Second career teachers’ identity through schools and supervisors: A qualitative inquiry

Abstract

Teachers’ identity is one of the problems in teachers’ education. Junior-level teachers, including fresh university graduates and second-career teachers, may face challenges to their self-identity as teaching is unique due to the nature of the profession. Unlike for-profit organisations, teaching requires a high level of individual work and self-management skills. However, many second-career teachers who have worked in the business industry may rely on teamwork for their projects. Unlike Bachelor of Education graduates who received extensive training from their university voyage, second-career teachers usually gain their teaching experience from partnered school and/or university training programme within a short training programme, such as PGCE. As junior-level second-career teachers may face challenges due to their expectations, it is important to understand how to offer supervision and help to second-career teachers in the secondary classroom environment. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between junior-level second-career teachers and their identity in the United States. Based on the self-efficacy theory, this study was guided by two research questions, how do second-career teachers describe their identity and experience in the secondary school environment, and how can the supervision from their school supervisors help them to overcome the challenges as second-career teachers? The general inductive approach was employed to recruit 14 second-career teachers who are currently teaching in the secondary school classroom environment in Indiana, United States. Focus group activities, remarkable item sharing, and member-checking interview sessions were used to collect data and materials from the participants. Based on the grounded theory approach, open-coding and axial-coding techniques were used to narrow the massive-sized data to meaningful themes. The findings indicated that 1) The school district’s partnership offers supervision, 2) The peer-to-peer interactions and help programme: Teachers from the district can be connected, and 3) the CPD training offers supervision: Government-run and partnered-university-run training. The findings of this study second-career teachers admired the in- school, school district-based, government-run, and university- run supervision can help them to overcome challenges and build up their teachers’ identity, particularly within the first few years of their teaching service. This study will contribute to the fields of school-university partnerships and challenges of second-career teachers.