Across European education systems, career-change teachers are increasingly recruited in response to persistent teacher shortages, while their specific developmental needs often remain insufficiently addressed within teacher education and induction structures (UNESCO & International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030, 2024). Existing research has examined motivations and entry pathways into teaching as a second career and has shown how prior occupational biographies may shape expectations, strengths and vulnerabilities during the transition into teaching (Tigchelaar et al., 2008). However, comparatively little is known about how career-change teachers themselves interpret their biographical resources and structural tensions in relation to their emerging professional roles across biographical time.

This paper addresses this gap by asking which biographical resources and structural tensions shape career-change teachers’ understandings of their professional roles in secondary education. Situated at the intersection of teacher education and biographical research, the study conceptualises professional role understanding as a dynamic, socially and biographically constructed process that unfolds across past experiences, present institutional positioning, and anticipated futures (Goodson & Gill, 2011). Rather than treating biography as a static background variable, the analysis foregrounds biography as an active resource mobilised in the negotiation of professional identity, legitimacy, and belonging.

Empirically, the paper draws on written reflection portfolios from 50 career-change teachers working in secondary education in Austria. The portfolios were produced within a mandatory, work-based teacher education programme for career-change teachers (HLG) and capture structured biographical reflections on professional role understandings across past, present, and anticipated future perspectives. This multi-temporal design enables an in-depth exploration of how professional roles are narrated, stabilised, and reworked over time under conditions of institutional strain.
Analytically, the study adopts an interpretivist–constructivist epistemology and employs an inductive, grounded theory–oriented analysis, following the Gioia methodology (Gioia et al., 2013). The analysis examines how informant-centric meanings are abstracted into higher-order dimensions of professional role understanding.

The findings show that career-change teachers’ professional role understandings are shaped through a process of relational role negotiation under high-stakes but meaning-laden conditions. Participants enter teaching after consciously disengaging from established careers—a step frequently described as risky, but also as deeply purposeful. While this transition is often marked by an abrupt “cold-water” entry into teaching, that is, assuming full classroom responsibility with minimal structured induction, it is also accompanied by the dual workload of a work-based, in-service teacher education programme (HLG). Yet these challenges are largely framed by participants as manageable and time-limited.
Biographical resources function as robust safety nets that not only buffer pedagogical insecurity and status ambivalence, but also enable confidence, composure, and a strong sense of vocational fit. Structural tensions are experienced as demanding, yet they frequently become productive sites of professional learning, self-reflection, and identity consolidation rather than sources of disengagement.
By theorising career-change entry as a high-stakes, biographically grounded negotiation of professional roles, the paper highlights not only vulnerability, but also the capacity of career-change teachers to transform tension into professional growth. In their reflection portfolios, this negotiation becomes visible in narratives of risk, safety, and professional distinction, through which participants position themselves as both novices and experts over time. The findings thus contribute a nuanced perspective to international research on second-career teachers and point to teacher education and induction programmes that build on biography, recognition, and relational support as resources for sustainable professionalisation.

The study is located within qualitative teacher education research and follows an interpretivist–constructivist research paradigm. Professional role understanding is conceptualised as a socially and biographically constructed process that emerges through reflective sense-making within specific institutional and temporal contexts (Goodson & Gill, 2011). Biographical accounts are treated as situated interpretations through which participants make sense of their trajectories into and within the teaching profession. The empirical material consists of written reflection portfolios from 50 career-change teachers working in secondary education in Austria. At the time of data collection, all participants were employed in the school system, either in their induction phase or with several years of teaching experience. All participants were enrolled in a mandatory, work-based, in-service teacher education programme for career-change teachers (HLG). The portfolios were anonymised prior to analysis (IDs N1–N50). The portfolios comprised structured biographical reflections on participants’ professional trajectories and professional role understandings across past, present, and anticipated future perspectives, allowing for an analysis of professional role construction over time. Data analysis followed an inductive, grounded theory–oriented approach based on the Gioia methodology (Gioia et al., 2013). In a first step, the material was analysed using informant-centric first-order concepts that preserved participants’ own language and interpretations. In a second step, these concepts were systematically compared and clustered into theory-centric second-order themes. In a third step, the themes were distilled into aggregate dimensions representing higher-level theoretical insights. The analytic process was documented through a data structure, ensuring transparency between raw data, conceptual development, and theoretical claims. Participants were treated as knowledgeable agents, and biography was foregrounded as an active resource in professional sense-making. The analysis was conducted reflexively, with the researchers’ positioning within teacher education acknowledged as both an analytic resource and a potential source of bias. The material originated from course-based assignments; informed consent for anonymised research use was obtained after course completion.

The analysis identified four interrelated dimensions that structure career-change teachers’ understandings of their professional roles. First, biography as a safety net captures how participants mobilise parental experience and prior occupational expertise as sources of immediate legitimacy and emotional stability. Professional confidence is frequently anchored in life experience rather than in formal pedagogical credentials, allowing participants to compensate biographically for perceived training gaps. Second, high-stakes transition vulnerability describes the intensified strain resulting from conscious disengagement from prior careers combined with an abrupt “cold-water” entry into teaching. Participants report assuming full teaching responsibility without structured induction, while simultaneously managing the dual burden of full-time teaching and the HLG qualification programme. The lack of transparent and timely recognition of prior service years and precarious contractual arrangements further amplify feelings of being institutionally undervalued. Third, the novice–expert paradox reflects a persistent status inconsistency. While career-change teachers are selectively valued for their subject or technical expertise, they experience themselves as pedagogical novices, particularly in classroom management and assessment. This tension is reinforced through heterogeneous external ascriptions, including scepticism from younger, traditionally trained colleagues and inconsistent mentoring experiences. Fourth, adaptive professional distinction describes how participants respond to these tensions by developing hybrid, pragmatic role identities. Drawing on professional distance from prior careers, they cultivate de-centered resilience and accept contextual role fluidity—being experts in some situations and novices in others. Overall, career-change teachers’ professional role understandings emerge as biographically grounded, structurally shaped, and relationally negotiated configurations, rather than linear progressions from deficit to competence. The paper argues that teacher education and induction programmes should explicitly address the high-stakes nature of career disengagement, strengthen mentoring structures, and engage systematically with career-change teachers’ biographies as resources for professional learning.

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