This paper provides research in the connected areas of initial teacher education, teaching and leadership to present an integrated snapshot of how teaching shortages are impacting all three sectors in interconnected ways.

There is currently an international crisis in the education workforce, exacerbated by Covid (Ovenden-Hope, 2022). Unprecedented teaching shortages are impacting all levels of the workforce including Initial Teacher Education (where numbers are declining and the pressure is on to attract and support new teachers); in the teaching workforce itself (where attrition and the difficulty of replacing teachers who leave is at an all-time high); and in school leadership (where principals are pressured to staff their schools in these challenging conditions).  In a crisis-oriented context this ‘perfect storm’ creates a policy context of ramped-up panic and competition in teacher recruitment practices. A cross-sectoral approach is needed for government to develop education workforce policy based on research from all three sectors.

Recruiting and retaining enough teachers to meet school needs has been challenging governments for many years. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) Sustainable Development Goal 4.c is to ‘substantially increase the supply of qualified teachers’ to support an equitable education system (Ovenden-Hope, 2022). In Victoria, Australia, advertised teaching vacancies peaked at 2,600 in mid-September 2023 and by December some schools in the State were reported as receiving no applications at all for advertised positions. These teaching shortages, reported similarly throughout Europe (Lindqvist, 2022; Worth, 2023) affect some schools much more than others, with poorer, diverse metropolitan schools, regional, rural and remote schools impacted much more. The impact and risk for historically disadvantaged school communities is much greater when there is an inconsistent or transient teacher workforce and the pressure on school leaders to solve a problem beyond their control has increased. Despite a wide range of government initiatives including financial incentives, mentoring, leadership pathways and more to address a ’crippling’ problem (Caudal, 2022; See et. al., 2020), workforce shortages persist.  

In combining research on the impact of teaching shortages in teacher education, teaching and leadership we are working towards a more consolidated approach to finding policy solutions to teaching shortages. Our method, bringing together and comparing findings from three large research projects is unusual in aiming to strengthen collaborations between teacher educators, teachers and school leaders to better understand the phenomenon of education workforce shortages and to propose partnership-based solutions.

As a first point into understanding teaching shortages, initial teacher education is considered in study one. Often focused on as an issue of teacher supply (Tatto, 2021), initial teacher education is both under scrutiny and the overwhelming focus of many government initiatives in both England and Australia. Gorard et. al.’s (2023) large-scale survey of undergraduates in England identified why people might or might not want to consider teaching as a career. Government initiatives to attract more people into the teaching workforce is the focus of a related Australian study providing insight into these initiatives and their impact over the past 20 years (Lampert et.al., 2021). This data demonstrate both the range and type of initiatives as well as suggesting the limited imagination of iterative attempts by government to fund the same sorts of strategies repeatedly, such as offering financial incentives with limited success. The Australian meta-analysis examined policies and was supplemented by interviews with key stakeholders and recipients of the initiatives to determine their impact. In study two, a large research study in Australia examined teachers’ perceptions of their working conditions. In this project a total of over 8000 Australian teachers completed an online questionnaire in 2019 and 2022 respectively (Heffernan et. al.,2022; Longmuir et al., 2022). Questions invited Likert responses and open comments. These data show teachers’ satisfaction with their role, their perceptions of respect for teachers, their feelings of safety and their intentions to stay in the profession. The survey also invited participants to describe the types of challenges they encountered and their suggestions for changes to their working conditions. The field of school leadership is reflected in study three, an ongoing project examining the emotional labour of government school principals who have been invited to contribute a short anonymous testimony – written or audio - about a critical incident that has occurred under their leadership in relation to one or more key stakeholder groups, e.g., teachers, executive staff, students, parents, community, and/or system personnel. They have been asked to reflect on the emotional impact it has had on them as principals as well as key learnings from the incident. Over 170 testimonies have been gathered, reflecting a broad diversity of schools, ranging from rural, remote, urban, low to high socioeconomic status as well as a diverse range of principals – from those in their first three years to those who have been in the role over 20 years.

Historically, while all in the ‘business’ of education, the fields of Initial Teacher Education, teachers’ work and educational leadership have largely operated in research, policy and practice siloes. The climate of teaching shortages makes it apparent that responses and strategies that take a more holistic, aligned approach must be adopted if sustainable, long term solutions are to be found. Our combined research raises new questions that we suggest can only be addressed by more integrated thinking about these challenges, such as deeper considerations of the relationship between teacher attraction, teacher preparation and teacher attrition. For instance, if teacher attrition is in part due to a lack of safety and low morale (study two), how might this be addressed in Initial Teacher Education (study one) If school leaders are experiencing an intensification of their emotional labour (study three), how is this related to teachers’ work stress and in what ways could this be seen as a systemic issue that goes beyond individuals or their roles? Currently, solutions often prioritise improving preparation or capacity building programs for teachers and school leaders, but these individualise responsibility for the problems to educators and divert attention from broader issues. They do not fully account for the broader social and policy conditions that teachers and school leaders report contribute to their intentions to leave the profession, such as increased monitoring and reporting of their everyday decisions, or increasing incidences of disrespect from students, families and the media. Further, questions of diversity across the teaching profession intersect with issues of workforce health and sustainability. An expanded understanding of how and where the intensities and challenges are being experienced by different groups of teachers and school leaders at a time of workforce shortages is needed internationally.

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