Research Questions, Aims: In the context of a global teacher shortage, many countries have turned to recruiting professionals from without pre-service teacher education background into K-12 education as a strategy to alleviate teacher shortfalls and diversify the teaching workforce. In China, these teachers are helping alleviate teacher shortages and bringing diverse academic and professional backgrounds possess strong subject-matter expertise or technical skills. However, without traditional teacher training, they often face acute deficits in pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and practical skills. They may leave teaching professions when access to social support from experienced teachers, school leaders, and colleagues is limit, or when they struggle to navigate and internalize the norms and rules in the educational field. This study investigates how these “teachers” without receiving traditional professional training can be better supported in their transition from other fields into teaching professional growth. This study is guided by these main research questions:

How do these teachers without pre-service training adjust to the school environment, and what initial challenges do they encounter in terms of teaching skills and professional identity?

Under Chinese educational context, in what ways do features like school teaching-research system impact these teachers’ professional developments and their integration into the faculty community?

By addressing these questions, the study aims to generate insights that can inform school and policy measures to help teachers without professional training succeed. We seek to identify what kinds of support systems (mentoring/apprenticeship, peer networks, etc.) are most effective for accelerating these teachers’ professional development and for helping them establish a confident teacher identity.

Theoretical Framework: Our conceptual approach combines teacher professional development with a social support network perspective. Traditional models of teacher professional development (e.g., Lawson’s stage model) assume a linear pathway in which new teachers receive formal pre-service training before entering the classroom. Those teachers teaching without pre-service education training, meaning their early development must rely heavily on in-service learning and on-the-job professional development. This reality calls for rethinking teacher induction: instead of a one-time preparatory phase, these teachers require robust support during their initial teaching years. We constructed a process-structure-mechanism analytical framework to examine the professional development of these teachers without pre-service teacher education experiences.

This framework integrates multiple dimensions of teacher occupational socialization theory to explain core mechanisms, with special focus on the role of China’s unique secondary school teaching-research system and interpersonal (guanxi) networks in post-entry professional development. By integrating these perspectives, our study not only examines these teachers' challenges but also how their unique cross-disciplinary strengths can be harnessed. We pay special attention to Chinese school practices like the mentor-apprentice mentorship system and collective lesson planning groups, which are rooted in a collaborative professional culture. We theorize that with appropriate networks and support; these teachers can convert their prior expertise into teaching innovations. In summary, this theoretical lens is geared toward practical application: it helps pinpoint how institutional and interpersonal support mechanisms can be optimized to improve these teachers' professional development, performance, and retention.

This study employs a qualitative, interpretive research design to explore teachers without professional pre-service educational experiences and the support systems available to them. We used theoretical sampling to recruit participants representing diverse school environments, thereby capturing a broad range of perspectives. Sixteen teachers were selected from secondary school across urban and rural areas in China. They taught a variety of subjects and all had 1-5 years of teaching experience, ensuring they could reflect on their initial induction period. This diverse sample ensures that the findings will be relevant across different settings and can uncover variations in support dynamics. Data were collected via semi-structured interviews with each participant. Interviews lasts approximately 40-60 minutes each, and invited teachers to share their entry-to-teaching story and detail the support they experienced. An interview guide with open-ended questions was used to prompt reflection on key issues. For example, who or what had been most helpful in their first years, how they solved teaching challenges, and how relationships with colleagues or mentors influenced their growth. Probing questions elicited detailed stories about how participants learned on the job, who guided them, and how they navigated interactions with colleagues, mentors, school leaders, and any external professional contacts. With participants’ consent, all interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim for analysis. We conducted a thematic analysis to systematically examine the interview data. Using NVivo 15, we coded transcripts for references to analyze how their developmental mechanisms differ from those teachers developing through traditional teacher education route, what the contributing aspects for their growths are and what the challenges are. We concentrated on identifying key patterns regarding the types of support relationships these teachers received and the resources gained through these connections, and the impact of these supports on their classroom practice and sense of professional identity. To ensure trustworthiness of the analysis, 3 researchers cross-checked coding and emerging themes, and we carried out member checks by summarizing preliminary findings to some participants to confirm our interpretations.

Our study primarily yielded the following three key findings: Compensatory Role of Apprenticeship and Collegial Support: China’s unique mentor-apprenticeship model and collaborative teaching-research groups serve a critical compensatory function. The absence of formal pre-service teacher education forces our research subjects to rely heavily on subject-based lesson-planning groups (teacher professional learning communities) and one-on-one mentoring relationships to construct a “survival network.” Their supervisors/mentors not only deliver practical and tacit teaching skills, but also help the teachers without preservice training socializes newcomers to learn the norms, rules, practices and discourse of the school context. Dual Nature of Guanxi Networks: Interpersonal networks rooted in guanxi (personal relationships) exhibit a double-edged nature in the socialization process. On one hand, the school-based teaching-research system provides an efficient in-service support mechanism. This is offering technical guidance and a safety net for new teachers. On the other hand, this tightly knit system constitutes a micropolitical arena; its strong normative pressures and hierarchical “disciplinary” logic can sometimes stifle the initiative and innovative potential of these teachers without preservice training, dampening their enthusiasm for independent professional growth. Capital Conversion from Outsider to Insider: For teachers lacking pre-service training, success involves more than passive assimilation into school culture—it is a process of converting and mobilizing capital that positions them as active contributors. These teachers learn to transform their prior “ascribed capital” (such as subject expertise, interdisciplinary skills, or industry networks) into school-recognized “educational capital.” By channeling their pre-existing strengths to fit educational contexts, they compensate for the lack of formal pedagogical training. This conversion of capital facilitates their transition from outsiders to accepted insiders in the teaching community.

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