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Conducting the research

Research questions guiding the project:

  • What are the characteristics of resilient early career teachers?
  • What are the range of circumstances that put early career teachers ‘at risk’ of leaving the profession? 
  • What conditions, school based strategies and policy initiatives are conducive to promoting teacher resilience and retention in the first two years of teaching?

Research Approach:

Phase 1: Preparation & Fieldwork

(i) Project start-up                July–December 2008    (YEAR 1)

  • Eg ethics applications; review literature; development of fieldwork protocols; website development.
  • Teacher recruitment (30 ECTs in both SA & WA). 

(ii) Ethnographic fieldwork      January–December 2009 (YEAR 2)

  • 60 beginning teachers from WA (30) and SA (30) will be selected and interviewed twice; i) early in the school year, around the time of induction workshops organised by employers and teacher unions; and (ii) towards the end of the school year.
  • Invite leadership teams in the schools to participate and interview once towards the end of the year;
  • Development of a Draft Profile of Conditions Supporting Teacher Resilience and Retention.  

Phase 2: Participatory Action Research and Profile Validation

January–December 2010                     (YEAR 3)

  • ECT participants will be interviewed again in the middle of the second year.
  • Refinement of the Draft Profile.
  • Six schools will be selected, three each in WA and SA respectively (urban, rural, and remote), to trial the Draft Profile using Participatory Action Research (PAR) and Mentoring
  • Profile of Conditions Supporting Teacher Resilience and Retention will be developed.
  • To advance the PAR and Mentoring process the researchers will facilitate three full day structured workshop programs for schools and teachers in January, July and November 2010. The researchers will provide participants with three things: (1)  assistance in using an action research toolkit, with which to trial the Profiles; (2) structured protocols to assist participants in presenting the results of school-based trials of the Draft Profile and (3) a case study framework to help schools prepare a final case study. 

Phase 3: Materials Development

January–December 2011                     (YEAR 4)

  • Development of a Series of Modules for Systems, Schools and Teachers on Conditions that Support Teacher Resilience and Retention.