Teaching out-of-field (OOF) occurs when teachers’ qualifications do not align with the subject they teach (Sharplin, 2014). In many jurisdictions, principals determine teacher assignments; Assignments may be temporary, periodical or a long-term addition to a teacher’s repertoire. OOF teachers may or may not receive adequate school-based support or have access to professional learning to build capacity or extend their qualifications. Educational policies may acknowledge, prohibit, or ignore this practice, with varying levels of public acknowledgment from governments, the media, and even researchers (Ní Ríordáin et al., 2017; Luft et al., 2015). High levels of OOF teaching may indicate, within the education system, insufficient or unequal distribution of school funding (Shah et al), challenges in recruiting teachers to the profession or specific locations (Ingersoll), or poor working conditions, an aging workforce and societal attitudes that lead to teacher attrition (UNESCO, 2023). Despite cries for professional development for out-of-field teachers (e.g., Caldis & Kleeman, 2019), formal professional development programs can be lacking, poorly attended, or inappropriate for out-of-field teachers.

 Understanding out-of-field teaching requires recognizing it as a systemic issue, not simply a teacher problem. Research also shows out-of-field teaching is not restricted to in-service teachers; it is a reality for pre-service teachers during professional experience and their transition into the profession (Caldis, 2022; Caldis & Kleeman, 2019). While solutions may often focus on the teacher, research indicates that repeated teaching experiences, leadership practices, collegial support, stable workloads, and sustained and structured teacher learning programs can mediate out-of-field teacher learning (Faulkner et al., 2019; Campbell et al. 2023; Caldis, 2022). This perspective acknowledges the dynamic nature of teachers' professional lives that are influenced by local and system factors. Viewing this issue through an ecological lens distributes the responsibility for change across the education system, ensuring teachers are not seen as the problem.

This research aims to model the ecology of an education system that would shift cultural norms that currently undervalue re-specialisation for OOF teachers through professional education. Using Ecological Systems Theory (EST) from Bronfenbrenner (1994), we are generating an ideal ecosystem that acknowledges the professional education needs of teachers teaching out-of-field in Science, Mathematics, English and GeographyThis study reports on the first phase of this research where we mapped the current profession education ecosystem within Australia across these four subject areas. Our two research questions are:

• What factors influence teacher uptake of professional education by out-of-field teachers?
• What is the ecology of an education system that values diverse pathways towards teacher becoming in-field?

An assumption of the education system is that in-field-ness (Hobbs 2013) is a measure of quality or ‘fit’ because the teacher’s capabilities and identities are obtained through formal disciplinary qualifications that align with what they teach. Our assumption is that teachers and schools are more likely to value and engage with PE and reduce the incidence of teaching OOF when there are defined pathways to becoming ‘in-field’ or less out-of-field.

In line with Hobbs (2013), out-of-field teaching is described as a boundary crossing (Akkerman & Bakker, 2011), where teachers move from familiar fields where their practices and identity are grounded in knowledge and formal qualifications, to a field requiring practices and identities that are less familiar. Learning to teach a new subject involves mastering new content, pedagogical content knowledge, teaching approaches, class preparation, familiarisation with teaching resources and equipment, and anticipating student difficulties (Singh et al., 2021; Hobbs, 2020). Boundary crossing theory suggests that recognized discontinuities provide opportunities for learning and identity expansion, aided by boundary objects such as colleagues, resources, and professional development who help the teacher re-establish continuity.

EST enables examination of the cultures surrounding professional education and OOF teaching, and diverse perspectives from the professional education ecosystem and interactions that lead to pre-service and in-service teacher development. Teachers are placed at the centre of a nest of systems, interacting with the microsystem (immediate environment of the teacher), the mesosystem (resources and support structures across microsystems), the exosystem (professional education provision, guidelines and policies that influence teachers and their professional education, non-school stakeholders), the macrosystem (attitudes and values related to teaching quality and specialization coming from different stakeholders and society), and the chronosystem (system-level changes influencing the teacher workforce). A focus on the four states and subjects of the researchers serves as a comparative lens to make explicit differences and similarities across the ecosystem. The research involves three sequential studies, preceded and informed by a literature and policy review designed to develop an analytical framework and map the current professional education ecosystem. The literature and policy review focused on research and commentary on professional education and out-of-field teaching. The scope of the documents sourced was determined by the systems as defined by the EST above. A total of 218 texts were sourced that included: policy documents (110 documents from all states and national); documents from subject associations (39 documents, including nine for English, 13 for Geography, eight for Science, nine for Mathematics); websites and information about university programs (16 in total, eight from Victoria, zero for Tasmania, seven for New South Wales and one for Queensland) plus eight other PL programs; and peer reviewed literature published 2020-2024 (53 articles). All researchers collated the policy and subject association documents relevant for their subject area and state and provided a summary of how out-of-field teaching and/or professional education for out-of-field teachers featured. A research assistant sourced the 53 research articles as part of a scoping review and summarised their content. The research assistant also searched all universities within the four states for programs/courses (qualification courses and professional development programs) that were tailored to out-of-field teachers and summarised their relevance. Then one researcher annotated all summaries with emergent codes, leading to a list of factors under a set of broad categories. The policy documents were analysed first, then the subject association documents, then the university and PL programs, then the research articles. The final list of categories and factors is cumulative.

The six categories and factors were compiled into an analytical framework and then placed onto a current ecosystem map. The ecosystem map was simplified to a Y-model to accentuate three relatively discrete pathways to becoming in-field or less OOF (Figure 3), as summarised below. We describe how out-of-field-ness, teacher learning and relevant factors are represented across the three pathways. Initial Teacher Education (ITE) - teachers learn through ITE: ITE and discipline qualifications determine teachers’ in-field subjects and by default what is out-of-field by qualification, or for composite subjects, out-of-field by specialisation. Relevant policies are ITE program accreditation, teacher accreditation and registration. The construct of out-of-field-ness reflects a ‘Deficit position’ and inadequacies. Workplace - teachers learn on the job: Learning through practice with adequate support forms a predominant attitude of out-of-field teaching being a ‘solution’ to the teacher shortage problem. Relevant factors are school leadership practices, differences in support practices and reliance on out-of-field teaching across subjects. The construct of out-of-field-ness reflects a ‘Tolerance position’ where schools (mainly principals) determine the tolerance threshold for the incidence and pattern of out-of-field teacher assignments, particularly for early-career teachers. Professional Education - teachers learn through professional education: Key observations include mediating factors to determine uptake (such as teacher agency and attitudes to learning, availability and appropriateness); different stakeholders provide solutions; longevity of initiatives. A range of PE solutions exist but a lack of clarity around responsible parties. The construct of out-of-field-ness reflects an ‘Opportunity position’ where teacher learning can lead to identity expansion and new practices. The Y-model demonstrates how different pathways support teacher learning in relatively discrete ways. The model provides a framework for: critiquing how current pathways are valued, challenged and privileged; interrogating the cultural norms that need to shift; and imagining generative connections between pathways within a more integrated system.

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