In ongoing discussions about diminishing teacher recruitment and increasing teacher attrition, a pervasive “crisis” narrative has emerged, often painting teaching as unrewarding and teacher education as too prolonged or even too theoretical. This understanding of the ‘crisis’ creates short-term policy solutions—lowering entry requirements, introducing alternative certification routes, and reducing program lengths—that may temporarily boost candidate numbers but risk undermining the teaching profession and education’s long-term credibility. This study applies comparative critical discourse analysis (CDA), informed particularly by the works of Fairclough (2013) and Ball (2021), to analyze how this ‘teacher crisis’ is discursively constructed in policy documents authored by national authorities and their solutions proposed, from the context of three nations, Norway, Finland, and Australia. Our research questions are: How is the teacher crisis discursively constructed across different national contexts? What solutions emerge from this “crisis” discourse, and what are their potential long-term implications? By dissecting a discourse of urgency, failure, and deficiency, we aim to show how these ‘crisis’ narratives reinforce a ‘deficit view’ of teachers and teacher students. Because, paradoxically, while most agree teaching requires highly skilled practitioners, proposed solutions usually revolve around lowering entry standards, implicitly saying that anyone can teach while also potentially dissuading stronger candidates. Our preliminary findings indicate that while policies shaped by the ‘crisis’ narrative may provide band-aid solutions, they also leave the deeper and systematic challenges untouched. Research shows, again and again, that themes like low public respect for teachers, stagnant salaries, and difficult working conditions are leading deterrents and the real “problems” of the consequences of current teacher recruitment and attrition issues. It is therefore puzzling that the prevailing ‘crisis’ rhetoric focuses on lack of suitable applicants, ignoring how unresolved professional dissatisfaction perpetuates teacher attrition. This narrow framing not only misdiagnoses the problem but also weakens the profession over time, leading to predictable consequences such as declining professional status and ongoing recruitment struggles. By challenging the ‘deficit perspective’ embedded in the crisis narrative, we will argue that there is a need for rethinking the ‘problem’ and ‘solutions’ of teacher recruitment and attrition.

Ball, S. J. (2021). The education debate. Policy Press.  Fairclough, N. (2013). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. Routledge.  Skytterstad, R., Antonsen, Y., Aspfors, J. and Heikkinen, H. L. T. (2025) Reframing New Teacher Induction: Opportunities Over Deficiencies. Teacher and teacher education. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2024.104910  Skytterstad, R., Antonsen, Y., Stenseth, A-M. (2024) Remediating Deficits? Problem Representations in Norwegian Policies for Newly Qualified Teachers. Journal of educational policy. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2024.2380761