Vocational teachers in school settings: career pathways and motivations

ABSTRACT

Vocational programmes offered to school students form an essential segment of senior secondary education, providing opportunities for students to develop employability skills, complete their senior secondary certificate and gain credit towards a vocational qualification. While school systems are experiencing teacher shortages across the board, these are both acute and ongoing in vocational programmes in many countries and attracting and retaining vocational schoolteachers is a critical policy challenge. While career pathways, motivations and intentions, and job satisfaction for mainstream schoolteachers have been extensively studied there has been less research on vocational teachers, and very little on those teaching in a school setting. We sought to understand motivations for teaching, satisfaction and career pathways of teachers who teach Vocational Education and Training in schools (VET in schools) in Australia. This study employed structured interviews with nine VET teachers working within a secondary school setting. Self Determination Theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000b) was the analytical framework used to understand factors influencing their entry into teaching and engagement. We found commonalities with the research on attraction and retention into teaching more broadly, but identified additional specific factors shaping vocational teachers’ career journeys and motivation. We identify implications for policy and practice to support the attraction, retention and career satisfaction of VET in schools teachers.

KEYWORDS:

• Vocational education
• vocational education teachers
• teacher motivation
• teacher persistence
• secondary schools

Introduction

Vocational programmes available as part of the school senior secondary education curriculum provide important pathways into further education, training and/or employment for both early school leavers and completers. The quality of VET in schools is dependent on the capacity of schools to attract and retain staff with current industry experience and credentials, as well as an aptitude for teaching (Firth 2020). There are, however, ongoing concerns internationally about provision and VET providers struggle with staff shortages that jeopardise quality (Devier 2019; Hanley and Orr 2019), with teacher shortages being reported in England, the U.S., Germany, Korea and Sweden (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2021). While there is a considerable body of research on motivations for teaching more broadly, the requirements that VET in schools teachers have industry qualifications and current industry experience as well as specific VET teaching qualifications, and the fact that they usually have employment options beyond teaching, make them an older, unique group (Australian Government Labour Market Insights, n.d.-c).

There is a growing body of research on VET in schools teachers’ motivations for entering teaching as a second career change in a number of European countries such as Switzerland (e.g. Berger and D’Ascoli 2011, 2012a, 2012b; Berger and Girardet 2015), Belgium (Coppe et al. 2021), Germany (Stellmacher et al. 2020) and Lithuania (Mičiulienė and Kovalčikienė 2023). This study complements these findings but also builds on them by considering teacher retention, focusing on the views of those who have remained as VET in schools teachers for over 10 years.

We describe below an interview-based study focusing on the factors that influence VET in schools teachers to move towards and remain in teaching. Since the study was limited to the experiences of 9 Australian VET in schools teachers, we are unable to generalise findings to the broader population, however, by drawing on motivational theories our analysis of the interviews aims to contribute to our understanding of how these factors interact and determine teachers’ professional satisfaction and retention in schools.

Context

The state in which the study was conducted, Victoria, offers two types of vocational learning to students. The first, Vocational Education and Training Delivered to Secondary Students (VETDSS), is a vocational programme embedded within the Victorian Certificate of Education, the end-of-school qualification. VETDSS provides school students with the opportunity to gain an industry-recognised qualification, or make substantial progress towards the gaining of one, whilst also achieving their senior secondary certificate (i.e. dual certification). VETDSS is regulated by the wider VET sector as it leads towards nationally recognised VET qualifications under the Australian Qualifications Framework (ASQA, 2021). VETDSS teachers must demonstrate that they have maintained industry experience, hold the relevant occupation-specific VET qualification in which they are teaching (for example, a Certificate III in Electrical Fitting) and complete the Certificate IV in Training and Education (i.e. the initial teaching qualification in the Australian VET sector which is at AQF level 4 on the Australian Qualifications Framework). These minimum requirements are the same for VET teachers teaching in the school sector and/or the wider VET sector to adult students. VETDSS is offered in all Australian senior secondary certificates of education and is designed to contribute towards the calculation of the Australian Tertiary Admissions Rank (ATAR), providing pathways into higher education, further education, and employment. The second programme is the Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning (VCAL). This is a senior secondary certificate of education designed as a pathway into Technical and Further Education, apprenticeships and traineeships and/or employment. VCAL teachers teach literacy and numeracy skills, employability skills and personal development skills. As this programme falls under the regulatory requirements of the school sector, teaching into this programme requires only an approved initial teacher education qualification offered by a higher education provider at AQF level 8 or above (e.g. Graduate Diploma in education or Master’s degree in teaching).

In Victoria, both VET and VCAL school teachers must be registered with the Victorian Institute of Teaching (i.e. the professional association). For those VET in schools teachers without an AQF level 8 or higher recognised teaching qualification from an accredited university, these teachers must seek permission to teach within a school context every three years. Thus, unlike other generalist teachers employed in the Australian school system, it is possible in Australia to teach secondary school students without an approved initial teacher education qualification (e.g. Graduate Diploma in education or Master’s degree in teaching) but under such circumstances, teaching is limited to delivery and assessment of the vocational curriculum. Some of our participants taught VET only, while others taught both VET and VCAL.

Review of the literature

Research on entering and remaining in teaching

The past two decades have seen major advances in our knowledge around motivations for entering and remaining in teaching in schools. This research has taken on increased urgency in a context of widespread teacher shortages. Previous research has found increased dissatisfaction with teaching and increased intentions to leave among current teachers. Longmuir et al. (2022) found the percentage of teachers planning to leave or considering leaving the profession in Australia had increased from 58% in 2019 to 74% in 2022, and teacher satisfaction had declined over the same period. In England, one in ten teachers in the state education sector left this in the 2021–2022 school year (UK Government, 2023), highlighting the urgency of understanding how to retain teachers.

Attrition from teaching increases when labour markets are tight, and teachers find it easy to obtain paid work beyond schools (Goldhaber and Theobald 2022). Hanley and Orr (2019) reported that VET providers in the UK are ‘competing directly with industry for employees’ (p. 112). Worth, Tang and Galvis () found that ‘the strength of the wider labour market … matters for teacher recruitment’ (p. iii), with a one percent increase in the UK unemployment rate leading to a 6% increase in applications for initial teacher training. These labour market impacts have also been noted in the United States (Goldhaber and Theobald 2022), Thailand (Chung and Huang 2012), South Africa (Mwamwenda 2010) and Turkey (Yüce et al. 2013).

Previous research has demonstrated that a wide range of factors influences teachers’ decisions to remain in teaching or leave. These include teacher voice in school (Garcia, Han, and Weiss 2022), workload (Saks et al. 2022), and support from principals and colleagues (Garcia, Han, and Weiss 2022). Studies that focused on personal motivations for teaching have most commonly adopted the Factors Influencing Teaching (FIT) choice scale (Watt and Richardson 2007). This research has identified that intrinsic factors, such as enjoyment of teaching, are particularly important in the decision to teach (Gore et al. 2016; Watt and Richardson 2007). However, there has been an increasing recognition of the need for more nuanced examination of the pathways and career motivations of different types of teachers, a shift away from the ‘one size fits all’ approach (Fray & Gore, 2018) that examines teachers as a unified group. Recent work has examined the career pathways, motivations and retention of teachers by subject specialisations (e.g. Rice et al. 2023; Vaidya and Thompson 2020), teacher indigeneity (Landertinger, Tessaro, and Restoule 2021), and teacher race or colour (Brantlinger and Grant 2022; Elfers et al. 2022), amongst other factors.

Career changers into teaching

As part of this more fine-grained approach, there is now a body of work looking at the motivations and retention of those who change careers into teaching. Career changers now form an important group of commencing teachers . While there is no fixed definition for what constitutes a career changer into teaching, they are usually seen as over 25 years old and having previous professional experience that will enhance their capacity to teach (Varadharajan et al. 2021). Because of the requirement for industry qualifications and experience, VET in schools teachers tend to be classified as career changers (Hof and Leiser 2014; Mičiulienė and Kovalčikienė 2023). Career-change teachers bring purpose, commitment, contemporary skills and experience to teaching (Dadvand et al. 2023) while also helping to alleviate teacher shortages (Siostrom, Mills, and Bourke 2023). Teacher shortages disproportionately affect socially disadvantaged schools and employing career-change teachers has been one way of addressing these inequities (Lampert et al. 2021).

Research has highlighted the specific needs of these teachers and the support they require (Dadvand et al. 2021). The decision to change career is significant, especially for those with dependents and/or financial commitments when the earnings of teaching are less than their previous occupation (Hof and Leiser 2014). This has resulted in a number of VET teachers adopting a ‘hybrid’ model of employment in which they continue in business and/or enterprise simultaneously (Mičiulienė and Kovalčikienė 2023. The reasons for making the change to teaching are diverse but can be broadly classified into intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Intrinsic factors comprise personal, psychological and emotional reasons, values and job satisfaction (Alharbi 2020; Coppe et al. 2021) and prior experiences and teachers as positive role models (Mičiulienė and Kovalčikienė 2023; Siostrom, Mills, and Bourke 2023) while extrinsic factors include financial and economic considerations, job security, relocation, work/life balance or inability to continue work in their current career (Alharbi 2020; Coppe et al. 2021; Siostrom, Mills, and Bourke 2023). Anthony and Ord (2008) reported second-career teachers’ motivations as complex, positioning work, family and expectations of teaching as a career as significant and interrelated factors in their decision making.

A major difference between career-change teachers and those who choose teaching as their first career is that career-changers have a point of comparison between teaching and their previous career (Kristmansson and Fjellstrom 2022). ‘ … Second-career teachers are choosing their new profession, not simply based on their general expectations, but based on how they perceive its benefits and advantages relative to those offered by some specific prior career’ (Alharbi 2020, 90). Siostrom’ et al. (2023) scoping review similarly found that dissatisfaction with the previous career and external events affecting that career (such as redundancy or increased job instability) were important in career changers’ decisions to move to teaching.

Attraction and retention of those teaching VET in schools

The attraction and retention of VET in schools teachers is still very much under-researched. In the few studies undertaken, there tends to be a focus on motivations for entering teaching as a career change. For example, the work of Berger and d’Ascoli (2012a), and that of Stellmacher et al. (2020) highlights the greater importance that opportunity plays in the career motivations and pathways of VET in schools teachers, with teachers responding to an opportunity without necessarily having planned a career in teaching. There is also some evidence that personal utility factors, such as the capacity to balance work with caring responsibilities, play a stronger role in VET in schools teachers’ decisions to move towards and stay in teaching than in the decisions of teachers in more traditional roles (Berger and Girardet 2015). This aligns with research on career changers in other teaching fields and suggests that the importance of personal utility factors such as job security rises for jobseekers as they accumulate financial and caring commitments.

The few studies that have examined motivations to remain within a vocational teaching role for career changers have tended to be limited to those who are hybrid VET teachers (i.e. maintaining a mix of teaching and industry employment (e.g. Coppe et al. 2021; Mičiulienė and Kovalčikienė 2023). Very few, if any, have focused on the motivations to remain in the teaching workforce for VET in school teachers with extensive full-time experience as a teacher. This is particularly of interest given the regulatory requirements for those teaching and assessing vocational qualifications in Australia for national recognition purposes to maintain industry currency (i.e. having up to date skills, knowledge and experience in a particular industry) (Clayton et al. 2013). Maintaining industry currency may be particularly challenging for VET in schools teachers who are employed full time as teachers after making a career change.

Theoretical framework

This study utilised Self Determination Theory (SDT), one of the most commonly used broad theories of motivation (Ryan and Deci 2000a). It has been used to study human behaviour in fields as diverse as student engagement (Reeve 2012), online learning (Chiu 2022), exercise (Teixeira et al. 2012), and consumer decisions (Gilal et al. 2019). There is a long history of SDT being used to understand work-related decisions and improve engagement in the workplace (see E. Deci, Olafsen, and Ryan 2017 for a summary). SDT thus forms a sound theoretical choice for examining VET in schools teachers’ decisions to move towards and remain in teaching and their current satisfaction. SDT proposes three basic psychological needs universal to humans: autonomy, relatedness and competence, which we apply in relation to careers, building on the work of Chen (2017).

Career autonomy refers to an essential human need to have some sense of control and independence in one’s own work life (e.g. roles and responsibilities), work environment and career development choices. It depicts an individual’s basic and instrumental tendency to express, utilise, and construct meaning to one’s career choices and to pursue career possibilities that align to career aspirations and vocational interests. To achieve career autonomy, Career Self Determination Theory stipulates that an individual has to possess, attain and utilise their talents, wisdom, capabilities and skills to solve career-related problems and reach more desirable career outcomes. Career relatedness refers to ‘dynamic phenomena of relational contexts, socialization and social interaction and connections in various life-career situations’ (Chen 2017, 340). Career competence focuses on the need to gain a sense of achievement through work and work choices. Individual motivation for work is supported when people can exercise autonomy, experience themselves as competent, and enact meaningful relationships in their work.

The relationship between basic needs and overall motivation levels is complex. Ryan and Deci (2000b) make the distinction between ‘intrinsic motivation, which refers to doing something because it is inherently interesting or enjoyable, and extrinsic motivation, which refers to doing something because it leads to a separable outcome’ (p. 55). They make a further distinction between autonomous motivation and controlled motivation. Ratelle et al. (2007) note that ‘Autonomous motivation is observed when behavior is initiated and governed by the self (i.e. when intrinsically motivated or [when extrinsic motivations are] regulated by identification), whereas controlled motivation is observed when behavior is not initiated or governed by the self (i.e. when regulated by introjection or external factors)’ (p. 735). Ryan and Deci (2017) note that ‘Management approaches in organizations both large and small are thus being transformed from trying to control people from the outside with carrots and sticks … to more autonomous work motivation and job commitment’ (p. 534). They further observe that ‘conditions that support the satisfaction of basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness facilitate intrinsic motivation, [and] internalization and integration of extrinsic motivation’ (2017, 239). Internalised or integrated extrinsic motivation is formed when extrinsic motivations (such as a bonus for a salesperson for meeting a target) are seen by a person as aligned with and contributing to meeting their basic needs for autonomy, competence and affiliation and thus support effort. That is, within Self-Determination Theory, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation are conceptualised as distinct from the fulfilment of basic needs, but the fulfilment of these needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness supports higher levels of autonomous motivation (intrinsic motivation and integrated extrinsic motivation) that in turn are associated with work satisfaction and commitment.

Research questions

The stimulus for this research was the current teacher shortage across all sectors of education both internationally and in Australia. While factors influencing the attraction and retention of primary and secondary teachers have been well-documented, less is known about the group of teachers (often career-changers) who move from an industry base into teaching and stay in the profession. These teachers have highly specialised skills that are attractive to schools offering VETDSS programmes, but their motivation to become and remain teachers, teaching experiences, compliance requirements, progression pathways and job satisfaction need to be determined to ensure this group of teachers are supported in their schools and are not lost to the teaching profession.

Using the theoretical framework outlined above, our research questions for the study were:

• How do experienced VET in schools teachers conceptualise their competence, autonomy and relatedness within a school setting and to what extent does their career pathway influence their conceptualisation?

• What intrinsic and extrinsic motivational factors lead VET in schools teachers to move towards and remain in teaching on a full time basis?

Methodology and methods

Participant recruitment

After receiving approval from the University Human Research Ethics Committee, an invitation to participate in the study was posted on an Australian Facebook group of teachers currently teaching VET to Victorian senior secondary school students. Teachers who were interested in this study were asked to complete a short Qualtrics survey to determine their suitability, for example, if they were currently working in a secondary school that offered VET in schools programmes. Nine participants were identified as suitable and they were provided with a plain language statement explaining the purpose and methodology of the study, steps to maintain confidentiality, and the voluntary nature of participation. Participants were asked to sign, scan and email back a consent form prior to the interview. The ninth respondent was a VET in schools teacher known to the research team and was invited to participate via email. In total, 10 structured interviews were conducted. Analysis of the data indicated that saturation had been reached after 9 interviews and that there was little emerging beyond the already identified themes (Hennink and Kaiser 2022).

Sample description

Of the nine participants interviewed, six taught VET in schools only, and three taught a mixture of VET in schools and VCAL. All nine participants interviewed were highly experienced with an average of 18 years of teaching experience, and a minimum of 10 years. Participants were drawn from nine Victorian secondary schools. The participants had followed a range of different pathways into teaching as described in Table 1 below. Pseudonyms are used throughout this paper.

Table 1. Study participants.

Participant	Pathway	Higher Education Teaching Qualification (i.e. Graduate Diploma in Education or Master degree in teaching)?	VET/VCAL/Both	Number of years teaching
Betty	Began as a teacher of vocational studies in a Further Education institute. Moved into school VET teaching after three years and has been teaching for approximately 17 years.	No	VET	23
Jingnan	Started working in VET in 2012.	Yes	Both	17
Della	Began as classroom teacher. Began doing volunteer work, and then casual work for RSPCA Education. Moved into VET teaching from this.	Yes	VET	22
Fahima	Worked in a hotel part time in a regional city, and developed hospitality skills. Left university to take an apprenticeship.	Yes	VET	22
Kerryn	Initially a physical and health education teacher. Taught overseas, followed by a move to Australia and teaching in independent school	Yes	VET	28
Marianne	Worked in health care industry. Followed this with postgraduate qualification in education on top of the bachelor, and moved into teaching	Yes	VET	13
Oscar	Began teaching in 2012 and moved into VET	Yes	Both	11
Tarani	Worked in the hospitality sector for many years. Completed hospitality qualifications back in the eighties, and worked for industry, but always had an interest in being a teacher. Moved into teaching 16 years ago	Yes	VET	17
Tineke	Further education course in Ireland, after that completed a postgraduate qualification in teaching. Taught in a school in England, was put into a vocational style pathway role as well as being in humanities stream.	Yes	Both	14

Data collection and analysis

Method

A structured interview approach was taken to gather data for this research. The use of structured interviews was adopted to ensure each interview followed a deliberate, intentional and standardised process. The interview questions were designed to allow us to deeply understand the experience of teachers in electing to teach VET classes, the pathways into VET teaching and how VET teachers view and sustain their teaching careers. We were cognisant that our participants were busy professionals with limited time so a rigid approach to the interviews, following a set order for the interview questions, was successful in eliciting the responses necessary to respond to the project’s research questions. This form of interviewing technique ensures that responses can be aggregated to fit the objective of the study and provides uniform responses allowing for data comparison (Rashidi et al, 2014). It also ensured there were few, unnecessary deviations in the discussions, allowing us to concentrate on the key themes we wished to uncover during the interviews. Each interview was conducted on Zoom and took approximately 30 minutes. Questions included:

• Tell me about how you came to be a vocational teacher within a school setting – what pathway did you take?

• Do you see teaching as a career? Do you see it as your main career?

• What do you like about VET teaching? What do you dislike?

• How are you maintaining your skills currency?

• How long do you intend to stay in VET teaching? Do you intend to stay teaching VET to school students?

All interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim.

Data analysis

Data was initially analysed according to interview questions to gain an understanding of the commonality across responses from all participants. With an understanding of the data set, it was then analysed thematically (Braun and Clarke 2006) against categories drawn from self-determination theory (i.e. Competence, Autonomy, Relatedness), and Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation Factors (E. L. Deci 1975). Each participant’s interview data was coded independently by two team members in a spreadsheet to establish inter-rater reliability.

Results

Pathways into teaching

We identified two typical pathways into VET teaching among our participants. In the first pathway, teachers had entered via a standard secondary teaching pathway through a university degree plus a teaching qualification at AQF level 8. As secondary subject teachers (for example, as a science or humanities teacher), they had become interested in VET teaching and/or an opportunity to teach VET in schools had arisen, and they had moved into vocational teaching consequently. In some cases, they already had industry experience and relevant industry qualifications within the VET sector, and in others they acquired such experience along the way. The second group had their first career in industry, and for a range of reasons had chosen to move into a school-based VET teaching position after their period in industry, acquiring a Certificate IV in Training and Assessment to do so. Five of our participants had come to VET teaching through the first pathway, and four through the second, industry-based pathway. Some participants had had occasional forays back into industry, and some retained part-time or casual industry work, such as design work, as a supplement to their teaching career.

Teaching intentions

All nine participants indicated that they intended to remain teaching as far ahead as they could envisage, and all indicated that they wanted to stay teaching VET within a secondary school context rather than in the tertiary education context. All participants reported high levels of satisfaction with teaching as a career, and all expressed that they viewed teaching as a long-term career rather than merely as a job.

The role of autonomy, competence and relatedness in moving towards and remaining in teaching

Competence

According to Self Determination Theory, competence refers to how capable a person feels about their ability to complete a task (E. L. Deci and Ryan 2000). The more capable a person feels in performing a task, the more likely they will be to internalise the task (i.e. perform the task based on intrinsic rather than extrinsic motivation (E. L. Deci and Ryan 2000). In our interviews a sense of competence in their teaching was expressed by all participants. For example,

I can actually transform them into people who can get employment, people who can go on to further study … these kids are now winning awards, getting jobs, and all because I gave them responsibility.

Trina

Two of the teachers interviewed in this study perceived their competence in terms of their inherent abilities. One of them said:

I think I’m a natural teacher. It didn’t … it wasn’t a huge step for me to go into the classroom and teach and I think that comes down to empathy, this weird combination of empathy and organization, and liking the way things logically progress.

Betty

Three teachers described their ability to perform their role as a VET in schools teacher in terms of their prior qualifications and experience. Hence, the notion of competence was directly linked to external signals of capabilities and competencies. For example,

I did a science degree, became a teacher, so secondary science teacher. My science degree was in zoology, like almost a major. Then I was doing volunteer work, and then casual work for RSPCA [Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals} Education and RSPCA run a Cert II Animal Studies through Box Hill as an accelerated course…And because at that point in time I had lots of school knowledge, and as well as lots of animal knowledge they were like, ‘Yes, you’re the person you want for that.’

Della

A number of participants framed their competence through the sense of satisfaction they derived from building the competence of their students in skills they saw as essential:

I love the fact that you know teaching kitchen skills, they just don’t have them. I think it’s fantastic, you know, being able to do that… And even in the front of house skills, these young people don’t know how to communicate. So that’s been fantastic teaching that you know.

Tarani

“I think it just helps to set them up for their future and also it tells them that they can do things and it’s that extra little confidence boost.

Jingnan

Autonomy

Autonomy is an individual’s need to act with a sense of ownership of their behaviour and feel psychologically free (E. L. Deci and Ryan 2000 cited in Van den Broeck et al. 2016). It should be noted that autonomy is not ‘a need to act independently from the desires of others; rather, it implies the need to act with a sense of choice and volition, even if doing so means complying with the wishes of others’ (Van den Broeck et al. 2016, 1198)., with the caveat being that compliance is seen as driven by internal needs rather than being externally imposed.

For several participants, comments about their autonomy were largely negative, with a strong focus on the degree of compliance with externally-imposed requirements and record-keeping required in the VET in schools role, particularly where their subject had compliance requirements associated both with VET and with the state certification organisation.

I dislike the fact that there is a lot of additional compliance work … compared to, like a normal standard teacher it’s yeah, it’s very sort of admin based I think.

Marianne

… what I dislike about that is that it’s a VCE VET program. So I’ve got the Registered Training Organisation [national VET] compliances. And then I’ve got the VCAA [Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority] compliances.

Kerryn

While some mentioned compliance as taking them away from the core business of teaching, other participants pointed to compliance requirements restricting the way they taught. For example,

It’s very regimented. So, in my everyday classroom … I can be a little bit more flexible. If it’s students having a bad day, we can, you know, pare back a bit, but if you think about it as an assessment, it’s a little bit harder to work around that kind of those structural things.

Jingnan

… there isn’t that sort of flexibility that could be done in terms of the assessment tool used.

Oscar

Other autonomy issues raised by participants include having to maintain industry currency and keeping current with the constant changes in training packages.

Why do I need to go and do this VET training? I think that’s been all the discussions online at the moment, you know, with the updates, I mean I can get my Bachelor of Science, and not need to update that for years, and that’s all I need to be doing but in the VET sector every two years I need to do an update.

Kerryn

These comments suggest that compliance requirements were largely perceived as negative, restrictive, externally imposed and unnecessary. Interestingly however, this sense of frustration impacting on their identity as a teacher, appears not to have impacted on their decision to remain in the teaching workforce given that all the teachers interviewed had more than 10 years’ teaching experience, and the regulatory requirement to maintain industry currency has been a requirement of the VET sector for more than 20 years (Clayton et al. 2013).

Relatedness

Relatedness, according to Self Determination Theory, concerns the affiliations an individual builds within an organisation (Deci, 2009). Relatedness includes forming bonds or attachments with other teachers but also relationships with students, parents and the broader community.

Relatedness featured strongly in the comments participants made about what they liked about VET teaching. For some participants, VET teaching roles enabled them to develop deeper and more influential relationships with their students in comparison to other teaching roles. Della, who had originally wanted to teach at the Zoo, commented, ‘When I got in the classroom and started developing relationships with kids and watching them grow across the time you have them, that changed into actually, no, [I don’t want to teach at the Zoo] I want the connection with the kids and to watch them grow across the time.’ Betty commented that the capacity to have a broader teaching focus in which the individual, rather than the curriculum, was central.

However, comments linked to relatedness also featured in participants’ responses to questions about what they disliked about VET in schools teaching. Participants commented about the lack of understanding of their role and of the importance of VET in schools among other teachers and school leadership. This formed a source of dissatisfaction. For example,

I dislike the fact that I just don’t think [VET] is recognized enough in schools … I don’t think it’s valued by everyone in the school.

Tarani

…the lack of understanding from…your teaching cohort of what it actually means to do [VET teaching]. I think what people just go, ‘Oh, he, he or she is not very good at this or they are good with their hands. We’ll just send them to go and do this’, and it’s like, well, there is more to it than that, as well. [That’s] the misunderstanding from peers.

Fahima

These findings suggest that VET in schools teaching largely supported the fulfilment of the basic needs of competence and relatedness amongst participants, although there were constraints on autonomy that were perceived negatively.

Intrinsic and extrinsic motivations for entering and remaining in teaching

Both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations for entering and remaining in teaching were identified in the interviews, many of which are aligned with the literature on the attraction into teaching and teaching satisfaction of non-vocational teachers, and particularly career changers.

Intrinsic motivations

Social justice motivations

Participants placed a strong emphasis on the social justice aspect of teaching. Marianne commented, ‘I wanted to make a bit of a difference. I think that’s why I got into health care in the first place. But it just became a little bit mundane. I thought give the teaching thing a crack.’, while Oscar noted, ‘Just the ability to help others, provide that opportunity to help others, empower young kids, or in this case young adults to be able to stand on their own two feet, learn the life skills that they need to function.’

Participants were aware of the nature of the VET in schools student cohort, which is skewed towards students from lower SES backgrounds and those with weaker records of academic achievement (Billett 2020; Polesel and Clarke 2011). Three participants situated their teaching motivation and satisfaction strongly in relation to this cohort in their comments. They noted that VET teaching offered opportunities to provide these students with a more relevant and engaging school experience and the building of supportive relationships. Oscar reported that he found VET teaching ‘to be a relatively empowering sort of experience because it’s kind of connected to the life skills that kids learn, and how they learn, and then being able to put that in the real world at the end of the day. And I found that to be, I guess, really valuable.’. Participants noted the challenges their students typically faced, and that the role gave them the opportunity to support students towards a better future. Jingnan, who had grown up in a less advantaged family, commented, ‘ … working in a lower socioeconomic area, I can kind of relate to some of my students and some of the family situations that they might be in.’ Several participants noted an active desire on their part to work with disadvantaged young people, and Kerryn’s comment in this regard was typical: ‘as I’ve moved around the globe, and you know, taught in other schools, I’ve realized that it’s the disengaged students that I like to work with.’

Passion for teaching

Four participants mentioned a passion for teaching, noting they had wanted to be a teacher since they were students in primary school, or that they simply loved their job. Only one participant, Betty, noted a passion for their subject, saying ‘I always said, used to say, when I was in primary school. I wanted to be an art or a math teacher, and I think multimedia is that beautiful intersect between creativity and logical thinking. And that’s what web design is. What coding is.’. Jingnan also commented on their own passion for learning as a motivator, saying that teaching was a job in which there was always the opportunity to learn and become a better teacher, while Kerryn considered that teaching kept her young through contact with the students. Fahima also noted that a VET in schools role allowed her to combine teaching with her work in industry, allowing her greater variety and the capacity to keep up her skills.

Extrinsic motivations

Job security

Extrinsic motivations also featured strongly in the participants’ responses to the questions. The job security associated with being employed in a secondary school was mentioned as a positive factor in their decision to teach in schools by five of the nine participants. Comments included:

[I] was a TAFE [Technical and Further Education] teacher first, and I kind of got sick of thirty-six weeks employed, the rest of the time not employed. So I went looking for a more permanent job and got a job in a high school as a tech. I’m making life happen on my own, and paying a mortgage on my own, so job security and having enough money to pay a mortgage, is a big factor.

Betty

I came from a very poor background, my parents, we didn’t have a lot of money, and I saw [a job in] education as a way to have a stable job and a stable income.

Jignan

The main reason I came into schools, I think, was that guaranteed continuance of, you know, you’ve got once you get in, you know you’ve got the definite job, you’ve got a future there.

Tarani

I think the schools give you stability. So you know I’m a single mum. My boys lost their dad years ago, and so I was sort of grateful that the teaching gave me the stability.

Kerryn

Work-life balance

Work-life balance was mentioned by five participants and some participants contrasted their teaching with the unbalanced life or hours incompatible with caregiving in their experiences in further education teaching or in their industry fields. Much research on teacher motivations finds that school holidays do not figure prominently in decisions to move into teaching, however, school holidays and the capacity to be with young children during them were mentioned by four participants in our sample as a factor in their motivation.

Yeah, I have young kids myself so that’s obviously you know a big bonus to be able to do that, you know, being with them in the holidays.

Marianne

Holidays was an attraction, because I had young children, and of course they’d spent primary school in holiday programs and childcare … it was the home life balance. I suppose I was working so hard in catering and just, look, I can’t keep this up, you know.

Tineke

Salary

Participants’ views diverged on salary. Five participants were positive about teacher salaries and some of these contrasted their teaching salary and/or the regularity of their teaching income with what was available to them in their industry field. For example:

Whatever I was on in industry, it was slightly more … but I knew that [in teaching] there was an increment jump every year whereas in industry, I didn’t know I was going to get that. So I saw that as a as a good option.

Tarani

Yeah, and the pay. You’re right. It’s pretty good.

Marianne

In contrast, two teachers commented negatively on salary, one in relation to work-life balance:

[It’s] definitely not [for] the pay. [I could] definitely make more at TAFE.

Fahima

Pay is lousy for the amount of work you put in. The work life balance, I’ve always had to do stuff over the holidays, so you know, people say Oh, you’ve got the holidays. How lucky you! But you don’t realize that you know the job means you’ve got to prepare. You’ve got [to have] a plan. And when you’re teaching senior classes, you’ve got to put in basically.

Kerryn

Oscar was ambivalent, noting that while teachers were not particularly well-paid, he felt the salary was enough to ‘pay the bills’, and he had been able to recently buy a house.

In summary, within the SDT framework, it would appear that the capacity of VET in schools teaching to meet our participants’ basic needs for competence and relatedness (if not autonomy) likely feeds into the intrinsic motivations for teaching identified (passions for teaching and social justice) and works to transform their extrinsic motivations (job security, work-life balance, and for some, salary) into integrated extrinsic motivations. In turn, intrinsic and integrated extrinsic motivations combined to form participants’ high levels of autonomous motivation for VETDSS teaching, as evidenced in their comments concerning their satisfaction with their work, and their intentions to remain in VETDSS teaching for the remainder of their careers.

Discussion

The study highlights some similarities, but also some important differences, between the motivations and satisfaction of experienced VET in schools teachers and those identified in the more general literature for schoolteachers.

The VET in schools teachers in our study identified strong social motivations for teaching. This finding aligns with much of the extant research on motivations for teaching more generally, with evidence that social utility values – the capacity to address disadvantage, contribute to the development of society, and shape young people’s formation – are rated highly as career motivations by those entering teaching (Kilinç, Watt, and Richardson 2012; Massari 2014; Richardson and Watt 2006; Thomson 2013). In a similar vein, an intrinsic enjoyment of teaching was found to be an important motivation for entering teaching by Richardson and Watt (2006) and by Fokkens-Bruinsma and Canrinus (2014), and this passion for teaching was identified by four of our participants.

However, in keeping with initial research into the career motivations of VET in schools teachers and career change teachers (recognising the overlap between the groups), extrinsic factors played a very important role in many participants’ decisions to move towards and remain in teaching and in their ongoing satisfaction with their work. One key factor for some participants was the job security associated with school-based teaching, which was contrasted with the insecurity of VET teaching in the wider VET sector (i.e. post schooling), or in employment in their industry field. Teaching in schools was seen as offering much more security and stability than, for example, hospitality work or freelance design work. The regularity and family-friendly nature of school teaching working hours were also given as important reasons for moving into and remaining in teaching, with some mentioning the importance of school holidays in being able to balance work and caring responsibilities. While some participants spoke negatively about teacher pay, others cited pay as a positive influence on their attraction and retention into teaching. This heterogeneity in responses is in keeping with the work of both Sevilla et al. (2023) and Coppe et al. (2021) who found distinct profiles of motivations among Chilean and Belgian VET in schools teachers with prior industry experience, respectively.

Participants did not only compare what VET teaching offered with roles outside schools. This comparative process appeared to occur within the school context as well, with several participants preferring VET teaching to more academic senior secondary teaching. Our participants noted the practicality of VET and the capacity to make a difference to students who may not have been successful in academic work, and the ability to support their successful transitions to the workplace through the development of work-related skills. This practicality and relevance of what students do and learn in VET classes were contrasted with decontextualised learning in generalist subjects.

Relatedness through the capacity to get to know and support students and the perceived relevance of VET subjects enhanced VET teacher satisfaction and retention. This is in keeping with other international research suggesting that relationships and the practicality of VET contribute to VET in schools teachers’ professional identities (Köpsén 2014). However, the study confirmed earlier research on the lower status of VET vis a vis the traditional academic curriculum (Coppe et al. 2021; Hiim 2020; Polesel and Clarke 2011), with participants noting a lack of respect for vocational subjects and pathways among some non-vocational teachers and school leaders, and a lack of understanding of the role of the VET teacher and the complexities it entails.

This study revealed feelings of frustration with the additional administration burden of compliance requirements that are unique to VET in schools teachers. Thus, what emerged in this study was VET in schools teachers’ internal struggles with their teacher identity, in which they were required to maintain multiple identities: an occupational identity (for currency purposes); a teaching identity (that aligns with their intrinsic motivations to make a difference to the lives of young people from a social justice perspective); as well as an administrative identity (i.e. for regulatory compliance purposes). However, fulfilling all three competing roles did not appear to impact negatively on their decision to remain in the teaching profession amongst the group of highly experienced VET in school teachers interviewed in this study. Such findings suggests that VET in schools teachers’ intrinsic and extrinsic motivation factors, in addition to a strong sense of relatedness have a stronger impact on decisions to remain within the teaching profession than their sense of autonomy.

Several policy responses to VET teacher shortages are suggested by the research. Five of the nine participants in this study had an in-school pathway into VET teaching. Currently there are increasing numbers of new teachers who are career changers and have already worked in a non-teaching role before entering teaching (Dadvand et al., 2023). Such teachers may have relevant industry experience, and one policy option would be to provide opportunities for those who are teaching or completing initial teacher qualifications as a career changer to move to VET teaching. While teacher shortages are commonly reported in general terms, detail often reveals that there are shortages in some subject areas and oversupply in others. Providing scholarships and time for teachers or trainee teachers in an area of subject oversupply to gain necessary experience might go some way to addressing supply issues. Recent research suggests that some teacher candidates are interested in changing teaching focus or subject area, provided they are appropriately supported (Authors, under review), so decisions about subject specialisations appear to have some flexibility.

The issue of the status and visibility of VET in schools is a vexed and longstanding one, and easy policy fixes are unlikely (Hanley and Orr 2019). However, most of our participants complained about a lack of appreciation and awareness on the part of other school staff, and this might be addressed through formal or informal professional learning for non-VET staff, and through the championing of vocational learning by school leaders.

Although the administrative burden associated with working within a highly regulated VET sector restricted our participants’ perceptions of their autonomy in their work and was very much a source of dissatisfaction, it did not appear to have a negative impact on their sense of competence and/or relatedness. Furthermore, it did not impact on their decision to remain within the teaching profession. It should be noted that although external accountability is not unique to Australia’s VET sector (Misko 2015), given the size and diversity of the VET sector [i.e. with approximately 4500 providers delivering nearly 2000 nationally recognised qualifications to more than 4 million students, (Gillis 2020)], Australia has implemented a strict rules-based regime for ensuring quality. However, as concerns continue to rise within the public domain with the quality and comparability of VET qualifications issued in Australia (Joyce 2019); and with the recent increase in the legislative power of the VET regulator (O’Connor 2024), it is unlikely that the administrative burdens placed on teachers will be reduced in the near future. Teachers therefore need support within the school to fulfil their administrative responsibilities, for example, in the form of additional release time from classes.

The study also points to some directions for further research in the field. As noted, this study was small-scale and qualitative in nature, and there is a need for further large-scale, quantitative research that allows for generalisations to the broader population of VET in schools teachers. Research needs to capture and differentiate between the factors specific to VET teaching and teachers but also the factors associated with maintaining a permanent career change into teaching on a full-time basis, given VET teaching is often a second or third career. In particular, further research needs to examine how VET teachers’ perceptions of relatedness, autonomy and competence interact with each other to influence their decision to remain within the teaching force and whether their intrinsic and extrinsic motivations can mitigate any negative perceptions associated with perceptions of loss of autonomy due to the regulatory requirements of working within the VET sector. Anglum et al. (2023) note that research on VET teachers is limited, but ‘suggests striking differences in motivations, backgrounds, preparation and academic and employment histories … compared to all public school teachers’ (p. 20), consistent with our findings. VET in schools forms a vital part of VET provision and supports stronger transitions for young people, particularly those from less affluent backgrounds. To enable this, we need further, more detailed research to understand how best to attract and retain those who will teach them.

Acknowledgements

This work was funded by a University of Melbourne Faculty of Education grant. We also acknowledge the generous time contribution of our participating VET in schools teachers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).