Increasing global teacher attrition rates and the difficulty of filling teacher positions in Australian schools have led to rising concerns about teacher supply and demand. While attrition factors and rates have been known for over thirty years, little has changed or improved. This raises the question, 'how and why do some teachers continue while…

Based on a review of recent studies and reports, this research investigates attrition among beginning teachers in the Netherlands as well as reasons for teacher attrition, and compares the finding with studies on this topic conducted elsewhere in the world. The findings suggest that attrition among beginning teachers in the Netherlands with a…

This paper presents evidence from a nationally representative sample of early career teachers about those likely to miss out on formal support, and the employment conditions associated with this absence of support. It uses survey data from the Staff in Australia's Schools Survey. Consistent with existing research, our results suggest a…

This paper explores the hyper-performative expectations of early career teachers (ECTs) in the context of neoliberal education assemblages. The need to support and retain beginning teachers is a salient issue in the context of troubling rates of teacher attrition. The study explores how ECTs perceive teacher identities in response to national…

Scholarly articles and the Australian media claim that 30-50% of Australian teachers leave teaching within their first five years in the role. The figures are considered to be well established although some articles acknowledge that they are estimates. In reality, there is no robust Australian evidence, and figures do not agree. What evidence…

This paper explores the relationship between early career teachers' (ECTs) work identities, neoliberal education assemblages, and mandated professional standards. The task of supporting and retaining beginning teachers has received considerable attention in recent years in the face of alarming rates of teacher attrition internationally. The study,…

Many early-career teachers (ECTs) begin their teaching careers in rural and remote schools in Australia, and do not stay long, with consequences for their own lives, and for their students, schools and communities. By understanding how first-year ECTs navigate personal (subjective) and contextual (objective) conditions, opportunities to disrupt…

Teacher attrition is a current issue in Australia and other economically developed countries, with up to 50 per cent of teachers resigning from teaching within the first five years. Teacher attrition is widely considered to impact negatively on student achievement and the school. The present study of 160 Australian primary and secondary teachers…

Australia has delineated a new direction for teacher education by embedding mentoring programs for teachers who support early-careers teachers as a system approach. This case study investigated how mentors after involvement in a mentoring professional learning program focused on goal setting with beginning teachers in their schools. Data were…

This paper describes opportunities to improve the current support provided to beginning teachers in Australia. It holds that there is a need for approaches that go beyond school-based induction and support. The paper presents data from a survey of beginning teachers in Queensland, with aims to determine current access to support and perceptions…

Early career teacher (ECT) attrition data are often challenged by those outside of the profession. Attrition rates can only be interpolated from existing data, but fall somewhere between 8 and 53%. The Australian workforce data on ECT attrition are problematized at the outset, before presenting a collective case study examining early career male…

This article describes the challenges beginning teachers face in schooling contexts that have become increasingly subject to direct political intervention. To tell the story it focuses on the experiences of five teachers in their first year of teaching in an urban jurisdiction in Australia, examining the ways in which they taught literacy, and…

Forty per cent of new teachers in Australia leave the profession in the first five years (Ingersoll, 2012; Watt & Richardson, 2011; Hartsuyker, 2007). Stress, induction failure and professional isolation have been identified as key attrition factors. Mentoring has been used both internationally and in Australia to enhance induction and…

Previous research related to this study explored early career female leaders' experiences in rural school settings, and probed the personal and professional challenges they faced and their motivations to accept formal and informal leadership roles ahead of the usual timeframes (e.g., Graham, Miller & Paterson, 2009). This study set out to…

This paper reports on the findings from a study with 22 early-career secondary school English teachers in New South Wales, Australia. Against the backdrop of increased attention to the patterns of teacher recruitment, retention and attrition, the present research sought beginning teachers' perspectives on the extent to which their initial…