This article brings together a number of key issues that emerge in research around the problem of teacher shortages in hard-to-staff schools. It offers a broad overview of the hard-to-staff schooling sector as discussed in recent academic literature and provides a context-specific overview of the literature around workforce shortages in…

The crisis of teacher shortages in Anglophone nation states can no longer be ignored as this long-term issue has been compounded by the pandemic. Growing evidence of the challenges of attracting and retaining a teaching workforce is now foregrounded in education policy internationally. This issue provides increased impetus for studying teacher…

Upcoming changes in the teacher labor supply will have an impact on nations that provide government-based education for their youth. Faced with a significant global shortfall of educators, most countries have taken steps to incentivize teaching as a profession and ensure that qualified teachers are available to students in all locations --…

Attracting teachers to rural schools continues to be a problem in Australian education. Debates on how to remedy staff shortages are based on a better distribution of financial and material resources. This emphasis on distribution has sidelined the role of recognition theory in understanding the challenges of rural staffing. I draw on the social…

Teacher shortages have intensified across several OECD countries, making this an urgent priority for education systems. Between 2015 and 2022, the share of students whose principals reported shortages rose from 29% to 46.7% on average across the OECD. Simultaneously, rapid technological advances, such as artificial intelligence (AI), and broader…

Early childhood education and care is recognised as extremely important for the health, education and welfare of all children. As Australia is a multicultural society then the early childhood education and care workforce needs to reflect the proportion of the population who were born overseas in non-English-speaking countries, often referred to…

To better understand the status of the teaching profession, we present a conceptual framework outlining the 4 domains of knowledge-worker professionals: professional benchmarks, professional discretion, room for promotion, and workplace conditions and use the TALIS 2013 survey data to show that these domains exist globally and vary within…

This paper presents the early findings from a study that addresses the topic of mature age professionals making a career change into the secondary teaching profession by undertaking a postgraduate coursework initial teacher education program. The paper specifically addresses the factors that affect the decision for mature age professionals to make…

The recruitment of overseas trained teachers (OTTs) in England is a matter that has received as much attention inside the United Kingdom as outside. Education systems in small island and developing states, especially, were believed to have been placed 'at risk' following the departure of experienced and qualified teachers. Correspondingly, the…

This study uses data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) to gain a better understanding of how academic performance and resources vary across rural-urban school communities in Australia. While it is well known that schools in rural areas have difficulty recruiting and retaining teachers, the degree to which schools in…

Teacher attrition is a cost to the community and, often, to the teachers concerned. One ready potential source of teachers is those having left the profession, particularly recently, and who may be willing to return. For this article, 22 former teachers were interviewed about their journey into and out of teaching. Understanding what made teachers…

The international mobility of teachers is gaining increased attention as particular developing countries become significant sources of supply for more developed countries that have shortages. Most attention so far has focused on Africa's contribution to the United Kingdom workforce. This article examines the patterns of teacher migration for…

This qualitative multiple-site case study explores the experiences of imported and overseas-qualified teachers appointed to fill "difficult-to-staff" Western Australian rural schools. In a climate of global teacher shortages, investigation of the strategies adopted to solve this problem requires empirical examination. The study of six…

In Australia and internationally, government policies aim to increase the supply of early childhood teachers and thus improve the quality of early childhood education and care services. In this paper, we suggest that such a policy-quality trajectory in Australia is not as straightforward as policy discourses suggest. From industrial relations and…

Principals are very aware that there is a great deal of competition in attracting qualified teachers of mathematics to their school, since there are just not enough qualified mathematics teachers out there. Recent studies of the qualifications of teachers in Australian schools have confirmed that there is a crisis in the supply of qualified…