This symposium examines the professional development and retention of homeroom teachers. In subject‑teacher systems, where students are taught by multiple teachers, a single teacher is appointed as the homeroom teacher to support students’ holistic development and coordinate collaboration among parents, teachers, and student welfare professionals. Homeroom teachers are typically subject‑specialist teachers who assume additional responsibility for the personal and social development of one class of students. The role has long historical roots across many countries (Best, 1999; Galassi et al., 1997; Smilie, 2025), and research has shown it to be critical for students’ well‑being (Da’as, 2025a) and academic achievement (Chen & Zao, 2022). When problems arise, homeroom teachers often serve as first responders; thus, they confront some of the most challenging issues related to student misbehavior, mental health, and school–home communication (Kuusisto et al., 2025; Shoshani, 2025; see also Da’as, 2025a).

Despite the importance of the role, research on homeroom teaching remains limited, and homeroom teachers typically receive no specialized preparation - even in countries where the role is acknowledged in educational policy documents, such as China, Estonia, and Israel (e.g., Mizrahi‑Shtelman & Sapir, 2025; Ye et al., 2023). Homeroom teaching is both theoretically underdefined and practically ambiguous, contributing to substantial variation in national and local expectations. Tasks may range from administrative responsibilities, such as monitoring absences and delivering announcements (Galassi et al., 1997), to pedagogical and social duties, such as responding to individual student needs and cultivating a positive classroom climate (Baeriswyl et al., 2021; Kuusisto et al., 2025). In some contexts, homeroom teachers are conceptualized as “moral managers” (Ye et al., 2023), and in others their work aligns with pastoral care traditions (Best, 1999; Purdy, 2013).

Homeroom teachers’ responsibilities often include extensive “meta‑work”, the behind‑the‑scenes efforts necessary to support student learning and engagement, including coordination with parents, colleagues, and multiprofessional student welfare networks (Kuusisto et al., 2025). Especially meta‑work demands extend beyond traditional teaching and require continuous boundary work from individual teachers (Mizrahi‑Shtelman & Sapir, 2025). Unsurprisingly, homeroom teaching is consistently seen as one of the most stressful and challenging aspects of teachers’ work (Baeriswyl et al., 2021; Galassi et al., 1997).

Subject teachers thus navigate a dual professional identity: they are experts in their academic disciplines and, simultaneously, educators responsible for students’ holistic moral, social, and behavioral development (see Purdy, 2013; Tirri & Kuusisto, 2022). Since subject‑teacher education typically emphasizes disciplinary knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge (e.g., Juvonen & Toom, 2021), some teachers prefer to focus solely on subject teaching and distance themselves from broader educational responsibilities (e.g., Rissanen et al., 2018). Others have internalized this dual role (Popper‑Giveon & Shayshon, 2017) and are more inclined to take on homeroom responsibilities (Kuusisto et al., 2025).

This symposium investigates homeroom teachers’ professional development both at the beginning of their careers and as they continue in the role. It further identifies key factors that promote retention, job satisfaction, and sustained work engagement among homeroom teachers. The symposium concludes with a discussant’s talk in which the three national contexts - Estonia, Israel, and China - are compared and synthesized to illuminate distinctive perspectives on homeroom teaching.

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