Teacher shortages in schools across Europe have received considerable policy and media attention in recent months (e.g., European Commission/EACEA/Eurydice, 2022; Jack & Cocco, 2022). Despite strong political consensus over the need to attract quality candidates to the teaching profession, many national education systems face significant problems with teacher supply which, with ageing workforces and increasing teacher retirements in the next two decades, are only likely to worsen (European Commission/EACEA/Eurydice, 2022). Though by no means a recent phenomenon, the European Commission has attributed this current teacher crisis to the low attractiveness of the profession and argued that longer-term systematic efforts need to be made to improve recruitment and retention if progress is to be made on targets towards the achievement of a European Education Area (European Commission, 2022).

Comparative research suggests that issues of teacher supply and demand – and the national education policies designed to address them – are highly contextualised (IBF Consulting, 2013a, 2013b). Moreover, despite the critical role that employer and employee organisations might play as social partners in teacher policy development, governance structures – and the division of policy labour between national, local and school-level actors – can inhibit social dialogue and teacher union engagement in industrial and professional issues (Stevenson, et al., 2018). Ultimately though, the relative ‘attractiveness’ of the teaching profession should be considered from a sociological and historical perspective (Cochran Smith, 2006) and in the context of a wider labour market which, in the post-pandemic era, has undergone significant transformation (Stevenson & Milner, 2023). All these interrelated factors suggest a need for empirical research to expand our understanding of this complex problem in order to promote a bargaining agenda based on a systemic and strategic response to the teacher crisis in Europe.

To address the gaps in knowledge and industrial relations in education, this paper explores teacher unions' strategic actions to improve the attractiveness of the teaching profession in three European contexts: Ireland, Poland and Sweden. The principal research questions are:

1.     What is the situation in relation to teacher supply in Ireland, Poland and Sweden?

2.     What factors explain problems of teacher recruitment and retention in these contexts?

3.     How have teacher unions been able to intervene to improve the attractiveness of the teaching profession through effective social dialogue?

Drawing on Archer (2008), we approach this paper through a critical realist lens which understands teacher union involvement in social dialogue processes as both spatially and temporally contingent. For Archer, society is defined by its morphogenic nature; namely, its capacity to change its shape or form. Significant to morphogenesis is the notion of temporality; current social structures – discourses, practices, relations, conventions – are the products of past social actions. Thus, teacher union agents can only transform future social structures through strategic actions conditioned by their present social context and their differential capacities to act on professional and industrial issues. To understand the potential for transformation, it is therefore important to analyse both the structural constraints and agential freedom of organised teachers within their diverse social and cultural contexts. Two significant social conditions for union action in our research were: i) social dialogue processes at the national level and ii) established industrial relations systems and frameworks in the context of wider socio-economic, health and humanitarian crises.

Funded by the European Commission, this qualitative case study is part of a much larger policy project developed by the European Sectoral Social Dialogue Committee for Education. The country cases were selected to cover a range of different industrial relations models and geographical locations within the European Union. While limited to three national cases, the findings for this research will have relevance to other European nations in which there are difficulties in recruiting and retaining sufficient numbers of qualified teachers to the profession. Data collection was conducted between September 2022 and January 2023. The principal data collection methods were documentary research and elite interviews. Documentary research consisted of the content analysis of national policy documents (e.g., government directives, inquiry commission reports, press releases) produced by ministries of education, national education authorities, statistics agencies and the social partners. In the first stage of analysis, this method was used to establish the principal issues of teacher supply, policy initiatives related to recruitment and retention, and the extent of commonality and variation between case contexts. It therefore addressed the first two research questions. Semi-structured interviews were conducted online with officials from the national teacher unions and employer organisations to explore their experiences and perspectives of social dialogue on efforts towards improving the attractiveness of the profession and teacher supply. While the focus of this paper is principally the teacher trade unions, the interview data from the employer organisations will be used to triangulate the union data. The trade union research participants were: the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO), the Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) and the Association of Secondary Teachers’ in Ireland (ASTI) (Ireland), Lärarförbundet and Lärarnas Riksförbund (Sweden), and NSZZ “Solidarność”, ZNP and Wolny Związek Zawodowy "Forum-Oświata" (Poland). The interview questions were based on all three research questions. The second stage of data analysis will begin in March. The interview data will be coded to identify the principal themes in the individual national cases and then comparatively. Adopting an abductive approach to analysis, codes will be developed both from the theoretical framework and through a process of opening coding. These codes will then be condensed into themes within and across the cases.

Research analysis is ongoing and the thematic coding is yet to be completed. However, early findings reveal that there are similarities and differences in issues of teacher supply across the three contexts. There are no global shortages of qualified teachers in Ireland, Poland or Sweden; however, the education system of each national case is currently experiencing problems in recruiting teachers of specific subjects, sectors and specialisms, most notably in science, maths and technology, early years and vocational education. While teachers are paid relatively well in Ireland, and there have been significant pay rises through legislative reforms and career progression initiatives in Poland and Sweden, salary remains a contentious issue in all contexts. Challenges were noted in relation to the cost-of-living in large cities, the comparability of starting salaries to graduate earnings in other sectors, a lack of transparency in the implementation of new pay models and government policy aims to increase teachers' contact hours without the appropriate remuneration. Educational reforms have been introduced to enhance teachers' professional development and career progression, although the former was not always contractually regulated or implemented fully. Migration - whether inward, outward or internal - is an issue in all the cases. Due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there has been a significant influx of Ukrainian children and young people to Ireland and Poland. Teacher supply issues have been exacerbated by increased class sizes and the psycho-social, linguistic, and pedagogical needs of these refugees. This war has also redirected social partner priorities and expenditure. There are established quality processes of social dialogue in Ireland and Sweden and the trade unions are consulted on professional issues related to educational reforms. However, educational decentralisation has fragmented approaches in Poland and Sweden and there are is a lack of clarity and/or conflict over professional and industrial policy responsibilities.

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