Ellen Larsen

Researchers, teachers aren’t reading your stuff now. Here’s what they think would help

May 15, 2025professional development of teachers, talking about teaching, Teachers' workAARE blog, Bronwyn Reid O'Connor, Ellen Larsen, Steven Kolber, Teachers' voices, University of Southern Queensland (USQ), University of Sydney, Victoria University

The Australian Association of Research in Education (AARE) Teachers’ Work and Lives Special Interest Group launched the second in a Teachers’ Voice Panel Series last year. It provides time and space for educational researchers to listen to teachers about what research matters to them. In this follow-up panel, six experienced teachers from government and independent schools across Queensland, Victoria and New South Wales came together online to share their ideas about research and their work. What emerged amid this discussion was a range of useful suggestions for researchers looking to engage with teachers and schools through their work.

Academics are constantly being asked to engage with the public – but that can be tough. It’s a tough struggle trying to publish in top-tier journals and balance that with external engagement, translational research, engaging with real people at the coal face.

We work on disseminating research through various avenues with the hopes that it reaches teachers – and contributes to change. But does it?

The road blocks between teachers and research

When speaking to the panel about how teachers connected with research, many roadblocks for teachers were raised. It almost goes without saying that many of the constraints and challenges faced by teachers in accessing current research are not within the locus of control for researchers, with time being the core challenge.

Amelia Nemeth notes that “I feel a challenge for classroom teachers is the time constraints and the demands of teaching leave little room for them to authentically engage with research.”

But beyond that, the panel raised that a major challenge they faced was when publications were not available as open-access.

Where Jessica Prouten emphasised that “Everything is hidden behind paywalls”.

Whilst Tom Mahoney also noted that “More research going open-access is really helping, so more of that!”

It was oftentimes presentations that made engaging with research overly onerous for teachers, with books providing a form of practical synthesis proposed as a clear alternative to the traditional research journal article.

To speak to teachers, synthesise the research

For Rebecca Russell-Saunders,“To sit down and read through a 23-page journal article, which is full of academic speak, can be daunting, I’d prefer to read a book written by someone whose synthesised the research applied it in the classroom – providing me with scenarios of how teachers have done it, so I can imagine how it would work in my setting.”

For Colin Jaques, “A book that summarises all of the research is quite useful – so I can bring those ‘nuggets of gold’ into faculty meetings, and we can say ‘what do we want to try’, and then come back and evaluate if that worked or not.”

Some of the teacher panel proposed that curation and synthesis were important, Cassandra Pride said that “It can be hard to know where to begin, so having a curation point would be lovely”

Amelia Nemeth finds that “[Research tends to be] …too theoretical and too disconnected from their practice… some dot-point summaries that they can put straight into their practice.”

Experienced teachers from the panel called for the importance of research that has clearly articulated implications for practice, and tangible directions for action.

Methodologies that respect teachers’ time

The panel also shared their insights regarding ideal methodologies and approaches that consider and value teachers time. With a focus on minimising surveys, many preferred interviews where possible.

Tom Mahoney believes, “You can never go wrong with just an interview, I’m more than happy to ramble on, and I think most teachers are like that…. Your talking is your thinking. But, I don’t like surveys, you know, Likert scales – I find them really limited and restrictive.”

Cassandra Pride concurred, “I agree, all of the interview research I’ve taken part in has helped me build connections. It’s exciting to speak beyond our own setting and system!”

Rebecca Russell-Saunders preference is for “Maybe a short screening survey at the start, 7 minutes would be ideal.”

A counterpoint was provided for the utility and convenience of completing surveys online. Such as Jessica Prouten, who said that, “I prefer surveys because I can do it at home, in the jammies, watching MasterChef, compared to an interview where I have to be dressed nicely and peopling with people, rather than being able to do things at a time convenient for me.”

As researchers know, the rise of altmetrics and a focus on impact has not always brought about the changes we may have hoped for; the consequence being that it can be challenging for teachers to know which researchers to turn to. A positive example of making research visible was provided as an exemplar that other researchers might explore.

Tom Mahoney suggests that, “Stephanie Westcott and her work on misogyny in schools has been really powerful, just knowing that’s ‘her thing’ – meant that when I had someone contact me about their experiences of this I could reach out and point them in the right direction.”

The ongoing challenge of journals being behind paywalls was one thing, but considerations of how researchers and Universities might do the work of sharing findings, perhaps at the organisational level was also highlighted. The use of social media for this purpose was proposed.

Jessica Prouten notes that, “It would be great if Universities could be doing more about journal accessibility, I loved the #edureading online reading group making journal articles accessible to us, but I’ve emailed academics to access articles, and no one ever responded to me – and that’s kind of sad.” Continuing she notes that, “Guidance from Universities around how they [teachers] could start journal article reading groups within their own schools… Is there a space for sharing research with teachers via social media?”

Small steps

A major trend within the discussion was around small steps that researchers could do to make their research work more classroom and school-friendly.

Cassandra Pride wondered that, “Wouldn’t it be great if education research required a precise, a one-pager, of how this research relates to school – to avoid reinterpretation, an infographic or something similar would be amazing.”

Amelia Nemeth suggests that, “Practical summaries, people who want a quick read to put things into practice”.

Tom Mahoney continues that, “Twitter was a really useful thing, a really good place to see that research distilled into short snippets – I made many connections there. LinkedIn is a great place to reach out to researchers.”

To conclude, the teachers on the panel, not surprisingly, enjoyed the opportunity to join in the discussion and being put into the empowering position of being asked for their input.

Rebecca Russell-Saunders concluded that, “Teachers feel that researchers aren’t asking us, what would you like?”

How might the work of researchers be shifted to meet the teaching profession and schools where they are?

Listen to teachers’ voices: Here’s what they are saying right now

July 29, 2024talking about teachers, teacher researchAARE blog, Bronwyn Reid O'Connor, Ellen Larsen, Steven Kolber, Teachers' voices

We’d like to thank those Early Career Teacher Panellists on the Teachers’ Voices : Catriona Vo, Emma Enticott, Liz McNulty, Daniel Siddhartha, Alexis Kim, David Oksinski

As educational researchers, we must listen to the voices of teachers to understand what research is critical to their work, and how we can effectively work with teachers to respond to contemporary issues and opportunities of the profession. Educational research operates in a void when teachers’ voices are left unheard. That void constrains the critical professional partnerships needed to bridge the research-practice divide and produce research with an authentic and powerful connection to educators’ work.

The Australian Association of Research in Education (AARE) Teachers’ Work and Lives Special Interest Group launched the first in a Teachers’ Voice Panel Series on June 24. It provides time and space for educational researchers to listen to teachers about what research matters to them. In this initial panel, six early career teachers from state and independent schools across Queensland, Victoria, the Northern Territory, and New South Wales came together online to share their ideas about research and their work. We asked our panel the following questions:

What are the current topics or issues for you as an early career teacher that are critically important for educational researchers to be investigating right now?

These early career teachers showed a clear and strong commitment to their professional growth. They indicated they were most interested in learning how best to meet the needs of the diverse students in their classes.

“How do we as teachers engage in culturally and linguistically responsive teaching? Given the diversity in schools and just how our classrooms are growing in terms of how diverse they are.” – Catriona

“Inclusive education… I’ve got anyone and everybody in my classroom, so what kind of research can be done so that students can get individual attention, and [teachers] giving each student exactly what they need.” – Liz

Inclusive practice

Inclusive practice and culturally responsive pedagogy emerged as topics of crucial importance, highlighting the focus of these future educational leaders on acknowledging, celebrating, and responding to the richness of their classroom cohorts.

They also spoke to their pressing need to understand how to work with Artificial Intelligence in ethical and practical ways.

“AI is another big thing. It’s taking over; whether its students using it to plagiarise (so how might we design tasks that stop this), or, how we might find ways to use it in responsible ways”. – David

The rapid evolution of digital technologies made the need for future-focused educational research in this space time-sensitive. Emma said: “Technology is moving so fast . . . I feel like the research that’s coming out now is delayed to my needs.” Panel members’ responses underscored the significant role that early career teachers will play in leading the way in working with a rapidly evolving digital landscape.

The panel also pointed to the potential for research to inform how teachers work together to innovate and collaboratively build professional capacity.

“To me, workplace culture is what it’s all about, genuine collegiality, with a generative outlook toward how to improve systems”. – Daniel

Still COVID-19

Interestingly, the residual impact of the COVID-19 years still loomed large as they discussed their need for research that could contribute to their address of student resilience, seen as an ongoing concern among students in the classroom.

“A lot of the younger students are coming out of the COVID years lack resilience. So it would be good to have more research into how we can support students with less resilience, especially with the limited resources we have”. – Alexis

We were impressed by the varied suite of topics reported by the panel as mattering to these early career teachers. At the heart of their interests was a commitment to social justice, a responsiveness to contemporary digital challenges, and a desire to contribute to a work culture of collegiality and collaboration.

To what extent do you, as an early career teacher, currently connect with research and/or researchers as part of your work? What are the available opportunities/challenges to doing this for you?

As with anything teaching, the “T word” loomed large as the key challenge to connecting with research and researchers.

“Time is a resource we don’t have much of, and I find that reading research can be quite difficult, it can be quite dense, but through reading groups and discussion this reading can be a lot more beneficial.” – David

Time alone, however, is not the only barrier to being research-connected as an early career teacher. The panel also shared how access to research post-graduation is also hindered when connections to their university are severed.

“Once I left university, of course, I have my alumni account, but that’s very restricted in terms of what I can access. So, I’m only often getting outdated information or I’m only ever getting the abstract.”- Emma

It was a theme that most of the early career teacher panel were primarily engaging in research through Professional Learning opportunities, with many of these opportunities being limited due to funding and time constraints. These systemic barriers to engaging in research, combined with the “density” (David) of research in some instances, led to the panel raising the need for “bite-size” research summaries on a variety of accessible platforms like practitioner journals, LinkedIn, and Instagram etc.

The diversity of ways that early career teachers preferred to access research-related media was also notable. with some noting preferences for print media (“the value of grabbing a physical text that is sitting around the staffroom”- Daniel) and others accessing videos and digital media more frequently.

For us as researchers, this raised thoughts of how we keep early career teachers connected to research and the universities they have spent so much time in after graduation. This appears to be an important question in moving forward in continuing to bridge the perceived research-practice gap.

As an early career teacher, what kind of research would you be most likely to take part in? How would you suggest we bridge the gap between the research community and the early career teacher community?

Many early career teachers leaned on the university-to-school connection during their first years of teaching, with a large portion of the connection to research coming from direct contact with past lecturers.

“The connection with lecturers and when you leave university, I think those relational connections are just so important for sustaining us as teachers sometimes just having that person that we can talk to, to say, “Hey, you know, this is going on in our classroom, do you have any thoughts about this” or just even checking in.” – Catriona

Emma too explained how she drew on her connections with past teacher educators. She proposed preservice teachers before graduation need to be upskilled in how to stay connected:

“It is a skill- staying connected. How do we stay connected? What are some really quick and easy places we can go to get this research? In that final year of ITE, how can we teach graduates how to stay connected and where to go for help”- Emma

They want access to research and are happy to be part of research

As well as these university-teacher connections providing a means of access to research, the panel also showed interest in being part of educational research while being cognisant that such research would need to work in with their everyday work.

“If I was part of research in my school, something that sat alongside my work, then that is something that I would be interested in”- Alexis

Excitingly, they encouraged educational researchers “to do a lot more research with their students who have gone out into teaching” (Daniel), reminding us that our alumni are important research partners.

The early career teachers on this panel, however, understood the important role that teachers played in being open to the value of research.

“There needs to be a shift in how teachers actually think about research…so how can we make research seem like it is accessible and approachable and that it is a part of everyday teachers’ work? Until we unpack that position that teachers may have about research and all those assumptions that teachers may have, that will go a long way to bridging teachers and research and how we design research that will get teachers onboard and involved in research too” – Catriona

As educational researchers, we need to find ways to connect with our early career teachers in ways that create manageable and timely access to cutting-edge research that can support their work.

Ways to connect

“This panel is an awesome starting point and I have learned so much this afternoon and that just speaks to the importance of these kinds of discussion.” – Liz

We would like to extend our heartfelt gratitude to these early career teachers for their time and insights. The convenors of the Teachers’ Work and Lives SIG, along with all participants in this event were left in no doubt that the future of the profession is in very good hands!

From left to right:

Bronwyn Reid O’Connor is a mathematics educator and researcher in the Sydney School of Education and Social Work at the University of Sydney. Drawing on her experience as head of mathematics, Bronwyn teaches in the areas of secondary mathematics education at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Her research focuses on supporting students’ motivation, engagement, and learning in mathematic as well as secondary mathematics teacher education. Her work focuses on addressing the research-practice nexus, and she serves as Editor of the Australian Mathematics Education Journal to continue disseminating high-quality research to practitioners.

Steven Kolber is a proud public school teacher who has been teaching English, History and English as an additional language for 11 years. He has been recently named to the top 50 finalists in the Global Teacher Prize. He is passionate about teacher collaboration which he supports through organising Teach Meets, running #edureading (an online academic reading group) and supporting Khmer teachers by leading teacher development workshops in Cambodia with Teachers Across Borders Australia.

Header image from the Teachers’ Voice Panel Zoom call.

Where we’ve been in the year so far – and a quick visit with Tibetan students

July 3, 2023students with language backgrounds other than English (LBOTE), teacher attrition, Trauma, Trauma-responsive, wellbeingAARE blog, Alyson Simpson, Eamon Charles, Ellen Larsen, Judith Howard, Nathaniel Swain, Pamela Snow, Pasi Sahlberg, Richard Sallis, Robyn Brandenburg, Sharon Goldfeld, Tanya Serry, Tessa Weadman, Tibetan, translanguaging

Follow the link for this fascinating post: Innovating English language curriculum through translanguaging in Tibet: fostering plurilingual identity for minority students

It’s been a busy 2023 here at AARE – we publish twice a week on a wide array of educational topics, from early childhood to higher education, from researchers at Australian universities. Today, we are reminding you of the fascinating posts we’ve published so far in 2023 with a bonus post about teaching English to Tibetan students.

Our most read post this year – by far – was a heartbreaking post by Robyn Brandenburg, Ellen Larsen, Richard Sallis and Alyson Simpson on their research. It explains why teacher retention is such a challenge. Please read Teachers now: Why I left and where I’ve gone if you missed it the first time around. It brings new insights into what is happening to the most important profession in our country.

“I was just so anxious, unwell, and unhappy. Every day I felt sick on my way to work. I could never get through my mountain of work, I could never get on top of classroom behaviour, and I could never get to a place where I was able to deal with the unreasonable demands of the school.”

Next up, Trauma in all our classrooms. Judith Howard explains how to respond to the children and young people who have been victims to complex trauma sitting in most school classrooms and early learning settings across our country.

“These young victims can struggle with feeling safe, with attaching and relating effectively to other people and with regulating their emotions.”

Two pieces sparked a lively conversation and had a number of comments. The first was by Pasi Sahlberg and Sharon Goldfeld: If not now, then when is the right time to re-envisage what schools could be? and in a response by Nathaniel Swain, Pamela Snow, Tanya Serry, Tessa Weadman and Eamon Charles: What we want to say right now to Sahlberg and Goldfeld

Sahlberg and Goldfeld write: “In our Discussion Paper titled “Reinventing Australian schools for the better wellbeing, health, and learning of every child” (Sahlberg et al., 2023) we outline a new vision for uplifting student learning, wellbeing, and health in our schools. We argue that the core purpose of schooling needs to shift from primarily focusing on narrow academic intelligence to equal value learning, wellbeing and health outcomes for balanced whole-child development and growth.”

The reply, from Swain et al, says: “Importantly, [Sahlberg and Goldfeld] note that these [declining] trends, seen across literacy, numeracy, and science, have stubbornly persisted in the face of increased per capita education spending. What is surprising to us though, is that Professors Sahlberg and Goldfeld seek solutions to academic struggles not in improved classroom instruction, but in extra funding and focus on wellbeing, without considering the contribution to wellbeing made via academic success.”

We have had many other fantastic contributions this year and you can read our entire back catalogue here.

And please read this fascinating post from Xingxing Yu, Nashid Nigar and Qi Qian on:

Innovating English language curriculum through translanguaging in Tibet: fostering plurilingual identity for minority students

Discriminatory education policies for Indigenous communities across the world is still a human rights issue despite the rights of Indigenous peoples (370 million) to education which is protected by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the UN Declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples. The article 14 of the second Declaration proclaims,

Indigenous peoples have the right to establish and control their educational systems and institutions providing education in their own languages, in a manner appropriate to their cultural methods of teaching and learning.

Yet, the policies of education across the world (70 countries) are orchestrated on dominant language/s and minority language divide. When dominant languages are privileged over those of minorities, it triggers a flurry of disadvantages and segregation for the minorities, benefiting the privileged at the expense of subjugated. According to United Nations,

Barriers to education for Indigenous students include stigmatization of Indigenous identity and low self-esteem of Indigenous learners; discriminatory and racist attitudes in the school environment, including in textbooks and materials and among non-Indigenous students and teachers; language barriers between Indigenous learners and teachers; inadequate resources and low prioritization of education for Indigenous peoples, reflected in poorly trained teachers as well as lack of textbooks and resources.

To address the barrier, “inadequate resources and low prioritization of education for Indigenous peoples” , we, three non-Indigenous educators collaborated internationally and took initiative to experiment and propose some innovative ideas to include Tibetan language and culture in the English language curriculum for Tibetan students. This is relevant for any dominant language focused curriculum that does not include and/or ignore indigenous languages, cultures, and knowledge systems in the curriculum: textbooks, materials and pedagogy.

In the summer of 2021, Qian, a master’s student at the University of Melbourne, decided to teach English in Ganzi county in the Sichuan Province for one month. Although not located in Tibet, Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Region has a greater than 80% Tibetan population, according to The People’s Government of Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, 2021. At the school where Qian worked, Tibetan students comprised the entire student body. This one-month course provides a clearer picture than the dispersed data in peer-reviewed articles.

Trilingual education

Qian: If the language of instruction is Tibetan, students seem more engaged in the classroom activity. Maybe, they can comprehend the teachers better through their native language.

Commonly, the term trilingual education is used to describe the learning of three languages by Tibetan students. First, minority students must learn their mother tongue as well as Mandarin Chinese as soon as they enter school; second, English as a compulsory subject must be learned as early as secondary school. Tibetan students, in this context, must learn two additional languages beside their native tongue, Tibetan.

Current research has uncovered two major negative effects of trilingual education on Tibetan students. First, Tibetan students are more likely to be labeled as “deficit” language learners owing to the paucity of educational resources (teachers, for example) in Tibetan areas, as well as their extra language learning responsibilities in comparison to their Han peers. Second, the Han-dominant ideology, embodied in both Mandarin-instructed English classrooms and English textbooks where Han-culture prevails, devalues Tibetan culture and language, as well as the ethnic identity of students.

In lieu of imaging a larger picture that is more idealistic and human rights oriented in terms of policy change, which appears impractical in China, we propose devising a more pragmatic approach. that, on the one hand, is permissible within the realm of current educational policy. It is, on the other hand, able to contribute to multilingual identity and an easier way for Tibetan students to learn English. It also paves the way how teachers’ agency can be applied in terms of teaching English from a multilingual perspective.

A new approach to curriculum

As master’s students taught by Nashid Nigar at the University of Melbourne, Qian, and I (Xingxing) discussed how to implement translangaugeing theory into the English language (EL) curriculum for Qian’s Tibetan students. We believe this practice demonstrates that translangaugeing could be viewed as a pragmatic solution for minority language users.

What is translangauging?

Translanguaging is a term originally attributed to the Welsh educator Cen Williams. The extended version of translanguaging, nevertheless, is aligned with the critical perspective of the named language. It is, according to O. Garcia and W. Li, socially constructed and represents a distinct concept of language itself. They assert that the transformative potential of translanguaging practices is derived from their capacity to transcend the socially constructed boundaries of named languages, notably the creative and critical feature. The worldview of Translanguaging involves the acknowledgement and development of their plurilingual identity through the uses of their full linguistic repertoire: languages, cultures, knowledge, values, and beliefs.

Under this understanding, educators in Tibetan classrooms should make full use of their students’ linguistic resources not only to activate students’ language creation so that they can learn English effectively, but also to empower them to reconsider the hegemony of Han-dominated language and culture.

Predicated on translanguaging theory, we put together a curriculum with the topic “I am a tour guide” that encompasses four classes and an assessment task.

First, we adapted the existing official English textbook more relevant to Tibetan students’ daily lives without altering its instructional focus. For example, Han festivals and foods were replaced with their Tibetan equivalents, and narratives of urban culture were revised to reflect rurality and snow mountains. On the one hand, the adaptation of teaching materials substantially increased students’ interest, and encouraged students to enjoy language learning and participate more actively in learning tasks and activities, thereby facilitating students’ connection to English by the means of Tibetan. In these, both languages were used non-hierarchically by them. The adaptations of the activities in the textbook addressed Qian’s concern for his students and provided multilingual support for them.

Second, we innovated the original test-oriented assessment by requiring students to simulate a tour guide to introduce Tibetan culture using all of their linguistic resources. In addition, students are encouraged to create an account on Douyin (TikTok in China) and upload their video recordings. The plurilingual identities of multilingual speakers and multimodal video creations served as a powerful incentive to enjoy and learn English. Throughout the process, they experienced, by knowing, doing,” becoming”, that their plurilingual self was underscored and valued.

Notably, repeated practices in front of the camera enhanced the students’ self-esteem and self-confidence in English interaction. Their oral fluency vastly improved, corroborating M. Amiryousefi’s (2018) conclusion that self-assurance indicates a solid command of a foreign language.

The innovative translanguaging-informed teaching strategies and curriculum reform that Qian applied in the Tibetan region promotes Tibetan English language learners’ plurilingual identity. However, we believe it is highly unlikely to institutionalize an all-encompassing democratic and inclusive curriculum that respects Tibetan identity and language under China’s current political system. Despite the severe censorship and surveillance of the government though, we can still do more to assist minority speakers not only in overcoming language learning hurdles, but also affirming and promoting their cultural and linguistic identities. Teacher professional development and exercises of their agency, and ethical commitment to responsive pedagogy are crucial in this process.

This curriculum reform approach can be adapted by stakeholders involved in any diverse context of teaching and learning in terms of literacy and language education.

From left to right: Xingxing Yu has a Master of TESOL from the University of Melbourne’s Melbourne Graduate School of Education. Experience in working in Chinese state-owned enterprises and her family history in remote areas of western China have prompted her to study educational inequities in China, including gender and ethnic disparities, as well as urban-rural imbalances melody0901@gmail.com.

Nashid Nigar has taught Master of TESOL and Master of Education programs at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne. She is at the final stage of completing her PhD at Monash Education. Adopting a transdisciplinary theoretical lens and hermeneutic phenomenological narrative enquiry, Nashid has investigated immigrant teachers’ professional identity in Australia. Nashid.nigar@monash.edu Qi Qian completed his Master of Education at Melbourne Graduate School of Education. He has taught at Garze Ethnic Middle School in Garze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province. He is now teaching English in another junior high school.

Header image of the Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture by Colegota

Teachers now: Why I left and where I’ve gone

April 13, 202321st century teaching, leaving teaching, teacher pay, teacher recruitment, teacher retention, teacher shortage, teacher workforceAARE blog, Alyson Simpson, Ellen Larsen, Jason Clare, Richard Sallis, Robyn Brandenburg, teacher attrition, teacher recruitment

“When you are a high achieving person, teaching sets you up for failure because you are never enough for everybody.”

The teaching profession is in crisis. By 2025, the federal government estimates a shortfall of more than 4,000 high school teachers across the country. While there is a significant body of research that has tracked the influence of teachers’ work and lives and their retention in the teaching profession, less is known about teachers who have left the profession.

Research, media reports, and anecdotal evidence report teachers’ intentions to leave the profession within their first five years of teaching at a rate of up to 50% of the workforce, leaving Australian schools with further critical workforce shortages.

This research addresses this claim. In this nationwide study, 255 respondents/those who have exited the profession have provided insights into why they left, the critical factors that influenced their decision to leave and revealed details about the next phase of their lives. As one ex-teacher said,

As a teacher you have never done enough. You work and work and work, creating, thinking, planning to get the best for each student and it’s still never enough. You still can’t help so many students, you never satisfy the administration load and so much pressure from parents. When you are a high achieving person, teaching sets you up for failure because you are never enough for everybody.

Preliminary results suggest that while all Australian states and territories were represented in this study, half of the respondents were from Victoria, and close to a quarter were from both New South Wales and Queensland. Almost two-thirds of those who left were from metropolitan regions and a third of the respondents were from regional areas. Almost two thirds (60%) were from the State sector, a quarter from the independent sector and almost 20% from the Catholic sector.

70 percent of those who left the profession were full-time employees.

Who is leaving the teaching profession?

Of the 242 respondents 167 were female, 71 were male and 4 identified as other. Most had been working in metropolitan schools prior to leaving (around 60%) and 60 percent were from the state sector. 70% were teaching in secondary schools at the time of leaving and 30% in primary schools. Most respondents were from Victoria, followed by NSW and Queensland.

The greatest number of respondents had been teaching for 7-10 years followed by those who had been teaching for 11-15 years. Combined this accounted for almost 40% of those surveyed. Fifteen percent left after 4-6 years. Whilst it is evident that we are losing teachers who are early into their teaching career, the majority of those who are leaving the profession are experienced classroom teachers and leaders in their school. Forty percent of those surveyed were in school leadership positions at the time of leaving.

In response to where participants were working prior to leaving the profession, of the 172 responses, almost 57% (98) were working in metropolitan areas; 35% (59) in regional and 13% (8) in rural areas. 1% (2) – remote or other.

Why are they leaving?

Our study shows that teachers are faced with a range of challenges in the profession, causing them to not only rethink their career as a teacher but significant enough to push them to the point of taking that definitive step and leaving it behind. Participants told us that the work environment, school leadership, dealing with student behaviour, administrative load, and workload more broadly were the big contributors to their decision to leave the profession. These ex-teachers stated that they did not feel respected, and their work had failed to bring about or sustain the level of personal satisfaction they sought from their careers.

“Until teachers are given more time, respect and support to actually do their jobs, more will continue to leave the profession.”

Significantly, these ex-teachers felt that leaving was the result of not just one of the challenges in isolation; but rather “a culmination of many things over a long period of time” that made their jobs untenable.

“I was just so anxious, unwell, and unhappy. Every day I felt sick on my way to work. I could never get through my mountain of work, I could never get on top of classroom behaviour, and I could never get to a place where I was able to deal with the unreasonable demands of the school.”

In essence, leaving was based on a long list of issues that, in combination, gave them no choice but to walk away. Their disappointment, frustration, and anger were palpable in their responses, as they reported on a broken system, and a ridiculous workload made all the harder by administrative and extracurricular demands. These ex-teachers also spoke of having to deal with challenging leaders, parents, and students. These challenges were then topped off by “a teaching profession that is misunderstood, disrespected and unappreciated”.

“I became a teacher because I am passionate about equipping the next generation to be their best. The education sector is making this harder and harder from a wellbeing perspective and from an educational perspective. The curriculum is crowded, students are pressured to succeed, teachers are trashed in media…There is little understanding of the complexity of these roles by those outside of schools.”

“Misalignment between my values and those of my colleagues and leadership. Not being equipped/ experienced enough to manage the tension that created. Lack of support from leadership when other teachers or middle leadership were treating me, other colleagues, and students in ways that did not align with my values.”

Where are they going?

Overwhelmingly most of those who had left teaching after 4-15 years were still working but in different professions (90%). Many of those who had left teaching (36%) are still working in education related areas such as devising education resources, developing education policy, consulting and managing education programs in institutions such as museums and art galleries. A surprising number (20%) have transitioned into work in the Higher Education sector. About 7% had returned to casual teaching in one way or another, some had sought further education through study (4.4%) and only 4.4 % had fully retired. The remaining ex-teachers were involved in work closely connected to helping people such as in Social Work, sports coaching, counselling and the well-being industry.

The implications of these findings are far reaching as they show that teachers are making a notable contribution to the workforce when they leave. It is clear that they take their highly transferable skills built up through training and experience with them. The findings also suggest the continued commitment of teachers to matters educational leaving teaching but not education.

I started my own business in the private disability sector. I now work full-time in this space and employ eight people.

Working for a company delivering student wellbeing programs

I am still in education but not in schools

I am a learning designer

I left the teaching profession in a school context. I remain in education and teaching in an ITE context where I can both contribute and be challenged / developed.

The small number of teachers (almost 10%) who had completely ‘jumped ship’ to another profession demonstrates a variety of new career directions including working in a cattery, as a truck driver, in animal rescue, in the military, in corporate marketing and as an engineer.

What is the impact?

Whether we have teachers in the first five years in their mid-careers, or in their later careers leave in critical numbers as they now are, the impact will be far-reaching. Schools are communities that thrive on having teachers from all career stages. When an early career teacher leaves, the school loses that teacher’s inclination for innovation, new perspectives, and in some instances, a future school leader. When a more experienced teacher leaves, they take with them their experience and expertise and as a result, both students and early careers teachers miss the opportunity to benefit from their accumulated talent.

As one of our survey participants explained, “When teachers with my years of experience start leaving in droves then that’s truly a truly catastrophic loss to the system. And that’s what we are seeing…”

“I consider myself to be a highly skilled and educated teacher. I have 3 master’s degrees and felt very confident in the classroom. However, the workload required to prove my worth was unreasonable and unsustainable.”

Previous research has spoken to these impacts, yet our study revealed the cost to these participants as well. Having left the profession, they did feel a sense of relief about getting their lives back, and for some the negative impacts to their health and wellbeing experienced while teaching began to dissipate. Many others, however, continue to experience issues related to their physical and mental wellbeing. As one ex-teacher out it,

“I was in complete burn out. There were too many administrative changes and expectations that led to unattainable work pressures. My mental health and family life were suffering, and I needed to make a choice. I love teaching and loved working with the students. I miss it but the expectations placed upon teachers is unrealistic and unsustainable without long term damage.”

For many, it also meant walking away from a vocation they still cared about, and they felt a deep sadness at leaving behind their students.

As another participant put it: “The hardest thing was knowing I was walking away from making a difference in the lives of young people, each and every day.”

Eighty percent of those who have left the profession have maintained their registration and while one third of the participants stated that they would ‘definitely not’ return to the profession, almost half were less definite about their future plans.

We now know more about the problems in the sector and the narratives provided by the ex-teachers shine a light on the personal, professional, health and emotional impacts of not only leaving the profession but on the anguish that many felt prior to making the ultimate decision to leave.

Many have left teaching, but not education. Some have used the skills and knowledge they have accumulated to begin new ventures in new professions. They have embraced the change.

However, our research shows that there is an opportunity for all stakeholders to address issues of flexibility, school leadership, progression and pathways, including a commensurate salary – “a living wage” – to halt the exodus from the teaching profession.

From left to right: Robyn Brandenburg is a professor of education in the Institute of Education, Arts and Community at Federation University Australia. She researches teacher education, reflective practice and feedback and mathematics education and is a past-president of the Australian Teacher Education Association. She is on LinkedIn and Twitter @brandenburgr. Ellen Larsen is a senior lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Southern Queensland (UniSQ). Ellen is a member of the Australian Association for Research in Education [AARE] executive and a convenor of the national AARE Teachers’ Work and Lives Special Interest Group. Ellen’s areas of research work include teacher professional learning, early career teachers, mentoring and induction, teacher identity, and education policy. She is on Twitter @DrEllenLarsen1. Richard Sallis is an Arts education academic in the Melbourne Graduate School of Education at The University of Melbourne. He also holds positions with the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA) and is a leader in curriculum planning and teacher professional development. His research interests include Initial Teacher Education, teacher professional learning, and diversity and inclusion in schools. He is on LinkedIn. Alyson Simpson is a professor of English and Literacy Education in the Sydney School of Education and Social Work at the University of Sydney. Her current research projects focus on building an evidence base of teacher quality, the role of children’s literature in education, and the power of dialogic learning. She is on Twitter @ProfAMSimpson