From Academic Teacher to School Teacher: Motivational Factors for Transition and its Contribution to the School Teaching Practice
Author(s):
Marta Kowalczuk-Walędziak (presenting / submitting)
Conference:
ECER 2016
Network:
10. Teacher Education Research
Format:
Paper

Session Information

10 SES 08 B, Role Change within Teacher Education and Beyond

Paper Session

Time:
2016-08-25
09:00-10:30
Room:
NM-Theatre N
Chair:
Ingrid Helleve

Contribution

Recently, a growing number of individuals in Europe (e.g. the UK, Switzerland) and all over the world (the US, Australia, New Zealand, Israel) representing various occupations has been reported to be entering into the teaching profession. Research shows that their decision to pursue the teacher’s career is mainly based on altruistic motivational factors (e.g. love for children, satisfaction from helping others) and intrinsic ones (e.g. intellectual challenges, personal positive contribution to society) and, to the lesser extent, by extrinsic factors (e.g. financial reward, time for family, need for greater employment stability and security) (Zuzovsky and Donitsa-Schmidt 2014; see also: Powers 2002; Priyadharshini and Robinson-Pant 2003; Richardson and Watt 2005). Interestingly enough, the teachers who transitioned from previously held positions into teaching are considered to contribute, e.g. valuable experiences, professional expertise, and advanced skills to the teaching profession, which is reflected in, e.g. dealing with everyday working issues, providing innovative learning and teaching strategies, facilitating students with requisite features indispensable to transfer newly gained knowledge and skills to their future profession-oriented context, and additionally, evincing strong personal commitment to solving students’ problems (Chambers 2002; Mayotte 2003; Wilcox and Samaras 2009; Wilkins and Comber 2015). Furthermore, according to Watters and Diezmann (2015, 164), the second career teachers, especially those with previous professional science-related career, tend to effectively utilise the „applied knowledge of their subject matter, people-oriented skills, eagerness to share with colleagues, good communication skills and tolerance of diversity”.

Despite the increasing number of studies on various aspects of transition of individuals from their prior professional careers into teaching, namely as second-career teachers, surprisingly, little is known about professional scholars pursuing school teacher’s career. Even though the area of STEM scholars’ transition into secondary schools seems to be rather satisfactorily analysed (Snyder et al. 2013; Watters and Diezmann 2015; Whannell and Allen 2014), there is a limited number of studies focused on scholars representing other fields of science (particularly the humanities and social sciences) who decided to work as school teachers. Besides, the phenomenon of non-traditional entrants (including professional scholars) to teaching profession is largely unexplored in the Polish context, which may pertain to the dichotomy between a relatively big number of teachers available on the Polish school labour market and, on the other hand, its limited employability capacity. 

Nevertheless, more and more secondary school headmasters in Poland are known to be interested in commencing cooperation with higher schools and hiring full-time or part-time academic scholars in order to enhance their school’s reputation or status (Madalinska-Michalak 2010; 2013). Moreover, according to my prior study (Kowalczuk-Walędziak 2015), it was remarked by some of the PhD holding degree interviewees that several teachers with PhD degree or habilitation, who were already working at their schools, had also changed their academic career into teaching, or provided their teaching services for both, e.g. secondary and higher school.

This paper is a part of the research project carried out in Poland aimed to provide the in-depth understanding of academic scholars’ motivation, experiences and perception of transition into the teaching profession. The project encompassed academic scholars who have advanced qualification (doctoral degree or habilitation) in the humanities, social sciences, and science, have worked or still work in higher schools and have decided to enter into the teaching profession. The aim of this paper is to present and discuss the project findings related to the motivational factors for transition from academic teacher to school teacher and its contribution to the school teaching practice.

Method

The pilot study of this particular research project was commenced in 2014, which encompassed the semi-structured, in-depth interviews with nine academic scholars working as regular teachers in Poland, and was aimed to gain an overall view of academic scholars’ experiences and perception of transition into teaching. The results extrapolated during the preliminary phase (Kowalczuk-Walędziak 2015) were consequently implemented to modify the interview protocol. Additionally, the greater number of academic scholars, headmasters, and students’ parents were engaged to have the whole study extended on the grounds of qualitative and multi-method approach (e.g.: interviews, classroom observations, document analysis) in order to obtain better and more detailed understanding of academic scholars’ motivation, experiences, and perception of transition into teaching profession. This paper reports data collected through qualitative, semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 17 academic scholars (including also those who participated in the pilot phase of this project) who had decided to enter the teaching profession in primary or secondary schools in Poland and 7 school headmasters, who employed such teachers. All of the interviewed academic scholars had accomplished the requisite trainings to fulfil the legal requirements for teaching at primary or secondary schools in Poland. The interview protocols for teachers and headmasters are related to several aspects of academic scholars’ transitions into teaching, including motivations of transition; benefits and challenges from making a transition to school working environment, similarities and differences between academic work and teaching, contribution of transition from academic career into teaching. The feedback data collected from the academic scholars’ and headmasters’ interviews, which elaborates on motivational factors and contribution of the teachers with the academic career background into teaching, is to be presented in the ensuing sections of the presentation.

Expected Outcomes

According to the preliminary results: (1) most of the interviewed academic scholars declared extrinsic motivation, e.g. deterioration of working conditions at university, the need to have extra earnings, seeking employment stability, prospects for employment in case of redundancies at university as factors determining pursuing the teacher’s career. Only few academic scholars declared intrinsic motivation, e.g. passion for teaching, personal conviction of holding pedagogical talents and abilities, and the altruistic ones, e.g. providing talented and gifted students with support as the key factors for their decision to enter the teaching profession; (2) The interviewed academic scholars reported making a great contribution to facilitating the students’ teaching and learning, e.g. implementing more scientific, research-based approach in the classroom, creating more collaborative and constructivist learning environments, preparing students to national contents and national exams; (3) Enhancing school reputation and its status in educational rankings, as well as commencing effective collaboration with other higher schools were also strongly emphasized by the most of school headmasters as the key factors determining the benefits from employing academic scholars; (4) Representing up-dated and specific subject knowledge, being skilled researchers and elaborate speakers, managing the stress-related professional issues, overcoming red tape difficulties, and having constructive rapport with students were enumerated by academic scholars as particularly valuable skills developed in their academic professional career that were successfully implemented in their school teaching practice; (5) Both groups of interviewees admitted having some difficulties in applying academic standards into school teaching practice due to test-oriented school culture, having some teachers and students prejudiced against following academic standards, as well as insufficient pedagogical expertise among academic scholars. The implications and recommendations for more effective implementation of academic scholars’ professional experiences into school teaching practice are suggested on the grounds of the extrapolated findings.

References

Chambers D. 2002. The Real World and the Classroom: Second-Career Teachers. The Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues and Ideas, 75(4): 212-217. Kowalczuk-Walędziak, M. 2016. The PhD studies in personal and professional development of teachers in Poland: a blessing or curse? New York, Washington, Bern, Frankfurt, Berlin, Brussels, Vienna, Oxford: Peter Lang (forthcoming). Kowalczuk-Walędziak, M. 2015. Academic Scholars as School Teachers: the Pilot Study of Academic Scholars’ Experiences and Perception of Teaching Profession (forthcoming).  Madalińska-Michalak, J. 2010. Budowanie partnerstwa pomiędzy uczelnią wyższą a szkołą. W poszukiwaniu perspektywy łączącej naukowców i praktyków. Forum Oświatowe, 1(42): 27-38. Madalińska-Michalak, J. 2013. Oferta edukacyjna i jakość kształcenia w publicznych liceach ogólnokształcących w Łodzi. Łódź: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego. Mayotte, G. 2003. Stepping stones to success: Previously developed career competencies and their benefits to career switchers transitioning to teaching. Teaching and Teacher Education, 19(7): 681-695. Powers, F.W. 2002. Second-career teachers: Perceptions and mission in their new careers. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 12(3): 303-317.  Priyadharshini, E., and A. Robinson-Pant. 2003. The attractions of teaching: An investigation into why people change careers to teach. Journal of Education for Teaching: International Research and Pedagogy, 29 (2): 95-112. Richardson, P.W. and H.M.G. Watt. 2005. I’ve decided to become a teacher”: Influences on career change. Teaching and Teacher Education, 21(5): 475–489. Snyder, C., A.W. Oliveira, and L.M. Paska. 2013. STEM Career Changers’ Transformation into Science Teachers. Journal of Science Teacher Education, 24 (4): 617-644. Watters, J.J., and C.M. Diezmann. Challenges confronting career-changing beginning teachers: a qualitative study of professional scientists becoming science teachers. Journal of Science Teacher Education, 26 (2): 163-192. Whannell, R., and W. Allen. 2014. The motivation and identity challenges for PhD holders in the transition to science and mathematics teaching in secondary education: A pilot study. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 39 (12): 78-94.   Wilkins, C., and C. Comber. 2015. ’Elite' career-changers in the teaching profession. British Educational Research Journal, 41(6): 1010-1030. Zuzovsky, R., and S. Donitsa-Schmidt. 2014. Turning to Teaching: Second Career Student Teachers' Intentions, Motivations, and Perceptions about the Teaching Profession. International Education Research, 2 (3): 1-17.

Author Information

Marta Kowalczuk-Walędziak (presenting / submitting)
University of Bialystok
Białystok

Update Modus of this Database

The current conference programme can be browsed in the conference management system (conftool) and, closer to the conference, in the conference app.
This database will be updated with the conference data after ECER. 

Search the ECER Programme

  • Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
  • Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
  • Search for authors and in the respective field.
  • For planning your conference attendance, please use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference and the conference agenda provided in conftool.
  • If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.