The teachers who have worked their way to the top of today's education system were hired at a time when fewer professional opportunities were open to all and when choosing a lifelong career was the norm. By contrast, today's new teaching candidates have many attractive career options and very different expectations about career mobility and job security. The archetype of the entrepreneur and free agent has replaced that of the company man (or woman). But teaching appears to be one of the few lines of work with a static understanding of career. So write Harvard ed school professor Susan Moore Johnson and four colleagues in "The Next Generation of Teachers: Changing Conceptions of a Career in Teaching," an article analyzing the results of interviews with 50 first- and second-year teachers in Massachusetts that appears in the December 2001 issue of Phi Delta Kappan.
The main question motivating the study was how the next generation of teachers differs from the generation that is about to retire in their conceptions of a career. In an attempt to capture the views of a wide range of teachers, the researchers interviewed 36 teachers who had followed the traditional route into teaching (passing through an ed school) and 14 who had followed alternate routes, either teaching in a charter school or participating in Massachusetts' fast-track certification program for outstanding teaching candidates. The researchers set out to explore what motivates this new generation of teachers, with an eye toward using this information to improve recruitment and retention policies.
The researchers were able to identify several different species of new teachers. About one third of the teachers interviewed were classified as long-termers who anticipated making teaching their primary career; the other two thirds were classified as short-termers. Among the long-termers, only a small fraction of these expected to remain full-time classroom teachers; most anticipated wanting new challenges and different roles in education as their careers progressed. The short-termers were divided into two categories, "explorers" who were testing out the career to see if it was a good fit for the long-term and "contributors" hoping to make a difference for children and society either at the beginning or end of careers in other fields. Researchers found that the short-termers were not casual about their commitment to their work but were very sensitive to the costs of preservice training and licensure; they concluded that policymakers should create alternate pathways for these individuals into teaching that are less costly (in terms of time and money) than traditional routes.
Policymakers also need to think more systematically about retaining the new generation of teachers, the authors write. To retain long-termers, it is essential that the career of teaching become more differentiated so that accomplished teachers can take on roles as inductors, mentors, peer reviewers, professional developers, team leaders, and curriculum writers. While improving work conditions may induce some short-termers to become long-termers, it is important to recognize that there may be a substantial group of teachers whose contribution to education will be short but nonetheless valuable, and policymakers should focus on making their time in teaching as productive as possible rather than trying to convince every teacher to stay for the long term.
"If public education is to tap the talents and interests of this entire pool and schools are to recruit the best possible candidates into the classroom, policies must not require that all candidates conform to a single career pattern," Johnson and her co-authors conclude. They proposed a mixed model for the teaching career with both a large core of dedicated teachers providing continuity in schools and also some well-defined alternative pathways by which shorter term teachers (who are still understood to have a serious commitment to teaching) can enter the classroom more easily.
A radically different proposal for adapting the teaching profession is proposed by Peter Temes of the Great Books Foundation in a commentary in last week's Education Week. Frustrated that we do not screen new teachers for excellence before granting them tenure, but merely for competence, Temes urges that new teachers face an early-career, merit-based threshold similar to what doctors and lawyers face in their first years of professional work. Most who begin their career as teachers won't make the grade, but by keeping only the very best of the new teacher recruits, we'll turn teaching into an elite profession. The author contends that this will attract large numbers of talented people from other professions who don't think teaching is respected today. It won't be necessary to pay teachers more money because people will work for less in order to be part of an elite profession. While the ambition of stocking our nation's schools with nothing but the elite as teachers has some appeal, the first step is to create ways of identifying and recognizing those teachers who today meet this standard of excellence. This is the goal of the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence, launched earlier this year by the National Council on Teacher Quality and the Education Leaders Council. (For more, see "New Organization Aims to Develop Tests for Teachers," by Julie Blair, Education Week, October 17, 2001.)
In the meantime, it is worth noting some pockets of activity already aimed at revolutionizing the teaching profession. Last week's Education Week reports that four to six Catholic schools in Indianapolis will take part next year in the Teacher Advancement Program, an initiative by the Milken Family Foundation to modernize teaching through opportunities for career advancement and performance-related pay. The Archdiocese of Indianapolis hopes eventually to put this program in place throughout the system. In Denver, where teachers in 16 schools are participating in a pilot program in which teacher pay is linked to student achievement, there are early indications that students in these experimental schools are progressing faster than youngsters in other schools. Finally, in Georgia, 15 state universities are creating fast-track training programs to help professionals who have lost jobs in the current economic slowdown enter teaching. All are reasons, albeit modest-sized reasons, not to be too discouraged.
"The Next Generation of Teachers: Changing Conceptions of a Career in Teaching," by Heather G. Peske, Edward Liu, Susan Moore Johnson, David Kauffman, and Susan M. Kardos, Phi Delta Kappan, December 2001. (Not yet available online, but copies of the article can be ordered at http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/karticle.htm)
"Can Teaching Become an Elite Profession?" by Peter Temes, Education Week, December 5, 2001
"Teaching and Learning: Catholic Schools TAP In," by Jeff Archer, David J. Hoff, and Kathleen Kennedy Manzo, Education Week, December 5, 2001
"DPS Pay Test Passing," by Eric Hubler, Denver Post, December 7, 2001
"Layoff Victims Sought as Future Teachers," by James Salzer, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, December 10, 2001