Across European scholarship, there is sustained recognition of a policy shift towards more practice-based models of initial teacher education (ITE) (Czerniawski et al., 2019; Gorman & Furlong, 2025; Murray et al., 2019; Skourdoumbis, 2017; Towers & Maguire, 2023).  ITE policy within the Republic of Ireland (RoI) has explicitly aligned with this trajectory (Department of Education, 2023). Céim: Standards for Initial Teacher Education (Teaching Council, 2020) and Guidelines on School Placement (Teaching Council, 2013, 2021), two regularity policies for ITE, have led a drive in extending placements on all ITE programmes in the RoI. HEIs are required to have 30 weeks of school placement for undergraduate 4-year programmes and 24 weeks of school placement for postgraduate 2-year programmes. A national review of school placement in the RoI has flagged that this shift has significantly intensified the organisational and staffing demands associated with placement provision (Hall et al., 2018), with pressures exacerbated by the absence of a formalised HEI-school partnership model in ITE (Gorman & Furlong, 2025). Under Teaching Council policy (2020, 2021), HEIs are required to have placement tutors involved in school placement. These duties include observing student teachers’ practice, engaging in professional dialogue, and making summative judgements aligned with HEI standards. International research consistently highlights that while this work is critically important for student teacher development, it can be complex and emotionally demanding (Darling-Hammond & Snyder, 2000; Haigh et al., 2013; Zeichner, 2021). Furthermore, and mirroring international trends, placement work within Irish HEIs (particularly universities) is undervalued within academic workload models and career structures, thus contributing to an increased reliance on part-time staff (Sugrue & Solbrekke, 2017; Zeichner, 2021). This part-time cohort consists mainly of retired teachers, principals, and former teacher educators. European research on teacher shortages has documented the growing re-engagement of retired teachers as a policy response to workforce pressures (Flores, 2025; Resch, 2025). While this literature has largely focused on classroom teaching, it also raises important questions for ITE, where retired educators also play a substantial role in placement activity.

Against this backdrop, this paper is guided by the following research question:

1. How do retired teachers and principals make sense of their post-retirement engagement in school placement activity?
2. What does their involvement reveal about the sustainability of contemporary ITE placement models in the RoI?

These questions invite analysis of how retired educators interpret their roles, identities, and responsibilities in placement work, while also examining what the growing reliance on retired educators suggests about the organisation and resourcing of school placement within ITE.

This paper conceptualises placement work as a form of post-retirement professional practice and draws on theoretical insights from retirement studies. In particular, the paper is informed by Wang and Shultz’s (2010) theoretical framework, which theorises retirement as a non-linear process shaped by individual decision-making, adjustment over time, career development, and organisational practices. Wang and Shultz (2010) conceptualise retirement as an individual decision-making process, foregrounding agency and motivation. The framework conceptualises retirement as an adjustment process involving the renegotiation of roles, authority, and work practices. Wang and Shultz also frame retirement as a career development stage rather than a period of withdrawal. From this perspective, retired work constitutes a distinct late-career role, where authority is derived from accumulated experience and professional judgement rather than formal position. Finally, the framework foregrounds organisational and policy dimensions, conceptualising retirement as a human resource issue shaped by recruitment practices and short-term contractual arrangements. This perspective is particularly salient given the flexible and often precarious arrangements through which retired placement tutors are engaged in Irish HEIs, raising questions about recognition, support, and long-term sustainability.

A qualitative approach was considered most appropriate for capturing participants’ lived experiences, professional biographies, and sense-making processes in depth. As outlined earlier, the study is theoretically informed by Wang and Shultz’s (2010) multidimensional framework on retirement, which conceptualises retirement not as a discrete moment of exit but as a dynamic process shaped by individual decision-making, adjustment over time, career development, and organisational human resource practices. This framework functions as a sensitising lens, informing both data generation and analysis rather than serving as a rigid coding structure. The study draws on in-depth interviews with 20 retired professionals, retired teachers and principals, currently involved in school placement activity at one HEI in the RoI. Participants were recruited through purposive sampling, guided by the criteria that they were formally retired from full-time teaching, had engaged in school placement activity within the previous three academic years, and had assessed student teachers in Irish primary or post-primary schools. The aim of sampling was not representativeness but to capture a range of professional trajectories and placement experiences. Semi-structured interviews were conducted either face-to-face or online, depending on participants’ preferences and location, and typically lasted between 60 and 90 minutes. Interviews were biographically informed, inviting participants to reflect across three phases of their professional lives: pre-retirement roles, the transition into retirement and decisions about continued engagement, and experiences of placement activity post-retirement. Interview questions were open-ended and exploratory, informed by the four dimensions of Wang and Shultz’s (2010) framework, and designed to elicit reflective narrative accounts. Ethical approval was obtained from the authors’ university, and all procedures were adhered to. Data analysis followed a thematic, theoretically informed approach combining inductive coding with theory-guided interpretation (Braun & Clarke, 2021). Initial analysis involved close reading and familiarisation to identify patterns across participants’ narratives. Inductive coding captured salient features of the data, including motivations for post-retirement engagement, experiences of placement work, perceptions of institutional support, and negotiations of professional identity. In a subsequent analytic phase, these codes were examined in relation to the four dimensions of Wang and Shultz’s framework, while remaining attentive to overlaps, tensions, and contradictions. Themes were refined through constant comparison across interviews, supported by reflexive memo-writing to ensure coherence between data, theory, and analytic claims.

Viewed through Wang and Shultz’s (2010) framework, post-retirement engagement reflects an adaptive reconfiguration of professional identity. Participants were clear about why they chose school placement work after retirement. Their motivations were rarely framed in financial terms. Instead, school placement offered continuity and a sense of purpose. Several participants spoke about not wanting an abrupt break from professional life. Negotiating the dual responsibility of supporting and assessing student teachers emerged as one of the most challenging aspects of the placement tutor role. Participants also expressed concern that ITE programmes have become overly academic, and participants saw themselves as helping student teachers bridge the gap between HEI expectations and school realities. Finally, what surprised participants was the strategic importance of their work in sustaining HEI-school relationships. They felt positioned to navigate tensions during school placement, particularly when concerns arose about student teachers’ practice, in ways that often prevented issues from hampering these relationships. While retired tutors value their roles, their increased centrality in ITE raises implications. First, as placement requirements expand across European systems (European Commission et al., 2021), ITE may risk drifting towards a ‘gig economy’ model, as evident in the RoI, where retired educators increasingly shoulder significant placement responsibilities without commensurate institutional status or security. Second, if these tutors were no longer willing or available to commit (e.g., due to changes in pension rules and part-time work), the placement system would quickly be exposed, potentially rendering placement activity unmanageable for HEIs. The paper concludes with echoing Zeichner’s call for greater recognition of placement activity (2021). Rather than remaining peripheral to workload models and promotion criteria, placement tutoring, whether undertaken by retired or full-time staff, needs greater recognition and resourcing. Without this, systems risk normalising dependency on casual labour while deferring reform of ITE structures, specifically in formalising HEI-school partnerships.

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