The international context of declining attractiveness of the teaching profession has prompted a range of policy responses aimed at broadening the recruitment pool (Maroy, 2024). Persistent difficulties in attracting ‘’traditional’’ candidates have led to the progressive opening of the teaching career to ‘atypical’ profiles, particularly individuals with prior experience in other professional sectors. These “second-career teachers” (SCT) (Berger & D'Ascoli, 2011) have become a focus of growing international attention, notably through facilitated access routes and tailored training pathways (Ruitenburg & Tigchelaar, 2021).  In France, however, within a civil service system structured around the principle of workforce interchangeability, no specific training framework is formally dedicated to SCT, despite the existence of occasional transitional arrangements.  

Existing literature suggests that the diversity of SCTs' professional trajectories and prior experiences may constitute valuable resources for teachers’ professional development (Tigchelaar et al., 2010). However, empirical evidence regarding SCTs’ ability to effectively mobilise and transfer these prior skills into the teaching profession remains limited (Troesch & Bauer, 2020; Den Hertog et al, 2023). Our presentation seeks to address this gap by examining the difficulties encountered by SCT, in order to better capture the specific features of their professional develepment trajectory.

Our analysis is grounded in the field of workplace socialisation (Coppe et al., 2022), understood as the process through which an individual acquires, through learning and adaptation, the knowledge, skills and behaviours required to perform their professional role (Chao, 2012). This process is multidimensional and generally conceptualised as comprising three interrelated domains of socialisation (Perrot & Campoy, 2009). Socialisation into professional tasks primarily relates to the appropriation of the technical and practical dimensions of the profession. In the case of teaching, it encompasses instructional tasks, and more broadly, classroom practices. Secondly, socialisation into the working group concerns relational and collaborative integration within the professional team. Finally, organisation socialisation refers to understanding the functioning, values and culture of the institution, and therefore to teachers’a adaptation to the school as an organisation (Mukamurera et al., 2019).

However, for SCT, these three forms of socialisation may be disrupted by prior socialisation experiences acquired in other professional environments. Sociological approaches distinguish between process of secondary reinforcement socialisation and conversion socialisation (Darmon, 2016), the latter involving mechanisms of deculturation and reculturation that may result in profound transformation of the individual. These processes are nevertheless complex, as they often encounter resistance rooted in dispositions formed through earlier professional  socialisation, developed over the long term, and sometimes poorly aligned with the requirements of new occupational contexts. This perspective helps to account for the difficulties that teachers may experience following an initial career in professional environments whose logic differ markedly from those of educational institutions.

Understanding these difficulties is crucial for preventing staff dissatisfaction and limiting teacher turnover (Hogg et al., 2023), particularly as SCT have become a key resource in the renewal of the profession (Charles et al., 2023). The interdependence of the three domains outlined above makes the analysis of barriers to workplace socialisation particularly complex. 

While the difficulties identified are not specific to SCT, they tend to be exacerbated by a mismatch between dispositions shaped through early professional experiences and the actual conditions of teaching work. Confrontation with the realities of the profession may profoundly challenge representations that are sometimes based on an idealised or outdated image of a constantly evolving occupation. The ‘entry shock’ into teaching is therefore hightened and compounded by this dispositional mismatch. Our findings highlights the risks associated with insuffisant support for new teachers whose prior professional experiences may constitute a paradoxical source of vulnerability.

Our empirical material combines two complementary strands of research in order to examine the challenges of second careers. The first focuses on tenured secondary school teachers in France who are pursuing second careers, as part of a doctoral thesis defended in july 2025. The second draws on a sub-sample from an ongoing doctoral project on the professional difficulties experienced by tenured primary and secondary school teachers in France in the context of school disorder, some of whom are also engaged in a second careers in teaching. In both cases, semi-structured interviews were conducted with teachers (n=20 for the first field, n=10 for the second), exploring professional challenges encountered at multiple levels and capturing information on respondents’ individual trajectories prior to entering teaching. All interviews were fully transcribed and subsenquently analysed in light of our theoretical framework. This presentation focuses on four second-career teachers in order to examine in depth the obstacles they faced in their workplace socialisation process, and to shed light on the proposed theoretical analysis based on their professional experiences. These teachers share a profound questioning of their career choice, leading them to contemplate leaving the teaching profession. This case study provides insight into how the specific characteristics of second-career teachers are, or not, considered public policies on teacher recruitment and training.

Our presentation demonstrate how the challenges faced by SCT can hinder their workplace socialisation, sometimes even calling into question their commitment to a profession that they have entered as a career change. It also highlights that the skills and resources acquired in previous careers may prove ineffective within organisation whose logics and cultural codes are unfamiliar or only partially understood (Varadharajan et al., 2018). This disrupted socialisation situates individuals at the intersection of tensions that adversely affect their professional experiences. These results underline the need for training and induction programmes that better accommodate the specific profiles of second-career teachers (Tigchelaar et al, 2010). The absence of targeted training reflects a vision of teacher attractiveness rooted in a human resources management approach that prioritizes recruitement over retention (Farges & Szerdahelyi, 2024). Yet, at the individual level, attractiveness is not merely a matter of aligning an employment offer with a career change project. Identity and symbolic costs must also be taken into account, as they can sometimes outweigh the material or economic benefits. The managerial logic therefore reveals its limitations, placing certain candidates in a structural position of disadvantage that prevents them from consolidating or developing a ‘vocational’ relationship with the profession (Garcia, 2023), an outcome that is often sought by those pursuing a career change. These findings provide avenues for policymakers and educational leaders to consider, encouraging a more qualitative approach to attracting second career candidates. They highlight the importance of providing training and induction programs tailored to these specific profiles while fostering long-term professional commitment to the profession. Facilitating the conversion of previous ‘’habitus’’ would, in particular, require recognising and addressing pre-existing beliefs, conceptions, and prior skills, which may become obstacles rather than assets if the conditions necessary to transform them into professional resources are not considered.

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