This first years of teaching constitute entry stage to the profession and are considered a period of critical importance for determining the new teacher's professional identity. This study explores the associations between novice teachers' perspectives of their relationship with their mentors and their professional commitment. This qualitative…

Through a phenomenological lens of portraiture methodology, this article explores the career experiences of a veteran acting teacher who, at the age of 85 years, remains highly passionate and dedicated to his work with younger aspiring actors. The article reveals how for this veteran teacher, his strong teacher identity characterised by a quest…

High teacher attrition rates hinder schools in their ability to provide quality instruction. While studies have identified factors related to attrition (e.g., salary, administrative support) and the emotions of teaching, research is needed that explores the impact of emotions on teachers' career decisions. This study examines the emotional…

The concept of professional agency has recently been predominating in the field of teacher education. Despite this considerable attention given to exploring professional agency embedded in different contexts, there is still scarcity in research on teacher trainees' agentic roles. To this end, this study focuses on exploring the impact of practicum…

This research narratively explores a veteran teacher's emotions and identities in varied teacher communities within and outside a rural school in China. Based on interviews, the teacher's one-year reflective narratives and conversational records with members of an online teacher community, this research constructs and reconstructs how varied…

Since the mid-1980s, the working lives of teachers has become an enduring research topic. Much research has focused on early-career teachers and is often reported from deficit positions, i.e. why they leave the profession. However, career trajectory studies have described a small cohort of veteran teachers who remain positive and committed to…

In this paper, we undertake a brief review of the "conventional" research into the problems of early career teachers to create a juxtaposed position from which to launch an alternative approach based on resilience theory. We outline four reasons why a new contextualised, social theory of resilience has the potential to open up the field…

The teaching profession continues to struggle with defining itself in relation to other professions. Even though public opinion positions teachers second only to doctors and nurses in terms of their professional status and prestige research in the UK suggests that teachers still believe that they have much lower status than other professions. With…