The Stories of Female Career-Changers Who Retrain as Primary School Teachers in England: Their Experiences of Early Career Teacher Induction

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the induction experiences of five early career teachers (ECTs), in England, who retrained to become primary school teachers after a ‘first career’. The participants self-identified as ‘career changers’ and are all female. This small-scale study took place during the mandatory two-year teacher induction and the aim was to explore their experiences as ‘career-changing females’, through an interpretivist methodology, framed as narrative inquiry. By adapting Lewin’s (1948) Force Field Analysis model, the researcher constructed a conceptual framework called ‘Early Career Teachers Force Field Analysis’ to consider the possible driving and restraining forces during induction. By identifying these forces, the findings revealed the critical incidents that impacted participants and this was mapped chronologically, to produce a visual representation of their stories. The telling of these ‘stories’ was set against the policy context of the Early Career Framework (ECF, DfE, 2021) and the impact this had as they entered the profession. The research questions focused on what can be learned from their experiences, to gain a better understanding of how to support career-changing female ECTs during induction. The main findings revealed greater compliance of the ECF(DfE, 2021) and the importance of the mentoring role during the first year but, by the second year, participants chose not to complete the research-based continued professional development (CPD), nor did they all utilise their official mentor support. Instead, they all enjoyed greater levels of well-being after the ‘perceived’ reduction in CPD and some chose to obtain support from ‘unofficial’ mentors. Some participants also spoke of their doubts about remaining as full-time teachers, due to the pressures of workload, wanting to start a family or questioning the sustainability of the role for them. Whilst this study did not directly consider the retention of ECTs, findings add further validation to the prior research of why teachers may leave the profession (House of Commons Library, 2019) and suggest that, despite the implementation of the ECF (DfE, 2021), the same issues continue to affect ECTs.

As the ECF (DfE, 2021) was only implemented in September 2021 and curtailed early, due to the Covid-19 global pandemic, there is no existing qualitative research following the consecutive journey of first and second year ECTs. Therefore, this research provides a nuanced look at their experiences and aims to contribute new knowledge to complement the field of career-changing primary school teachers, through a female lens.