In this autoethnography I present three narratives exploring how I understood and experienced my identity as a gay beginning teacher working in a rural Australian secondary school, where my sexuality was generally not accepted. Reading these narratives through a phenomenological lens highlights how my subjectivity as a gay man was entangled in my…

The research presented here is a qualitative heuristic inquiry, sparked and driven by the following research question: How do first-year elementary teachers experience coping with strain? This inquiry investigated the experiences of six first-year elementary school teachers coping with strain working in a southwestern state of the United States.…

The year 2020 marked an era of change and demanded that educators across the globe adapt in new and innovative ways. In secondary agricultural education, teachers experienced significant transitions as a majority of K-12 schools shifted to remote, distance, and online instructional models. Therefore, teachers' position requirements, obligations,…

The first year in the education professoriate is an ineluctably critical time to establish a pathway for long-term professional success mirroring a scholar's commitment to positively influencing students, schools, and communities. For Black women, the distinguished dual marginalization that they endure based on race and gender creates challenges…

In many schools, both urban and rural, children living in poverty face daily stressors including lack of parental support, lack of resources, unsafe living conditions, and poor nutrition. As teachers are first responders in facing these difficult situations, resilience enables teachers to overcome challenges and succeed professionally. Teachers…

The purpose of this phenomenology was to examine the lived experience of being a first-year music teacher during the COVID-19 pandemic. Across two data waves, the first in winter 2020 and the second in late spring 2021, we collected written reflections and conducted online interviews with 10 music teachers who began their careers in 2020 to 2021.…

The COVID-19 pandemic has considerably disrupted teacher education. In Australian, the placement days required to meet the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) standards were reduced for the 2020 final-year graduate teachers. Simultaneously, the COVID-19 disruptions posed significant challenges for first-year teachers.…

Early-career music teachers are described in the literature as being in the first few years of the profession. This research explores the motivation, sense of value, and areas of stress affecting early-career music teachers in Australian secondary high schools. The research is a part of a larger qualitative study which contains a national survey…

Early career teachers continue to flee the profession in many countries around the world. In a series of our own studies, we have attempted to better understand the intentions of early career teachers. In this paper, we build on themes that emerged in a 2015 study, published in Teaching Education, with 40 second- and third-year teachers, and…

Recent studies show that conflict situations are a quite frequent reality in schools. These conflict occurrences can be attributed, among other things, to the lack of conflict resolution skills among school personnel. This paper presents a mixed methods study aimed to evaluate the effect of the "Mind the Conflict" intervention model on…

The aim of the present study was to use the narratives of beginning teachers to investigate the emotionally challenging situations they face, with a focus on how their perspectives and definitions of such situations guided their actions and made coping possible. A short term longitudinal qualitative interview study was adopted. Twenty participants…

Teacher stress can be conceptualized as an imbalance between risk and protective factors. Stress emanates from risk factors at the personal, interpersonal, and organizational levels. When risk factors exceed protective factors, teacher ability to cope with adversity is inhibited, likely resulting in stress and pernicious consequences. In this…

While teaching is the most important school-based factor in student success, teaching is also ranked one of the worst professions for physical health, psychological well-being, and job satisfaction. That leads to high rates of absenteeism and turnover, exacting a financial toll on schools and negatively affecting students' academic achievement.…

This article explores some of the challenges faced by Teach First teachers during their first year of teaching in a culturally diverse school, and describes some of the strategies they employ to overcome them. Using a variety of methods, both qualitative and quantitative data are collected, focusing on the perspectives of the teachers over the…

Findings are presented from a qualitative longitudinal collective case study of 29 teachers newly appointed to rural or remote schools in Western Australia. All participants experienced stress and articulated coping strategies in response: direct-action, palliative and avoidant strategies. Where protective structures and processes existed in…