Mid-career Teachers Research Articles

Reflective teaching in Ethiopian secondary schools: examining teachers’ characteristics and engagement

ABSTRACT This quantitative study surveyed 361 secondary school teachers in South and Central Ethiopia to examine their engagement in reflective teaching and its relationship with gender, qualification, and teaching experience. The study used descriptive survey design and structured questionnaire to collect data. Results indicated that teachers had minimal overall engagement in reflective teaching. Results also showed insignificant difference between male and female teachers’ engagement in reflective teaching. However, there were significant differences in teachers’ engagement in terms of their qualification and teaching experience. In this regard, teachers with Bachelor of Education had the highest level of engagement, followed by Master’s and Applied degree holders. In addition, mid-career teachers had the highest level of engagement, exceeding the level both novice and veteran teachers had. The findings suggest the need to revisit existing pre-service teacher education programme, identify teachers’ engagement patterns, identify their specific needs, design and run tailored in-service professional development programmes, and establish support system to promote reflective teaching in Ethiopian secondary schools. Most importantly, the findings suggest the need for teachers to actually engage in reflective teaching in their professional contexts.

Exploring the Impact of Songs in EFL Teaching Across Age Groups: Perspectives from Vietnamese EFL Lecturers

This study investigates the effectiveness of using songs in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teaching from the perspectives of Vietnamese EFL lecturers, focusing on identifying the most beneficial age group among young learners, teenagers, and adult learners. Employing a qualitative research design, the study conducted semi-structured interviews with nine EFL teachers from two educational institutions in Vietnam, representing a range of experience levels from novice to near-end career. The data were analyzed using thematic analysis, guided by Constructivist and Socio-cultural theories of learning. The findings revealed that the application and perceived effectiveness of songs varied significantly across different age groups and teacher experience levels. Songs were universally recognized as beneficial in EFL teaching, but their implementation and impact differed, with novice teachers focusing on engagement, mid-career teachers on cultural and linguistic nuances, and near-end career teachers on a holistic language experience. The study found that songs are highly effective with young learners, need careful selection for teenagers, and should be thematically rich for adult learners. These insights have implications for EFL practitioners, curriculum designers, and policymakers, suggesting the need for tailored song-based activities and professional development for teachers.

Exploring the Impact of Scholarly Writing on Professional Development and Reflective Practices Among Vietnamese Tertiary EFL Teachers: A Qualitative Inquiry

This qualitative study investigates the perceptions of Vietnamese tertiary English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers on the role of writing scientific journal articles in their professional development and its contribution to their reflective teaching practices. Nine EFL teachers from two Vietnamese tertiary institutions, representing novice, mid-career, and near-end career stages, participated in semi-structured interviews. Thematic analysis was employed to interpret the data, grounded in reflective practice theory and situated learning theory. The findings reveal that teachers across all career stages perceive scholarly writing as a crucial component of their professional growth. Novice teachers viewed it as a reflective tool for self-discovery and skill enhancement, mid-career teachers as a means for consolidating experiences and contributing to the field, and near-end teachers as an avenue for mentorship and legacy building. Additionally, the study found that scholarly writing significantly fosters reflective teaching practices, enhancing self-reflection, pedagogical innovation, and mentoring across different career stages. The study highlights the multifaceted role of scholarly writing in professional development and reflective practices of EFL teachers. It underscores the need for tailored support for scholarly writing at various stages of a teaching career, emphasizing its value not only in academic contribution but also in enhancing teaching quality. The findings suggest that engagement in scholarly writing is a powerful catalyst for professional and pedagogical growth among EFL teachers, particularly in the evolving educational context of Vietnam.

Identifying Teaching and Laboratory Instruction Concerns of Illinois Agriculture Teachers

Concerns of teachers must be identified to provide quality teacher education programs and professional development. The theoretical framework of this study was the Teacher Career Cycle (Fessler & Christensen, 1992). The theory explains that as teachers move through the cycle, their characteristics and professional needs change. The purpose of this study was to identify the concerns of Illinois agriculture teachers of different experience levels. A multi-part instrument of demographic information, two teacher concern statements, and a Likert-type scale of concerns was administered. The sample was divided into three experience groups: early career, mid-career, and late career. The results indicate that certain concerns do change with the level of experience and that mid-career teachers in this sample have the most concerns. We recommend that these results be shared with the Illinois Association of Vocational Agriculture Teachers, universities, state agricultural education staff, and other stakeholders. Those leading professional development should consider years of experience when planning for workshops. Professional development topics on student motivation, funding for supplies, and student safety should be explored.

Learned from a Semester Spent in Schools

ABSTRACT This article reports on the experiences of a mid-career teacher educator who spent a full semester supervising student teachers in schools. Adopting a self-study methodology, she and a critical friend collected and analyzed data, often in the form of reflection, on her experiences of third space and liminality. The time that she spent on the project helped her to develop more nuanced understandings of the complex daily realities faced by elementary teachers, which led to changes in her instruction with the preservice teachers with whom she worked. Importantly, the experience helped her to rediscover a sense of passion for her work. Her approach led to deeper insights on the importance of spending time in schools and of emotions and relationships in the work of teacher education. The experience points toward interesting professional development possibilities for teacher educators at mid-career.

The Effects and Local Implementation of School Finance Reforms on Teacher Salary, Hiring, and Turnover

Knowing how policy-induced salary schedule changes affect teacher recruitment and retention will significantly advance our understanding of how resources matter for K–12 student learning. This study sheds light on this issue by estimating how legislative funding changes in Washington state in 2018–2019—induced by the McCleary court-ordered reform—affected teacher salaries and labor market outcomes. By embedding a simulated instrumental variables approach in a mixed-methods design, we observed that local collective bargaining negotiations directed new state funding allocations to substantially increase certificated base salaries, particularly for senior teachers with 16 years or more of teaching experience. Variability in political power, priorities, and interests of both districts and unions led to greater heterogeneity in teacher salary schedules. Suggestive evidence shows that state average teacher turnover rate was significantly reduced in the first year of reform. The McCleary-induced salary increase particularly reduces mid-career teachers’ (8–15 years of teaching experience) mobility rate and late-career teachers’ (23+ years of teaching experience) leaving rate. The McCleary-induced base salary increase has mostly null effects on teacher hiring in the first 2 years of implementation.

Система подготовки учителей в Японии на стадии разработки стандартов педагогических работников

Presented analysis of the teacher’s training process in Japan. Clarified the features of education courses and training for improving the qualifications of mid-career teachers. Examined papers and focused on basic knowledges and skills during the process of drafting for creating criteria that enable teacher assessment. Suggested to take into account some points of Russian Teacher’s Standard.

Preliminary Investigation of Teachers’ Emotional Exhaustion, Teaching Efficacy, Hope, and Colleague Support during the COVID-19 Pandemic

<p style="text-align: justify;">The COVID-19 pandemic required teachers to quickly adapt to changes in teaching likely impacting teachers’ emotional exhaustion and feelings of teaching efficacy. Further, teachers’ experience in the classroom may have shaped how they responded to the crisis and changes. Although teachers faced these unprecedented shifts, it is possible that both internal (i.e., hope) and external (i.e., social support) sources of support may act as promotive factors for teacher outcomes. The present study describes how teachers’ emotional exhaustion, teaching self-efficacy, and supports (hope and colleague) were associated with one another one year into the pandemic. Associations were compared across early-/mid-career and veteran teachers. Results showed higher emotional exhaustion and lower hope for early-/mid-career teachers compared to veteran teachers, and a negative relation between emotional exhaustion and hope for early-/mid-career teachers. Pre-pandemic emotional exhaustion predicted hope during the pandemic for all teachers. Implications include supporting teacher well-being and career longevity considering acute stress.</p>

Agency and professional identity among mobile teachers: how does the experience of teaching abroad shape teachers’ professional identity?

ABSTRACT In the context of global mobility research, this study explores agency and identity formation among mid-career teachers who travel abroad to experience teaching in a new country. We conducted in-depth interviews with 16 Israeli teachers and examined their retrospective narratives of their teaching experience. Our findings reveal a complex nexus of identity and agency, whereby identity formation echoes agency choices. We conceptualise forms of agency and point to possible connections between agency types and their use in identity formation. We conclude that under circumstances of rapid change, agency plays an important role in identity formation.

Daring Not to Lead: A Poetic self-study Examining the Tensions of Teacher Educator Identity

ABSTRACT This article simultaneously explores the dynamic nature of teacher educator identity and highlights the methodological potential of poetic inquiry in self-study. Using tensions as a conceptual framework to explore identity as a process of becoming, I draw from a series of found poems to examine my identity as a mid-career teacher educator working in a leadership position at an Australian university. In this article, I assert that poetic inquiry is a vehicle for representing the embodied, emotive aspects of ongoing identity development. I contend that poetic inquiry is a doorway to sharing experiences and understandings of identity in authentic, lived ways that speak back to metanarratives of academic work. Poetic self-study enables us to map the otherwise hidden tensions mediating our identity development and generate collective knowledge of what it can mean to be a teacher educator in higher education contexts.

Through Their Eyes: Ethnic Minority Students Describe Teachers Who Helped Them Succeed in School

In this article, ethnic minority students describe teachers who helped them succeed in school. Data are drawn from interviews conducted in 1997 with successful students enrolled in a pre-service education program at Yunnan Normal University. Many of the interviewees are now mid-career teachers in schools throughout Yunnan Province. Plans (postponed due to the pandemic) have been made to interview these individuals again, hopefully later in 2022. The focus here is on one characteristic of effective teachers that was mentioned frequently by the students, and that is teachers’ ability to bring about change. A tentative theoretical model was developed to explain teacher change agency. Using the model, we find that change brought about by teachers is manifested in students, schools, and society.

Mid-Career Teacher Retention: Who Intends to Stay, Where, and Why?

Teacher turnover is widely understood to be among the most pressing challenges facing the American public education system. Who and where are the mid-career teachers who choose to stay in the profession? Why do they stay? Researchers need to attend to these questions to inform both national dialogue and local actions regarding how to retain and sustain mid-career teachers who positively impact student learning. This quantitative study explored mid-career teachers’ responses to the 2015–2016 National Teacher and Principal Survey to ascertain if certain demographic factors (e.g., race, school location) and school climate and teacher attitudinal factors (e.g., job satisfaction, career pathway and opportunities, support from administrators and/or sources beyond school leaders and colleagues, and influence over school policy) affect a mid-career teacher’s decision to remain in the teaching profession. Findings indicate that mid-career teachers (5 to 20 years of teaching experience) in a secondary setting are significantly more likely to intend to stay in the profession than their peers in an elementary setting, and non-White mid-career teachers (Black/African American, Asian, Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islanders, and Native American/Alaskan Native) than their White peers, respectively. Suburban mid-career teachers are more likely to express a desire to remain in the profession than their counterparts in urban, town, and rural settings. Related to the climate and attitudinal factors, mid-career teachers with more positive perceptions of school climate are more likely to remain in the profession. The most important factor in mid-career teacher retention is the teacher’s level of satisfaction with workplace conditions that directly impact teaching.

Riding the happiness curve: the wellbeing of mid-career phase language teachers

ABSTRACT Mid-career teachers are often described as experienced and comfortable in their jobs with higher motivation and self-efficacy (Hargreaves 2005); yet, at the same time, the mid-career phase has also been portrayed as a period marked by a career plateau and feelings of stagnation (Farrell 2014). Despite the criticality of this career phase and the paradoxical research findings, mid-career teachers' lives have been rarely examined in-depth (Day and Gu 2010). This study employed semi-structured interviews with 16 mid-career foreign language teachers at secondary schools in the two different settings, Austria and England, to explore the characteristics of this career phase and the factors contributing to the wellbeing of these teachers. Inductive data analysis revealed that these mid-career language teachers benefitted from an established sense of confidence but also sought further professional growth opportunities. The teachers drew positivity and satisfaction from the meaning they took from their work, although their wellbeing appeared occasionally threatened by tensions between their job commitments and additional responsibilities in both personal and professional domains. The findings contribute to a more nuanced understanding of this under-researched population and indicate the kind of support such teachers would need to remain in the profession and thrive during this critical period.

Challenges and Resilience-Building: A Narrative Inquiry Study on a Mid-Career Chinese EFL Teacher.

With a high rate of attrition and burnout of teachers as a global concern, teacher resilience has become a trendy topic in the research of their professional development as one of the pillars of positive psychology (positive character traits). However, the literature reveals that little research has been done on the mid-career teachers in the Chinese context, especially on how resilience may be nurtured, sustained, or eroded over time. Focusing on a mid-career EFL female teacher (the author) in China as a case study, this longitudinal self-reflective study employs a narrative inquiry to investigate the challenges that the experienced teacher was encountered with and to depict her trajectories of resilience-building by fleshing out the interaction between challenges, resources, and coping strategies in her three different scenarios. “Hard data,” such as teaching journals, reflective field notes, and messages with students were collected and analyzed inductively by using thematic analysis, and “soft data,” like memory was also referred to. The findings unfolded challenges confronting the experienced teacher peculiar to the Chinese context and charted a detailed bumpy journey of resilience building in three phases, accompanied by her growing emotional, intellectual, and psychological capacities. Implications are drawn out for teacher resilience building, school leaders, and policymakers.

Implications for Selves and Students Through Introducing New Pedagogical Strategies Into Our Teacher Education Practice

Collaborative self-study involving three mid-career teacher educators at different universities who introduced three new teaching strategies into their courses. Strategies promoted students to actively work with one another to construct and share their understandings. Researchers investigated implications for self, practices, outcomes, and relationships with students. Data included researchers’ reflective journals, Zoom conferences, course materials, teaching notes, and students’ survey responses and feedback. Each instructor’s students were encouraged to critique and reflect on the strategies’ utilization. Four themes emerged: unsettling consequences of change, renewed energy and enthusiasm for teaching, new skills and perspectives, and perceptions of student engagement, learning, and relationships.

Mid-Career Teachers: A Mixed Methods Scoping Study of Professional Development, Career Progression and Retention

Globally, there are ongoing problems with teacher retention, leading to a loss of experience and expertise. In policy and research, the emphasis is often on the professional development and retention of early career teachers, whereas teachers in later stages of their career are relatively under-represented. This article addresses this imbalance, reporting on a mixed methods scoping study that explores definitions of mid-career teachers in England and their retention and development, via a literature review, primary data collection and secondary analysis of data from the OECD’s TALIS 2018 survey. We found that there is no agreed definition of mid-career teacher, relating to time in teaching, role and wider life circumstances and self-definition. Whatever definition is used, mid-career teachers are a heterogenous group, with varying needs, career plans and commitment to the profession. Whilst typically confident in their practice, their learning needs vary and are often experienced as unmet, especially for those looking for progression routes outside leadership and those with family commitments. This indicates that their potential for career development to benefit the profession may not be reached. The article concludes with suggestions for further study, policy and practice to improve understanding of this under-researched group.

Fostering intrinsic motivation among teachers: Importance of work environment and individual differences

ABSTRACT Given the high importance of the teachers’ role in overall school improvement, there has been a strong tradition to investigate various factors affecting teachers’ motivation in developed countries. However, like other variables, the factors of intrinsic motivation may offer variance in developed and underdeveloped countries. Thus, this study investigated the importance of work environmental factors and the role of teachers’ individual differences in fostering intrinsic motivation by collecting data from 357 Pakistani secondary school teachers. Interpersonal relationships were found to be the highest source of teachers’ intrinsic motivation. The structural equation model revealed that school work environment variables: administrative support, working conditions, interpersonal relationships, promotion, colleagues’ support, and salary were significant factors in fostering teachers’ intrinsic motivation. Teachers’ individual differences in gender, academic and professional qualifications, and work experience also showed a significant role in explaining teachers’ intrinsic motivation although the extent of effect was smaller than work environmental factors. Female teachers and teachers possessing low qualifications and having work experience of 6–10 years were found more intrinsically motivated. Findings suggest that school administration ought to encourage strategies that foster teachers’ needs and expectations, particularly for mid-career teachers and those possessing higher qualifications.

Considering Implications for Self and Institutions in Navigating Transitions in Teacher Education Administration

ABSTRACT Three mid-career teacher educators, each of whom involuntarily served as mid-level administrators are now in the similar position of having left those roles. Each has a different story to tell and they come from very different institutions, yet find themselves experiencing many of the same issues and frustrations. This collaborative self-study was an intentional study of and reflection on how their administrative roles impacted or changed their perspectives on teacher education in general and how it changed them each personally. The weight of the role had lasting implications for their personal and professional selves. Their reflective journals, weekly online meetings, and responses to each other’s experiences resulted in findings that can inform the work of others in similar positions or circumstances. Those findings, while both similar and distinct, reveal enough commonality that we, as teacher educators often placed in positions of leadership, must consider the implications for our practice, our students, our scholarship community, and our selves.

The Meaning and Structure of Learning at Professional Schools for Teacher Education in the Lifelong Development of Teachers:Making Sense of Learning by Mid-career Teachers who Graduated from Professional Schools for Teacher Education

The Meaning and Structure of Learning at Professional Schools for Teacher Education in the Lifelong Development of Teachers:Making Sense of Learning by Mid-career Teachers who Graduated from Professional Schools for Teacher Education

Exploring Intersections of Work Intensity and Professional Learning: Female Teachers’ Responses to Research Engagement as Professional Learning

Much research has focused upon the promise of teacher research engagement as a form of professional learning. Yet, little scholarship has looked closely at how female teachers juggle research engagement alongside personal and professional responsibilities. This inquiry into the research experiences of two mid-career teachers provides an up-close look at the ways they attempted to sustain engagement over a three-year period. Attending closely to participants’ accounts of time use, as they engaged in research activities, sheds light upon the presence of socio-cultural expectations, in these instances, constraining their efforts and, arguably, impacting the depth of their professional learning.