Jo Lampert

In this paper, we present a case study of hard-to-staff secondary schools to examine teacher turnover in Australia. The paper draws on interviews with teachers and school leaders to explore issues related to turnover, an aspect of workforce instability that is less recognised in discussions of the Australian teaching workforce. We situate this analysis within the broader context of education marketisation to consider the implications for disadvantaged schools in the context of widespread teacher shortages. We map the dynamics of localised experiences of turnover, highlighting the impacts of marketisation on the teaching workforce through increasing competition between schools for teachers, the ongoing process of continuous recruitment, and the complexities of teacher retention in hard-to-staff schools. We demonstrate how this cycle of constant staff replacement not only disrupts school stability and social relationships but also places additional strain on remaining teachers and leaders, creating unsustainable working environments that further drive turnover contributing to increasingly stratified working conditions for teachers across different school contexts.

In many ways, a text such as this, which focuses on a range of individual chapters and selective analysis, is difficult to conclude without resorting to trite generalisations. As outlined in our introduction, the aim of this book has been to confront some of the trends in society and within education through the lens of teacher education. The chapters in this book offer a critique of those trends and their impact on practice and offer a sense of the possibilities and affordances made possible by thinking about new ways of preparing and educating new teachers. We have sought to present a critical but optimistic account, generating valuable critique of the status quo and hope to provide sources of inspiration about what can be done. However, if a reader has read each of these chapters in the order intended, we would suggest that they will have noticed that the balance of critique and optimism is uneven at best. Perhaps this speaks volumes about the contexts that we, the editors and the chapter authors, find ourselves in. Sometimes it can feel overwhelming to consider the array of structural, policy-related and practical challenges that teacher educators face, and how powerless it can feel to be positioned responsively with a limited range of power, authority and opportunity to elicit real and effective change. In the light of such a context, Zembylas’ call for solidarity between teacher educators is a timely one – as feeling part of a collective movement is important for us as individuals as well as for our collective endeavour of supporting and developing new teachers and the profession as a whole. Preparing teachers for social transformation now seems more urgent than ever.

In this chapter, based on our research on codesigned Indigenous education that is led by and informed by Indigenous communities, three stages of codesign are proposed to ensure the process of delivering culturally responsive education is genuinely transformational. First, codesign should be conceptualised, proposed, and led by or with Indigenous communities and enacted from the outset (design). Second, codesign is an intentional process, and third, codesigned projects should always be evaluated based on their positive impact within the communities for which they have been conceptualised and designed. In this chapter, we outline some of the findings of an Australian codesign research project to (i) interrogate the ways codesign is interpreted and examined differently by Indigenous and non-Indigenous stakeholders and (ii) offer examples of how a framework for codesign could be used in teacher education to prioritise local Indigenous knowledges and support teacher graduates to advocate for social change in their teaching practices.

This chapter explores several implications of the changes to Initial Teacher Education that are happening at a time of unprecedented teaching shortages in Australia. In doing so, we hope to illustrate the complexity of these changes and the risks that some of these changes may pose to educational equality. Drawing on Bourdieu, we consider teacher education reform in Australia, including scaling down social justice curricula and fast-tracking teacher education. We examine how these changes may diminish the focus on producing teachers who understand the context of young people and their families in historically disadvantaged communities and how this may reproduce social inequalities.

This book critically evaluates the dynamic landscape of teacher education on a global scale, delving into its recent advancements, innovations, and emerging paradigms. Recognizing the need to arm teachers with the capacity to address contemporary challenges, the authors emphasize inventive approaches within teacher education that can foster the ability to confront problems such as unprecedented inequality, resurgence of ultra-right movements, environmental crises, and the interconnected dilemmas of today's world. By analysing the intricacies, strengths, and limitations inherent in existing teacher education models, Dadvand, Lampert, and Brooks and their contributors examine current frameworks and consider the potential and drawbacks in preparing educators to effectively tackle multifaceted challenges. The chapters focus on the opportunities and limitations presented by ongoing trends in Initial Teacher Education, particularly in relation to the most urgent issues of our time. This valuable resource for educators, policymakers, and researchers is an essential read for anyone committed to fostering social justice and inclusive education and seeking to equip educators for the challenges of today's world.

The world is facing a range of complex and interconnected challenges, including climate change, political instability, wars and conflict, widening inequalities, and rapid environmental degradation. Education is often seen as a means of helping young people make sense of the world and consider how they might respond to these and other emerging challenges. Thus, it is not surprising that education is frequently positioned as part of the ‘solution’ to pressing issues such as educational inequity (Lampert et al., 2024), social exclusion (Dadvand, 2024), declining democratic participation, and environmental degradation (Bryan, 2022). However, as Apple (2015) cautions, education does not function independently of the broader structures of power, ideology, and economic interests that shape it. While schooling can create spaces for critical engagement and possibility, it is also constrained by dominant, and increasingly neoliberal and neoconservative, agendas that can limit its potential.

In a climate of pervasive teacher shortages, initiatives have focused on attracting new teachers to the profession, with hardest-to-staff schools more likely to fill vacancies with early-career teachers, including those with conditional status. In Australia, workforce policy prioritises induction and mentoring to support transition to the profession and improve retention. This paper aims to understand mentor teacher experiences in hardest-to-staff schools, where a growing cohort of inexperienced teachers increases the need for mentoring. The analysis is based on data from semi-structured interviews conducted with teachers in six schools across two Australian states, as part of a larger project exploring work experiences of teachers in hardest-to-staff schools. In addition to formal mentoring, our findings illustrate that in these schools, informal and incidental mentoring is widespread. Further, the iterative nature of novice teacher induction creates a sense of ambivalence in longer-serving teachers. While experienced teachers find reward in supporting early-career colleagues, the hidden labour inherent to constant incidental mentoring encroaches on the time available to manage their own workload, sometimes leading to frustration and even resentment. We conclude that while mentoring is crucial with so many new entrants to the profession, policymakers should be aware of the labour associated with increased incidental mentoring to avoid unintended consequences for teachers who find themselves in the position of supporting growing numbers of new staff.