Teacher shortages are affecting multiple countries. In Europe, it has been reported that France, Germany, Portugal, Sweden and Italy are all facing major recruitment issues that are only going to get worse (Euronews, 2022). The issue is not solely European, education systems in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are having to confront similar problems. Shortages are not uniform across each jurisdiction though – within each there are areas where schools can be regarded as ‘hard to staff, these tend to be in rural, regional, remote and low socio-economic areas. Such issues are not new, as indicated by the OECD’s (2005). Teachers Matter: Attracting, developing and retaining effective teachers. However, globally there have been many recent and urgent policy responses to these shortages, some have sought to improve the number of people entering and staying in the teaching profession generally, others more targeted at improving the attraction and retention of teachers in specific schools and locations (e.g., rural and remote schools), and others have been multi-purposeful. This paper provides document analyses of three diverse international approaches and responses to this policy problem: England’s DfE (Department for Education) (2019) Teacher recruitment and retention strategy; the Australian Commonwealth Government’s (2022) The National Teacher Workforce Action Plan: December 2022; and the US Whitehouse (2022) set of Actions to Strengthen Teaching Profession and Help Schools Fill Vacancies. The analyses of these documents contain lessons for all countries facing issues of teacher recruitment and retention.   The documents are analysed through Bacchi’s (2009) ‘What’s the problem represented to be?’ approach. This methodology, drawing on a Foucauldian genealogy, works to identify the presuppositions or assumptions underlying a representation of a problem, how the problem has come into being, the effects of a problem representation, what has been left unsaid about a problem and how it can be thought about differently (Bacchi 2009, p. 2). The analyses of these documents demonstrate how the problem has been variously represented as, amongst other representations, a problem of ‘teacher education’, ‘student behaviour’ and/or ‘school leadership’. A glaring silence across all of these documents is an understanding of social justice. The paper argues, drawing on the work of Nancy Fraser (e.g., 2009), that the teacher shortage problem needs to also be seen as a social justice problem, and that that will provide new insights into potential policy solutions.

Bacchi, C. (2009) Analysing Policy: What’s the problem represented to be? Frenchs Forest, Pearson . Commonwealth Government (2022). The National Teacher Workforce Action Plan: December 2022. Canberra, Australian Government. DfE (Department for Education). (2019). Teacher recruitment and retention strategy. London: HM Government. Euronews (2022) Teacher shortages worry countries across Europe. https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/11/30/teacher-shortages-worry-countries-across-europe. 30th November, 2022. Accessed 23/1/23 Fraser, N. (2009). Scales of justice: Reimagining political space in a globalizing world. New York: Columbia University Press. OECD. (2005). Teachers Matter: Attracting, developing and retaining effective teachers. Paris: OECD. US Whitehouse (2022) FACT SHEET: Biden-⁠Harris Administration Announces Public and Private Sector Actions to Strengthen Teaching Profession and Help Schools Fill Vacancies. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/08/31/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-announces-public-and-private-sector-actions-to-strengthen-teaching-profession-and-help-schools-fill-vacancies/ 31st August, 2022. Accessed 23/1/23