baby-boomers (Goss, Sonnemann, and Nolan 2019; Kline, White, and Lock 2013). Supply is also clearly affected by attrition rates, particularly of early-career teachers (George et al., 2018; Mayer et al. 2017; Weldon 2018), the range varying between 8% and 53% (Gallant and Riley 2017). The teacher labour market as a social field, the DET (2015) review showed, is characterized by variability of demand across the different school systems (public and private) according to geography (rural/regional/remote/urban), type of school (primary, secondary, special), teacher shortages in specific subjects and individual schools’ capacity for flexibility in staff recruitment because the bulk of school funding is spent on teachers.

Equally important in teacher recruitment are their aspirations, life-style preferences and career choices (Barty et al. 2005). Teacher life history and career studies (Goodson and Sikes 2001) and gender analyses of teacher careers (Acker, 1995), still a highly under researched area, show that individual aspirations (Lusty 2016), as well as their sense of professional self-efficacy (George et al., 2018), their individual and collective teacherly habitus and sense of investment in the field, alter over time, producing different personal and professional needs, desires and interests (Hargreaves 2005). Policy interventions such as Teach for Australia which attracted highly aspirant recruits from other professions have not reduced higher turnover, with many costly TFA recruits leaving the profession within 5 years (Ledger and Vidovich 2018).

Personal factors, relationships and family commitments, as well as contextual factors and material and social conditions around schools such as resources and services available locally (e.g. child care, children’s education), impact on teacher mobility. Australian women remain largely responsible for care for young and aged and comprise 65.8% of part-time workers (WGEA 2022). Gender is a factor rarely mentioned in reports on hard-to-staff schools. Structural factors therefore shape the rules of the game which penalise some more than others. Teacher choice is also informed by the degree of staff mobility within the system, with greater mobility more likely in hard-to-staff schools because of teaching out-of-field or the complexity of teaching in schools in disadvantaged and culturally diverse communities (Samuels 2018). Staff mobility is also impacted by structural factors such as degree of school autonomy in different state systems. Greater school autonomy in Western Australia, for example, reduced staff mobility for rural/isolated schools in particular (Keddie et al. 2020).

Teacher choice of school and principal recruitment practices are also shaped by a policy context in which teachers and principals are increasingly held responsible for student (under)achievement on standardised assessment (e.g. NAPLAN and PISA) regardless of school profile (and the forms of cultural and social capital it attracts) and context, which positions each school relative to others within the market, making some schools more attractive than others. Decades of unfavourable media representations of teachers have produced a discourse of teacher and teacher educator blame circulating in Australia, USA, and the UK which means schools and teachers have come under greater scrutiny due to politicised results (Lewis and Holloway 2019). The policy response has been to increasingly standardise initial teacher education and develop a narrow metrics approach. While teachers’ work has become intensified in terms of increased administration associated with testing and multiple competing accountabilities (Fitzgerald et al. 2019), Education labour market dynamics have a supply and demand side, with high demand for teachers qualified in mathematics and technology, especially (but not only) in rural and remote locations (Du Plessis et al. 2019; Fraser, Beswick, and Crowley 2019; O’flaherty 2021; Prince and O’connor 2018). Yet there has been little regard in initial teacher education paid to the specific needs of the sector and particular schools (e.g. in rural and regional education) (Roberts, Downes, and Reid 2022). These discursive, material, social and cultural conditions of the social field of teaching are the context for this TFI policy initiative.

Furthermore, persistent shortages of suitably qualified teachers in hard-to-staff schools and subject areas (Cuervo and Acquaro 2018) limit the selection of teaching staff which in turn can impact on student learning (Sullivan, Perry, and McConney 2013). Importantly, the TFI focuses on hard-to-staff schools which tend to be more disadvantaged. Hard-to-staff schools also tend to have a disproportionate number of early-career teachers (Darling-Hammond 2017) and high incidences of out-of-field teaching (Du Plessis et al. 2019; Hobbs 2013). Out-of-field teaching incidence increases with distance from metropolitan regions −24% in metro areas compared with 32% in provincial and 41% in remote areas (Weldon, 2018). Under these circumstances, principals ‘have less choice in regard to their staff,’ and there is often considerable political pressure, translating into policy imperatives, for hard-to-staff schools to recruit ‘a teacher, any teacher’ (Rice, Richardson, and Watt 2017, 280–3). But the issue addressed in this article is whether principals adopt the same position.

The relatively sparse literature on the role of incentives highlights that whilst TFI have some potential to increase teacher retention for the duration of the incentive payments (Lyons 2009), financial incentives themselves have limited effects (Kelly and Fogarty 2015; Reid et al. 2010) and there is little evidence of longer-term effectiveness (Feng and Sass 2015; Rice, Richardson, and Watt 2017). Despite this, the Halsey report (2018, p. 17) on Australian rural, regional, and remote education explicitly recommended the introduction of incentives to recruit teachers whilst also noting that TFI programs in Western Australia and New South Wales (and others) were yet to be comprehensively evaluated. In this context, our evaluation of a Victorian incentive scheme is timely.

The study

This study of the initial roll-out of the TFI scheme in Australian state of Victoria sought to provide early insights into the first stage of the initiative and to generate data from the first cohort of participating schools and teachers to inform policy design and enactment. The study responded to the overarching question ‘What factors led to both successful and unsuccessful recruitment of teachers for hard-to-staff roles?’

In this article, we limit our discussion to the role and function of the financial incentives in teacher recruitment and retention in participating schools. The research methodology was underpinned by recognition of the complex inter-relationship between labour market supply and demand. Supply issues are understood through the life history approach (Goodson and Sikes 2001), which recognises the multiple influences of stage of career, age, gender, ethnicity, relationship status, care obligations, educational, and work opportunities for self, partners, and children as well as career and lifestyle aspirations for self and family members, on choices teachers make about where and when to work and in what roles. That is, how the teacherly habitus and particular dispositions are formed. Demand issues include the recruitment practices of principals within specific contexts informed by the specificity of school factors such as location, size and type of school, and student and community profile i.e. the social field and the rules of the game underlying principal recruitment practices.

A mixed methods case study enabled the development and implementation of this program informed by Stake and Abma (2005) notion of responsive evaluation or stakeholder evaluation (Rodríguez-Campos 2012). This approach provided for consultation and collaboration with stakeholders in the evaluation design phase and for elicitation of the personal experience of participants, in this case DET program staff, principals, and teachers. Data were sourced from successful and unsuccessful teacher applicants through a survey (n = 92) and interview (n = 15); from principals of participating schools through interview (n = 23); from DET program staff through interview (n = 3); and extant data provided by DET on the TFI scheme, including numerical details relating to participating schools and outcomes of recruitment processes. The interview questions were informed by the literature and input from DET stakeholders through a workshop. The questions and survey focused on what factors contributed to their decision to apply for the TFI, how they found out about the TFI, how they understood the initiative, what their experience of the application process was, to what extent the financial incentive was significant relative to other factors in terms of applying, taking up or staying in a school if they got the job, and what factors impacted on their retention at the TFI school. Phone interviews with principals whose schools participated in the TFI scheme focused on (i) how the school’s context led to the school’s need to engage with the program and (ii) how the program did or did not support the appointment of the teachers they needed.

The survey, which gained responses from 92 teachers who applied for a position in participating schools, included short answer and multiple-choice questions. It enabled thematic analysis of the teachers’ professional careers, motivations for applying, experiences with the application processes, response to the program outcomes, their immediate intentions regarding TFI participation and level of satisfaction impacting on decisions to stay. Follow-up interviews with 15 teachers provided a more nuanced and in-depth understanding of how life history and life/career stage impacted on career choices. Teachers interviewed were from a mix metropolitan, inner regional and outer regional locations, including teachers who were appointed and not appointed under the scheme, and some who were appointed but were not eligible. Of the teacher survey respondents, 53 identified as women and 39 as men, one preferred not to say, two respondents identified as Indigenous, reflecting the teacher workforce profile. The age range was relatively evenly spread except for a reduced proportion aged 61 years and over. Teachers were predominantly qualified for secondary teaching (53%), while 33% were qualified for primary teaching, 14% for special education, 4% for vocational education, and training/Research Training Organisations (VET/RTOs) and 3% for early childhood, respectively.

Principals interviewed were from a mix of metropolitan, inner regional and outer regional locations and of primary, secondary, and special schools. Both the TFI scheme and iterative phases of the responsive evaluation were significantly affected by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Some recruitment processes were disrupted, and the delivery of some non-financial supports of the TFI program had to be deferred. Data collection was interrupted when Victorian schools closed early at the conclusion of term one due to lockdown. When data collection resumed, the pressures schools experienced led to a reduction of the number of principal interviews from a planned 50 to 23.

Analysis of interviews (Braun and Clarke 2006; Nowell et al. 2017) and of survey items included frequency tables and cross-tabulations identifying trends in relation to the three themes presented in this paper on these three themes. The first theme explores the attraction of applicants, including distribution in relation to geographical region, the role of the financial incentive, and characteristics of successful and unsuccessful applicants. The second theme explores the factors informing teachers’ decision to apply. The third theme explores retention of teachers under the TFI, including factors that would make a teacher stay in their appointed roles. Each theme draws upon relevant survey and interview data and situates the findings within the extant literature relating to teacher attraction and retention.

Theme 1: attracting teachers

The literature on the supply side of teacher labour markets suggests that teacher choices as to whether to apply for certain positions are influenced by stage of career, career aspirations, education and work opportunities and personal issues based on relationships status and care obligations, informed by such factors aethnicity, and age (AITSL 2021). The teacher survey showed that financial incentives seemed to be less motivating than other factors when teacher were deciding whether to apply for a position in a TFI named hard-to-staff school, rating financial incentives or acquiring economic capital as low or very low in terms of motivational influences.

At the same time, for those relocating from a metropolitan to a regional area or who relocated from another state, the incentive offset the costs which made relocation financially viable more than gaining the financial incentive once appointed. Indicative teacher responses regarding the extent to which the TFI influenced their decision to apply included:

Yes, in some ways, but not in others because they were ongoing positions. So that was a big part of it. … the financial part of it came in, in terms of relocating a family and things like that. Teacher, successful applicant through TFI

The money was —it didn’t increase my pay at my previous school … so it would have kept me on the same pay or a little bit below but close enough. Teacher, successful applicant through TFI

I’m single, so I had the freedom to move. I was a homeowner, so needed to consider whether to rent or to sell the property; but having the moving costs covered by the TFI was helpful. Teacher, successful applicant through TFI

Only some prioritised the higher incentive payment

Certainly the $50,000 incentive was the main thing, I was not going to leave a school just for the sake of leaving a school. Teacher, successful applicant through TFI

That is, many were attracted to the idea by the TFI but did not necessarily apply.

Amongst teacher survey respondents, the location and type of school were less significant factors in decision-making. The teacher interviews confirmed survey results indicating multiple motivating factors dependent on career stage and age informing their decisions to apply for TFI positions. Opportunities associated with working in a hard to staff school as envisaged by teacher survey respondents varied by age group, with younger teachers citing travel, cost and availability of housing, physical environment and change in lifestyle; 30- to 50-year-old teachers more likely to have family responsibilities were concerned about promotion, local schools, community, change in lifestyle, and challenges and the most experienced older cohort over 50 were interested in employment security, community, and new challenges. Of the older cohort, many referred to a desire to make a difference

I’ve worked in top class independent schools, but you know, I feel that working along with kids who maybe are deprived in some way or feel neglected in some way, that’s where I would like to be. Teacher, successful applicant through TFI

That is, each teacher was personally disposed at a particular time in their career to consider what they valued in terms of their future professional aspirations.

Furthermore, there was a collective teacherly disposition of some applicants, particularly those with six or more years of experience, towards teaching in hard-to-staff schools. Only a quarter of teacher survey respondents indicated that they had not previously considered teaching in a hard-to-staff school. The mid-career teacher applicants were more likely to have previously taught in hard-to-staff schools and were more likely to be appointed because they positively disposed toward and were experienced in teaching at hard-to-staff schools bringing with them useful pedagogical capital they had accumulated over time, making them a ‘good fit’ for the school. As life history approaches show, teacher career needs and aspirations change over the course of the working lifespan (Goodson and Sikes 2001).

The assumption of financial incentive schemes is that teachers consider money to be a significant factor in their decision-making about career. Of the surveyed successful teacher applicants, 17 (over half) were satisfied with the incentive paid and those who received the largest amount were the most satisfied, with six receiving $50,000 (outer regional/rural), five receiving $21,000 (inner regional appointees) and one receiving $9,000. But five of the seven successful applicants were ineligible for the TFI, suggesting that the criteria were not clear to them, that the applicants hoped that the criteria may be dropped if appointed and they would receive the incentive, or that the financial incentive was not a significant factor for them and they would take the job regardless. That is, some had a teacherly habitus and disposition towards teaching students in disadvantaged communities and money was less of an incentive.

Theme 2: recruiting teachers

There is a complex inter-relationship between teacher labour markets and recruitment to a particular school in the social field of a devolved school system such as Victoria, where principals have significant autonomy with regard to teacher recruitment in terms of determining the interplay of position and description (Keddie et al. 2020). Demand factors informing principal decisions to recruit would include the number of applicants depending on the size of the pool of qualified teachers, school factors such as the location, type, size, and student profile, the nature of the position, and principals’ recruitment criteria and disposition in relation to the forms of pedagogical capital available. Overall, on the supply side, 47 out of the 50 available TFI roles were filled by March 2020 and 37 of these met DET criteria of eligibility and only one appointee resigned. Successful appointees were located across metropolitan, inner regional and rural schools, although mostly in rural schools due to marginally higher applications rates. Together, the comparison with the average number of applicants for participating schools without the TFI suggests that the financial incentive was a factor for outer (rural) but not for inner regional schools.

However, some positions were readvertised and/or reconfigured by the principal multiple times before a successful appointment could be made. For example, seven of the 14 principals interviewed whose positions were filled reported readvertising or changing the role specifications before an appointment could be made. Some reported making no appointment, despite the TFI. The availability of job specific and subject expertise, that is pedagogical capital, was a key issue, regardless of the TFI. In particular, principals of special schools struggled to make appointments no matter where they were located. Interview excerpts below exemplify the range of principal experiences of the education field.

[We advertised] that position three times, I think, before we had access to the TFI. We then advertised it as an English/psych position, I think three more times and we couldn’t fill it … So we then advertised [the vacancy] as an English position, I think twice and finally filled it. (Principal, inner regional, TFI appointment)

The one that we got [through the TFI] was not in the area of expertise we were looking for but has been a good fit. (Principal, outer regional, TFI appointment)

The range of successful appointees across primary, secondary, special school, and VET sectors indicated that the TFI scheme attracted a wide range of expertise and experience. Of the 82 teacher survey respondents who completed the relevant question, 29 were successful in gaining employment under the TFI, the majority being secondary teachers appointed to mathematics, mathematics/science, or English teaching positions, therefore addressing some of the key areas of demand where there were shortages.

A significant finding was that while successful and unsuccessful candidates were spread across age ranges and levels of experience, successfully appointed surveyed teachers were most commonly aged between 31 and 60 years with between 6 and 20 years of teaching experience, i.e. mid-career teachers with accumulated pedagogical capitals. This cohort are likely to have been impacted most within the field by the lack of leadership promotion positions into middle management in their current schools (Lipscombe et al. 2020) or were at a career stage where they were seeking a lifestyle change. Mid-career teachers have been overlooked in both the scholarly literature and in the workplace, yet principals consider their presence is critical to school leadership capacity building (Lusty 2016). Therefore, the TFI provided an incentive for these mid-career teachers to shift and provided the hard-to-staff schools with teachers whose level of experience matched principal preferences for recruiting experienced teachers into leadership positions.

At the same time, principals also preferred teachers who were a good potential ‘fit’ for their school, that is, ‘being like us’ and aligned to the school ethos and staffing, student and community profile (Blackmore, Barty, and Thomson 2006), or prioritising certain capitals over others, such as relationship building skills over background in a discipline (Du Plessis et al. 2019). The principal’s disposition for seeking ‘best fit’ was often not articulated explicitly but usually was the final test upon which applicants were often judged, indicating implicit rules of the game or unconscious assumptions. Principals stated in interview:

You want people who want to be here. You want people who understand the community context and how challenging that is. I would take a good person over a good teacher, but ideally get a combination of the two … people who are resilient … who value relationships with difficult students. Our kids have a lot of trauma in their background. And if you use the teaching techniques that you would use in, I guess, a more settled school environment, they’re not always going to be effective. Principal, special education, metropolitan

I’m looking for people who want to fit into the community. So we are particularly outdoorsy. I want people who are prepared to muck in and not draw a line in the sand and say that’s not in my role description. Principal, inner regional

However, the effect of principal discretion was that some qualified teachers interviewed who met the criteria on paper but were not experienced (such as recent graduates) were not appointed, as exemplified in the following survey responses:

One of the positions that I applied for was [in] an area I looked at moving to because I have got friends that live there and the TFI just happened to come under there. They did not appoint anyone to that position, unfortunately … I really wanted that job. Teacher, unsuccessful applicant through TFI

I feel that I would like to make a difference. And I think that the job descriptions worked well for me and obviously, the financial aspect is also helpful. But, I was disappointed that those schools withdrew the position that they had offered [through the TFI]. Teacher, unsuccessful applicant through TFI

Non-appointment to a TFI position created some dissatisfaction and affected each applicant’s sense of professional efficacy and their positioning within the field. Poor communication on eligibility criteria and without adequate feedback as to the failure to appoint meant these teachers felt they did not know the rules of the game.

Despite the reported and unprecedented exodus of experienced teachers (Lusty 2016), principals were generally unwilling to appoint a teacher who was perceived to be neither sufficiently experienced nor a good organisational fit for the school in terms of educational philosophy, attitude regarding the type of students or particular forms of professional capital (e.g. commitment to community or to social justice) (Blackmore & Rahimi, 2019). Instead, principals would withdraw positions rather than risk an inappropriate appointment because ‘any teacher’ would not do (Rice, Richardson, and Watt 2017, 280). Principals indicated that they thought deeply about the needs of their school and exercised judgement during the selection process about whether a particular teacher’s dispositions (values, practical mastery) as well as their cultural capital (experience and qualifications) fitted both the stated requirements and the school culture. Such decision-making processes was also about managing risk – of appointing a teacher in a permanent position who is dissatisfied because they do not fit in or appointing poorly prepared teachers who take up incentivised positions for financial gain and who are much more likely to leave relatively soon after appointment (Kelly and Fogarty 2015).

While the TFI advertisement initially attracted more than 50% of the teacher survey respondents because of the size of the incentive, it was less significant relative to other factors. When combined with a relocation payment, the TFI enabled some teachers to move long distances (including interstate) to take up positions that they would not otherwise have considered. Further, the TFI advertisement did foreground new opportunities. Likewise, principals saw financial incentives as only one of many factors assisting them to fill vacancies, although their principals’ risk-averse preference for proven record based on experience in hard to staff schools worked against early-career teachers.

What this shows is that a field such as education is subject to rules or doxa, a common sense about what is legitimate and how things are done (Bourdieu 1977), which sets conditions of entry to that field. In the selection process, doxa prescribes not only the qualifications necessary to become a teacher but also establishes expectations about what teachers should be like and should do (or not do). Fields also have a specific logic which informs the practices that take place and how that practice is undertaken (Bourdieu 1990). These practices are informed by principals’ unwritten understandings of a teacherly habitus of what constitutes a good teacher. Principals stressed they were seeking an applicant displaying dispositions appropriate to the school and community by ‘being like us’. This may mean favouring applicants seeking the experience of living and/or teaching in rural areas or those expressing non-deficit attitudes towards social disadvantage or students with a disability, or of a similar cultural background, or forms of desirable capitals.

Theme 3: retaining teachers

In order to improve retention, the TFI policy was to schedule payments over three years, and 22 of the 28 surveyed teachers successfully appointed were still teaching in their appointed positions. Fourteen of these teachers indicated that they would like to stay beyond their current contract, ten were ambivalent and four wanted to leave. The survey data indicated 73% compared to 6% of all new appointees were not teaching in their preferred subject areas and 60% were not employed in the capacity they wanted. This was a source of considerable dissatisfaction, potentially having implications for attrition. Multiple factors contributed to their stance, including age, personal relations, social and leisure opportunities.

I am 56 this year, so, [I will] probably [stay another] six years and maybe I will retire. I will see how I go. Teacher, successful appointment under TFI

Depending on my partner, who’s a teacher. If she can get work locally, I can’t see myself leaving. Teacher, successful appointment under TFI

I’m not sure whether I want to stay here … I may go for a country position near the beach … I’m not sure yet. Teacher, successful appointment under TFI

Factors contributing to teachers wanting to stay were that they were feeling capable, liked the students, enjoyed the teaching, felt supported in their role and enjoyed the freedom and challenges; that is, both their teacherly disposition and pedagogical capitals were valued within the school. Less significant factors were issues of community or the financial incentives. That is, professional and personal self-efficacy were important with the additional payments only one factor in retention, thus countering the deficit view that no-one could possibly want to teach in hard-to-staff schools unless paid more (Reid et al. 2010). Survey data strongly pointed to the importance of school ethos, support and teacher satisfaction in a particular context as being major factors influencing retention in hard-to-staff schools, which also aligns with principals’ rationale for appointment (Kelly and Fogarty 2015). The significance of a positive school context and importance of relationships and sense of being valued professionally were reinforced in teacher interviews as evident in the following excerpts.

I would say, [what would help me stay would be] to be valued by management and to feel that I am making some headway at the school. Teacher, appointed under TFI

It’s got to come down to opportunities [and experience at the school] … Like in my situation where I’ve got nine years’ experience in special needs, having acknowledgement for that from the leadership team. Teacher, appointed under TFI

Of the small number of surveyed teachers who had left or were considering leaving their TFI appointed positions, three teachers reported feeling unsupported and some felt unsuited to the role, reinforcing the importance of feeling a sense of belonging in the school arising from a close alignment between habitus and field.

Teacher retention is therefore potentially impacted by multiple factors, such as whether teachers feel they belong at a school, where a sense of belonging can be understood as synergy between habitus and field (Bourdieu 1990). Teacher retention is also influenced by enabling conditions of work (teaching resources, workload), professional relationships and recognition of their accomplishment as well as extrinsic factors such as their connection to community, travel-to-work times and meeting familial needs. Many of these factors are related to the amount and type of capital held and which capital is most valued in a given social space.

Conclusion

In the context of an international shortage of trained teachers, teachers possess valued capital and could assume they would be successful with their application to a position, but this was not always the case. The initial roll-out of the TFI did result in successful appointments to hard-to-staff schools in metropolitan, inner regional and outer regional (rural) government schools in Victoria. Some of those appointments were of experienced teachers who would otherwise not have applied, such as those who moved from interstate or metropolitan Melbourne to take up positions in regional or rural Victoria. This contrasts with the results of prior studies, which suggested that teacher financial incentive schemes were more likely to attract early-career teachers (Lyons 2009).

Applications under the TFI scheme from experienced teachers closely aligned with principals’ stated preferences or disposition for teachers who were not only qualified in a specific area but also more experienced and a good fit for the school, and therefore able to take up leadership positions. The importance of teachers being a good fit for the school culture was also evident in teacher interview data around retention where teachers more likely to leave referred to not feeling a sense of belonging at the school, not being supported, regardless of the financial incentive. With regard to the education field, the TFI did increase applications for vacant positions in regional and rural areas (most especially in the latter), which was a key aim of the scheme. A financial incentive of an appropriate size was a factor in motivating applicants to apply for advertised positions in hard-to-staff schools but was not amongst the most significant factors. However, the combination of an incentive with relocation costs was significant in rural and regional areas because it enabled mid-career teachers in particular, those who were possibly more established, to move long distances to take up appointments without feeling financially disadvantaged.

For principals, the issue was not about appointing any teacher but finding teachers with the individual habitus and disposition (fit) with the necessary educational capital (subject expertise, experience, preference for hard-to-staff schools) that teachers brought with them to the school.

While the principals were generally satisfied with the TFI scheme, many considered the size and scope of the challenge associated with appointing qualified teachers to hard-to-staff schools and for specific roles could not be resolved by a teacher financial incentive scheme alone.

Furthermore, the analysis supports existing conclusions (e.g. Weldon, 2016) on the tendency for teachers in rural, regional, and remote settings to teach out-of-field – the data indicated that more teachers were teaching in subjects they do not want to teach than subjects they do want to teach, which is likely to mean subject or year level where they feel out-of-field, out of their depth, or have little interest. So, while the TFI was successful in recruiting teachers, the relatively high incidence of possible out-of-field teaching reported by the teachers suggests that such a program does little to alleviate the incidence of out-of-field teaching in rural and regional areas – that is, teachers appear to continue to have an out-of-field class as part of their load. The risk is that dissatisfaction will lead to attrition because, while allocating more experienced teachers to teach out-of-field has lower risks than early-career teachers, research shows that mid- and late-career teachers can experience a re-novicing (Blazer, 2015). That is, when teaching new subjects out-of-field – in such situations, teachers can ‘become novices again and struggle with their instruction in ways common to new teachers’ (Du Plessis et al. 2019, 225).

In conclusion, more integrated and multi-dimensional programs are required that recognise and respond to different personal and professional needs at different career and life stages (Kelly and Fogarty 2015). For example, recognition of the significance in attracting teachers to hard-to-staff schools with regard to teachers’ professional commitment to make a difference. Feelings of belonging and being valued as well as their professional and personal self-efficacy were key to retention where relationships both within a school and also with the community are significant factors (Craig 2013). These are the affective dimensions of the teacherly habitus which are often ignored or not realised in policy initiatives such as the TFI. The other policy issue is how to encourage principals to fully call upon the aspirational capital of early-career teachers (Buchanan et al. 2013) and get beyond best fit (experience and being like us) to explore how more diverse age groups, backgrounds, and experiences can be supported and contribute to school and community capacity building.

Attracting and retaining teachers is also about the policy settings (Hobbs et al. 2022). While the shortage of teachers in rural or disadvantaged school settings is not new, our research indicates that policies can be developed to address this issue, such as better preparing preservice teachers through rural focused teacher education programs (Roberts, Downes, and Reid 2022). Our research also indicates the need for more professional development and systemic support for principals focusing on recognition and valuing of diversity in recruitment. While principals referred to how they were seeking to recruit a teacherly disposition towards social justice that would ‘fit’ the school and community, the principal discourse also recognises, as does recent research (Corbett 2020; Cuervo 2020), the need for teacher education that focuses on relationships and connectedness to place.

This analysis also identifies significant issues to be addressed when considering the larger policy issue of who to recruit to address the projected 4000 secondary school teacher shortages by 2025, particularly in STEM subjects and in rural and regional areas. In 2022, Federal and State governments in Australia are seeking to attract teachers internationally through skilled migration and targeted programs, as they did in the 1970s recruiting from USA, UK, and Canada, by promising fast track visas (Welch 2022). This teacher shortage is the manifestation of structural issues of the social field of school education relative to other professional fields such as the devaluing of the profession, the gender pay gap, reduced professional autonomy and the intensification of teachers’ work, all of which are impacting on teacher health and wellbeing (Riley et al., 2021). This study indicates that the conditions of teachers’ work need to improve, and this requires targeted funding for hard-to-staff schools which are usually the most disadvantaged. Teachers’ career aspirations and familial circumstances also need to be recognised. Financial incentives or recruitment programs targeting high achievers or overseas teachers are not enough to retain teachers (Goss, Sonnemann, and Nolan 2019). Unless teachers feel respected for their professional expertise through enabling agency, and school cultures and leadership are welcoming of diversity while providing opportunities for advancement, then teacher shortages will continue.

Ethics

Deakin University ID HAE-20-023.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Department of Education and Training, Victoria .

Notes on contributors

Jill Blackmore

Professor Jill Blackmore AM FASSA researches from a feminist perspective education policy and governance; international and intercultural education; leadership and organisational change; spatial redesign and innovative pedagogies; and teachers' and academics’ work, health and wellbeing.

Linda Hobbs

Associate Professor Linda Hobbs’ research interests include teaching out-of-field, STEM education, teacher learning and school change, partnerships in educations, as well as evaluation of education-based initiatives.