Early childhood (EC) teacher turnover is a chronic issue for the field that affects children, teachers, and programs; yet some teachers choose to remain in the profession. We interviewed EC teachers with the goal of identifying salient motivators and challenges to teaching in their EC workplace and the field generally. Teachers reported parts of…

This study investigates the intricate relationships among display rules, emotional job demands (EJD), emotional labour and the occupational well-being (OWB) of kindergarten teachers in China. Utilising the job demands-resources (JD-R) model, this study specifically assesses the influence of EJD and displays rules on two dimensions of teachers' OWB…

Prospective teachers' attitudes towards teaching are grounded in their experiences of successes and failures as students. Thus, addressing their attitudes towards teaching before starting their profession is strategic. To this aim, this study explored Jordanian prospective kindergarten teachers' attitudes towards the teaching profession.…

This article juxtaposes mentoring with an extended concept of time, arguing against the idea of mentoring as a unilaterally forward-moving progression. We discuss how time and temporality unfold in mentoring in the teaching profession. We further explore how temporality might create different potentialities of hope. Ultimately, we suggest the…

Purpose: Since the early 2000s there has been increased attention on the professionalisation of the Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) workforce in many OECD countries. This study focuses on what Australian early childhood educators holding the lowest level of qualification -- Certificate III are experiencing in relation to their…

How are teacher pension benefits funded? Under traditional plans, the full cost of career teachers' benefits far exceeds the contributions designated for them. The gap between the two has three pieces, which may (with some license) be mnemonically tagged the three R's of pension funding: "redistribution," "return," and…

What makes a teacher? How might educators be oriented toward children, rather than institutions? How might we grow pedagogies through humans, instead of systems? In a time of scope, sequence, standards, and scripted lessons, the orientation of teachers is often turned away from the actual people who inhabit the classrooms: the children and the…

At a time when national discourse in the USA centers the need for professionalization, regulation, and surveillance, this article emphasizes the ways in which neoliberal logics harm those working in early childhood education in the USA. While stakeholders at every level debate proposed solutions to the early childhood education crisis, largely…

Drawing on official data, this article looks at the phenomenon of teacher shortage in Portugal and its implications for teacher education. It includes a quantitative analysis of needs of the system to renew the teaching workforce alongside aspects of mass teacher retirement and a decline in teaching candidates. Issues such as negative media…

"Reconstructing Democratic Education" was an international conference held virtually on June 22, 2024. This article uses the words of the speakers and the participants to present some of the stories and reflections that stimulated us that day. Speakers touched on a wide variety of challenges that democracy in general and schools in…

There is a critical, nation-wide teacher shortage. Exacerbating this shortage is declining enrollment in teacher preparation programs that serve as a pipeline to the profession. To help address this shortage, school districts and teacher preparation programs across the country are implementing a variety of strategies to recruit high school…

This qualitative multi-case study delved into the perceptions of five immigrant and refugee high school students enrolled in an early childhood pathway program in a Midwest high school in the USA. The primary objectives were to explore how these aspiring teachers' Funds of Identity (FOI) influenced their perceptions of teaching in the USA,…

After nearly 40 years of policy changes since "A Nation at Risk," often without or over the voices of teachers, it seemed that society was on the way to embracing the idea that teachers were interchangeable, over compensated, and largely unnecessary to the process of education. Supreme Court decisions, such as Janus vs. American…

This article examines men's career decisions in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) using feminist post-structural agency theory that postulates a hybridization of 'male' and 'female' agentic factors. Anzaldúa's concept of "new mestiza" provides a theoretical foundation. The research focuses on the careers of three veteran male…

This qualitative study examines the professional development of early education preservice teachers and the initiatives behind the formation of a professional identity in the early stages of their studies. Professional identity is examined through the motivational factors that guide students to a minor in early education. The theoretical framework…