It’s Not About the Money: STEM Professionals’ Motivations to Become Secondary School Teachers Through Alternative Entry Teacher Education Pathways

Abstract Teacher shortage is a global problem. One strategy adopted in several countries to help address the shortfall of teachers is to employ career-change teachers, sometimes through alternative entry pathways, which allow aspiring teachers to teach in a school, while simultaneously working towards their teacher qualification. Teachers of STEM subjects, including mathematics, technology, physics, chemistry, biology, and generalist science, are in short supply in many schools, especially in low SES, disadvantaged, rural, and remote schools. This paper draws upon interview and survey data with Australian teachers at the beginning, middle, and completion of their 2-year employment-based pathway to a teaching qualification and tells the story of three teachers through individual vignettes. This paper takes a phenomenological approach to the data as we sought to understand the meaning and lived experience of each of the participants, all of whom were career-change teachers. This longitudinal research study specifically examines the motivations for career-change teachers who have come from STEM disciplines, as they make the change to teaching, and how they sustain their motivations through their early years of teaching. The study found that, as STEM professionals enter the teaching profession, building an understanding of the issues specific to sustaining their motivation for teaching is important. This will ensure that, as a community, we not only foster individual success but also that STEM teachers are retained in the workforce.