Performed research of first year teachers 10 years later

This presentation is based on longitudinal research involving 12 beginning teachers who entered the profession in Victorian schools in 2010. In the initial research I employed performed research, specifically the process of scripting as analysis, to investigate the beginning teachers’ identity transformation throughout their first year of teaching. Each scene in the original performance of ‘The First Time’ signifies a category of identity transformation. The findings from the initial research showed that the survival discourse of beginning teaching had shifted from survival discourses of transition shock and classroom management concerns to surviving contract employment. Beginning teachers were neither sinking nor swimming in this liminal state. They could not feel like a ‘real’ teacher until they could operate with certainty.

I contacted the teachers again in 2020, ten years after their first year, to track their journey from first year teaching to the present. Now, in the new performance of ‘The First Time +10’ the participants look back at their first-year selves, discuss their career trajectory, and highlight aspects of their career that contribute to their decision to stay or leave. In this presentation the findings will be shared in the form of a video of the new performed research, and a discussion focussing on 3 main areas:
1 – what teachers’ employment conditions looked like over 10 years
2 – when teachers left the profession or said they thought about leaving
3 – why teachers left the profession or said they thought about leaving

Initial findings suggest that career interruption (i.e., parental or family leave) contributes to teachers feeling a reduced attachment to, and subsequently leaving the profession. In addition, employment contracts become less of a contributing factor over time, in relation to a teacher’s indication that they will leave the profession. This presentation will also consider how contemporary graduate teachers might fare, over time, in this new era of ‘quality teaching’ and ‘classroom readiness’.