The biggest challenge in Denmark is that there are neither national organization nor resources for the support of newly qualified teachers. At the same time schools are challenged by initial teacher shortage and an increasing number of newly qualified teachers who leave or consider leaving the teaching profession (Frederiksen et al. 2017). The most urgent challenge is therefore to set newly qualified teachers on the national school policy agenda - in competition with many other challenges at that agenda. In other words, there is some competition in the ecological niche where mentoring is inhabited in the ecosystem of teacher development in Denmark (Kemmis et al., 2014). In contrast to many other European countries there is no national policy concerning induction in Denmark. In the period, 2000-2013 scattered local mentor programs were expanded and all new teachers were entitled to additional working hours for preparation as part of a collective agreement. However, this disappeared with the working time law that followed the lockout of the Danish teachers in 2013. Recently, newly qualified teachers have gained a renewed focus, because the newly established teacher commission has to pay attention also to induction of new teachers. The support for newly qualified teachers is arbitrary and appears differently from one municipality or school to another. Big parts of the newly qualified teachers lack structure for their start on the school, and most of the newly qualified teachers’ experience that the principals are not very keen on establishing mentoring (Frederiksen et al. 2017; Krøjgaard & Frederiksen 2018). The current picture is that newly qualified teachers get far less support than they need and many lack even basic formalized introduction. A survey from the Danish Union of Teachers shows that an increasing part of the new teachers turn to counselling due to precarious work pressure, caused by the work’s structural framework that creates an imbalance between demands and resources. They have expectations to their own role as teachers, and get the experience that they cannot fulfil this role. Project “Early career teachers and foothold “ is developing a context-sensitive induction program aiming at supporting teachers in their first year of practice. The main research question is: “How can a teacher induction system be designed and implemented in a Danish context?” Quantitative data on national level will be combined with challenges that can be identified along with developing and implementing a teacher induction program.

Frederiksen, L.L., Krøjgaard, F. & Paaske, K.A. (2017). Lærerstart og fodfæste i et livslangt karriereforløb https://www.ucviden.dk/portal/files/44628052/L_rerstart_og_fodf_ste_m._bilag_1_6.pdf Jonassen, A. (2016) Hver sjette nyuddannet lærer dropper folkeskolen inden for det første år. Politiken.13. august.2016. http://politiken.dk/indland/uddannelse/art5632312/Hver-sjette-nyuddannet-l%C3%A6rer-dropper-folkeskolen-inden-for-det-f%C3%B8rste-%C3%A5r Kemmis, S., Heikkinen, H., Aspfors, J., Fransson, G. & Edwards-Groves, C. (2014). Mentoring as Contested Practice: Support, Supervision and Collaborative Self-development. Teaching and Teacher Education 43, 154-164. Krøjgaard, F., & Frederiksen, L. A. L. (2017). Newly qualified teachers´ possibilities to get foothold in a lifelong career course. Paper presented in the ECER 2017 conference, Bolzano, Italy, September 7th, 2018.