Building on the previous presentation on causes and consequences of the teacher shortage in Austria, this presentation focuses on a specific policy response, which is under-researched in this context: the return of retired teachers into school-teaching. Not much is known and even less is reported about this possible answer to the current teacher shortage, although international research on this topic exists (Amanat 2022, Droogenbroeck & Spruyt 2014, Martinez et al. 2010). The current study is a first explorative study concerned with the decisions of retired teachers in Austria to return to school against the background of the internationally acknowledged, acute teacher shortage. The conceptual framework covers current educational policy reforms and macrostructural theories about the teacher shortage, as well as action theories about the individual decisions to return to school, which are located within the biographical lifeworld of the retired teacher. The research questions which are addressed are: How do educational policy makers and retired teachers describe and experience the policy response to bring retired teachers back to school? Why did only a few retired teachers return into active teaching in the schoolyear of 2022/23? From an empirical perspective, this explorative study is based on qualitative expert interviews (Bogner et al. 2002) with leaders from educational policy and episodic interviews (Flick, 1995) with retired teachers. The interviews (N=14 in total) show four relevant episodes in this context: teachers’ last year in school, their retirement and first year out, being approached to return to school, and their first year back. The findings show that multiple factors play a role in the decision-making process to return to school-teaching, such as finances, health, family and workplace-related factors. This is in line with existing research, which shows that personal, professional and situational factors related to the teacher identity determine whether or not teachers remain in their profession or not (Towers & Maguire 2017). Overall, the specific conditions for returning to school must be negotiated with the school leader, otherwise, if terms and conditions do not fit, retired teachers will not return to school. None of the retired teachers in the study would repeat their return to school. As a consequence, this study’s findings conclude that the return of retired teachers to school is not an adequate policy response to the current teacher shortage.

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