The proposed paper draws on research investigating the professional identities and learning of teachers seconded as teacher educators to an Irish continuing professional development (CPD) support service (O’ Donnell, 2023). Irish policy’s rationale for employing experienced classroom practitioners to support services in a temporary capacity is rooted in the assumption that their knowledge and understanding of curriculum and policy will be enhanced by the secondment and that the schools to which they belong will benefit from this expertise when the teachers return (Department of Education and Skills, 2018).

Curriculum development, enactment, leadership and the complexity of curriculum change are core to the learning and work of these seconded teachers within a national  remit for supporting and guiding Irish schools through significant curricular reforms. Yet there is a significant gap in what is known about the professional and curricular capital  accrued by these teachers during their secondments as teacher educators and how this impacts their identities and later careers. Additionally, there is no research at all capturing if and how any of this benefits to the school on their return. Further with an increasing trend in such teachers choosing alternative careers in the education system post-secondment, there has been no specific research into if or how this curricular learning and capital  is harnessed elsewhere

From an international perspective, this study stands apart from previous ones in the field of teacher education where there has been a dominant focus on the identities, work and professional learning of teacher educators working in university-based initial teacher education programmes. Studies focussing on  ‘Continuing Teacher Educators’ (CTEs) (O’Donnell, 2023) who work to support experienced teachers through curricular and policy change, are extremely rare. Furthermore studies investigating the experiences of teachers seconded to do such work are equally sparse despite this arrangement being commonplace internationally in Australia, Canada and Scotland. This study sought to address this dual gap by investigating the learning and experiences acquired by teachers seconded as CTEs to a multi-disciplinary support service for primary and post-primary schools in Ireland.

This research  is especially timely given the global shift from content prescribed to competency-based curricula typically framed around broad learning outcomes which challenges the professional knowledge capacity of teachers who are now positioned as curriculum makers at local level. As CTEs the participants of this resecah occupied the system’s meso layer (Priestley et al, 2021) concerning activities that connect policy and practice. Notably in this regard they behaved as front-line change agents working in teacher learning environments where habitual curricular, pedagogical and assessment practices are typically confronted and disturbed.

The study’s theoretical framework was rooted in the field of career dynamics and  structured according to three pillars (Entry, Experience and Exit) denoting key stages navigated by these teachers from their induction to the service through to their post-secondment work destinations. It was scaffolded by two theories in the field of career transition which together guided an exploration of the knowledge, skills and experiences acquired by participants throughout a unique  career journey. The sequence and structure of the theoretical framework was central to the study’s tapestry as a robust thread woven through all stages of the research design from the gathering data to the presentations of findings while facilitating coherence in data analysis. 

In interpretivist tradition all stages of the research design from data gathering to the presentation of findings privileged the perspectives and experiences of teachers who had lived a career transition into, through and out of a teacher educator role at a time of significant curricular reform. The purposive sample comprised primary and post-primary teachers previously seconded to the service who had since either returned to school or taken up other positions in the education system. Mirroring the multi-disciplinary nature of the support service, the sample was stratified to include representatives from several curriculum subjects as well as those specialising in the cross curricular components of inclusion, digital technologies and school leadership. The study adopted the hallmarks of Structured Thematic Inquiry (STI) (Berkeley, 2014), a research design which embraces an interplay between deductive and inductive approaches in qualitative research. Data were gathered using semi-structured interviews allowing for STI’s quasi-deductive means of exploring and contemporising predetermined themes while also allowing for the generation of new ones . With fidelity to the theoretical framework, the interviews explored motivations for career change and commencement of the new role ( Entry), learning and working during the secondment (Experience), departing the service and initial work in post secondment destinations (Exit). Accordingly the lines of inquiry sought to uncover identities and capacities that teachers brought to the role of CTE, developed while in the role and harnessed thereafter in post-secondment work. In line with STI some deductive coding was employed during data analysis while the generation of inductive codes reflected the study’s fundamentally interpretivist stance. Within this context, reflexive thematic data analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2019) was employed given its openness to both essentialist and constructionist paradigms. Consequently both deductive and inductive themes were generated and presented.

Findings show that knowledge and identity tensions presented for participants when transitioning from teacher to teacher educator with data indicating these as amplified in the CPD setting where teacher audiences often resist curricular change. They encountered related boundary dilemmas in publicly promoting curricular and policy ideals as teacher educators while privately questioning these ideals within the realities of practice. Data also show however that in having access to both the teaching population and policy circles, these teacher educators learn to constructively inhabit this meso space as transformative interventionists in negotiating terrain on which competing curricular policy/practice pressures operate. Their most meaningful work with teachers manifested within sustained and contextualised CPD settings which boosted teacher agency as curriculum makers. Participants acquired extensive curricular and pedagogical-content knowledge within a cross-sectoral, multi-disciplinary organisation which privileged a cross-pollination and reciprocity of subject and sectoral knowledge through internal cultures of expansive learning (Engeström, 2004). They also gained a deep understandings of curriculum as a social artefact through immersion in research and collaboration with system partners and agencies. The unpredictability of secondment contracts prompted most participants to seek alternative education positions post-secondment rather than return to school considered to be an antithetical home for harnessing their newly-acquired identities and curricular capital. Data show an underutilisation of their expertise in post-secondment work places with this particularly acute for those returning to school where hurried classrooms and examination pressures curtailed curricular and pedagogical freedom and where static school cultures militated against knowledge sharing. The paper concludes that policy’s assumption that secondees return to school to recycle their knowledge is incognisant of the transformational impact of secondment and of the conditions needed in schools for acquired curricular expertise to be shared. Recommendations call for return-to-school career pathways which better optimise the curricular and pedagogical expertise acquired by seconded teachers.

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