From disconnection to reconnections and new connections:experiences of Early Career Teachers and the need for non-hierarchical Communities of Practice

This paper discusses the experiences of a group of new teachers in England since the introduction of the Early Career Framework (ECF) (DfE, 2019), a 2-year programme forming part of the national Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy, structured around eight Teachers’ Standards; and currently under-researched. For 95% of new teachers, the ECF (typically involving set reading, regular mentoring, facilitated group discussions and reflective activities) is an externally-delivered package. Contextualising the ECF within the global teacher recruitment and retention crisis - UNESCO (2024) projections suggest a global shortage of 44 million primary and secondary teachers - the paper describes for an international comparative project currently under development. <br/><br/>Drawing on a previous study exploring what motivates people to teach why they leave (Perryman and Calvert, 2019) conducted before the introduction of the EC, the paper first reports on a contemporary study that mirrored Perryman and Calvert’s (2019) methodology. Online surveys and interviews were conducted in 2023-24 with Post Graduate Certificate of Education (PGCE) alumni of a university in southwest England who began teaching in the first two years of the ECF. It focuses on what attracted new entrants into teaching and why many are leaving or considering leaving, and critically evaluates the ECF. <br/><br/>The study found that people became teachers through a love of their subject and a desire to make a difference, but that they often become disconnected not only by a lack of intellectual stimulation and excessive workload, but few opportunities for creativity, a lack of appropriate support, little voice or agency, and isolation; and that the top-down, one-size-fits-all ECF is ineffective in supporting their development needs. It advocates for a more bespoke, interpersonal, non-hierarchical approach to supporting new teachers. <br/><br/>The paper calls for research into the formation of innovative, non-hierarchical forms of Communities of Practice (CoPs) which - through reconnecting them to their training peers and facilitating the forging of new connections – would better respond to the reported needs of beginning teachers by supporting them to develop holistically, such that they are well-prepared and enthusiastic to navigate and commit to a career in education. Whilst acknowledging that causal factors of the international recruitment and retention crisis are to an extent context-dependent, known common issues include the levels and type of support teachers receive (e.g . Alexander at al, 2020); hence, the paper describes plans to establish CoPs in three different jurisdictions to explore how such practice might support retention.