The role of initial and continuing professional education in recruitment and retention of teachers: the importance of a basis of social justice

Abstract

The closure of schools and universities because of the COVID-19 pandemic has thrown into sharp relief the global issue of the shortage of well-qualified teachers, a subject much discussed in recent volumes of JET. Challenges of both recruitment to and retention in the profession are the subject of an increasing number of studies that are shedding light on an array of contributing factors. Social justice, professional development, the role of the teacher educator and teachers’ knowledge, which are topics that feature through the articles of this issue, all have a significant impact on the recruitment and retention of teachers. Activities related to social justice and professional development, paired with the expertise of teacher educators and the collective knowledge of teachers, are key components of successful recruitment and retention efforts as can be seen in the articles that comprise this issue. The first paper, from Jenni Kunnari and colleagues from the University of Oulu in Finland, describes a novel lens being brought to focus on teacher recruitment: that of the matriculation results of teacher candidates. In a country where recruitment to teacher education programmes is highly selective, the findings were that the successful acceptance was generally related to the selection criteria for teacher education and with a strong performance in the contrasting disciplines of mathematics and psychology. Given that recruitment to the teaching profession is not a problem in Finland, these findings have interesting international significance. But what of the reasons people have for choosing teaching as a career in the first place? The second article is by Wenting Wang and colleagues from two universities that offer teacher education courses in China. They found that whilst student teachers perceived teaching as a platform to fulfil their professional ambitions, they were under no illusion about the challenges they might face. The negative notions of high workload, low salary and low social status were weighed against a high level of intrinsic motivation for teaching to fulfil their aspirations and to make a difference. This desire to contribute to the lives of pupils and thus society is the focus of the next paper, which comes from the Netherlands and is by Heleen Simonsz and colleagues. They looked at the relationship between motivation for becoming a teacher and educational ideals in a cohort of Dutch student teachers (secondary phase). For this group, important motivational factors included interest in their subject matter, social utility value and intrinsic value, which accord with past studies. Educational ideals included the desire to contribute to pupils’ social development and subject achievement and here lies the new contribution. Interestingly, these participants thought that it was less important for their pupils to have successful careers and develop democratic attitudes based on principles of social justice. JOURNAL OF EDUCATION FOR TEACHING 2023, VOL. 49, NO. 2, 177–179 https://doi.org/10.1080/02607476.2023.2191470