As the teacher shortage rages on across the country, Dr Ellen Larsen from the University of Southern Queensland is co-leading a research project that’s charting why educators are opting to leave and the kinds of work they go on to pursue.
Crucially, Larsen says the team have recently focused on unpacking exactly what it is these former teachers enjoy and appreciate about their new roles.
Less accountability, more job flexibility and a better work-life schedule emerged as the key perks, according to 25 ex-teachers interviewed for this phase of the study.
“This offers some really, really great insights,” Larsen tells EducationHQ.
“So, things like, they actually found that while they still experienced accountability, they didn’t feel so micromanaged.
“And in doing so, they felt they had the opportunity to be far more creative and really utilise their expertise and their skills in powerful kinds of ways, whereas they were feeling that in teaching, the accountability constrained how well they could actually do their job.”
With far more manageable workloads to contend with, the former teachers reported their new workplaces offered greater flexibility, handing them the opportunity to also prioritise family alongside their career, Larsen adds.
“That’s something I think that schools are really going to need to think about, how we can actually embed that kind of flexibility in a school setting.
“And whether that’s about people taking on dual roles or having sharing roles, and thinking about this in really imaginative ways to make it possible.”
Leadership that had the capacity to tune into their needs was another huge positive, the former teachers reported.
“…they really loved the fact that their leaders actually had the time and the space and inclination to be really forthcoming in their valuing and care of them as employees.
“And so, they felt that their wellbeing counted, and they felt that that was less the case when they were teaching.”
Larsen notes there are some “very strong managerial constraints on teachers at the moment”.
And yet, one thing was noticeably absent from participants’ new employment, Larsen flags.
“There was something that they couldn’t or they didn’t feel they could replicate in their new careers, and that was the kind of connection that you get through teaching with your colleagues and the students.
“That connection is something that is so unique and important for teaching that they really missed in their new careers.”
Tellingly though, despite the ex-teachers missing this ‘intensely’, it was not enough to keep them in schools, the researcher warns.
“Even though they … often felt really guilty about losing that kind of connection, the other factors that were in play just overpowered that.”
An earlier research phase involving a survey of 256 former teachers found the overwhelming majority had gone after jobs that were still tied to education.
“If we think about those that we interviewed, for example, a portion of those went into higher education. In some cases, that was in the form of lecturing, but in other cases, it was more professional or administrative work,” Larsen explains.
Online resource designers, career advisors and roles in sports training and development also came up.
“Some actually started up their own, or began working for, education consultancy businesses … but we actually had a few who went into public servant positions in government, and we even had those in the Australian Defence Force,” Larsen says.
The former teachers didn’t feel as though they had shut the door on education, she notes.
“And I think that was a really, really big part of what created that job satisfaction for them, because they didn’t give education away.
“It’s just that they couldn’t maintain working in a school context because those other [factors] that brought them job satisfaction just weren’t there.”
Larsen argues that the system should not rely on teachers’ strong commitment to their students and colleagues to keep them in the profession.
“That’s a given,” she says.
“What we have to do is create those other factors around them that enable them to really enjoy that beautiful connection that you have as a teacher, but also enables them to do so in a way that helps them maintain some semblance of wellbeing and work-life balance, because everyone is entitled to that.”
