1 Introduction

Multinational corporations have taken initiatives related to teacher education. For instance, the international consultancy group McKinsey was behind this initiative ‘Teach for America’ and later in England: Teach First England (2001). This initiative has been spread to other countries. This chapter explores the Teach For All (TFAll) alternative teacher education programme’s expansion to the Scandinavian countries and uses the Norwegian context to illuminate certain aspects of this employment-based route into the teaching profession.

While Finnish teacher education has gained international recognition for its high level of quality, traditional teacher-education programmes in the Scandinavian countries have been heavily criticised. Politicians, practitioners and researchers have expressed continuing concerns about the quality of teachers and their teaching. Also, high attrition rates among teachers is expressed as a particular concern in the Norwegian and Swedish contexts (Tiplic et al., 2015).

The field of education has for the last decades been subject to intense reform pressures with different aims, such as improvement of the quality of teaching and learning, addressing problems with the governance of educational systems and initiatives that are designed to make teaching careers more attractive to a broader range of graduates (Crawford-Garrett et al., 2021). This development has given rise to alternative routes into the teaching profession initiated not by government but by social enterprises backed by corporate sponsors (Tatto et al., 2017). TFAll is such a programme, often promoted as a remedy for improving educational outcomes for disadvantaged pupils (Crawford-Garrett et al., 2021).

TFAll, which originate from the Teach for America and Teach First UK programmes, represents a unique private/public partnership model of fast-track alternative teacher education with funding from foundations, corporations and government entities (Crawford-Garrett et al., 2021). TFAll programmes recruit high-achieving graduates with no previous teacher education and place them in teaching positions in schools for 2 years. Internationally, TFAll alumni point to diverse experiences associated with participating in the programme, from great satisfaction to disappointment and disillusionment. Some of the alumni maintain that the programme has provided them with valuable life experiences and the acquisition of leadership skills, while others report feelings of disappointment and a rejection of the assumption underlying TFAll that being academically high achieving makes you a good teacher (Nesje, 2018; Nesje et al., 2018b; Thomas et al., 2020).

TFAll rests on a two-part theory of change. Firstly, the programme recruits high achieving graduates who receive only a short period of preparation before entering the classroom as teachers, often to underprivileged populations. Secondly, the participants are offered leadership training with the expectation that they will transition into leadership positions in a variety of sectors and utilise their experience in classrooms to work for systemic change (Crawford-Garrett et al., 2021). An underlying assumption in TFAll is that by recruiting the ‘best and brightest’ (Blumenreich & Gupta, 2015) and offering them an alternative teacher education, one can affect educational outcomes, especially for disadvantaged pupils (Crawford-Garrett et al., 2021). Thus, these programmes overlook educational research showing that socio-economic status and parents’ educational background are the factors that have the greatest significance for student learning outcomes (Thomas et al., 2020).

TFAll can be seen as a manifestation of the rise of a global market-orientated neo-liberal political and economic agenda staged in the public policy arena (Moss et al., 2021). Market-based solutions have weak traditions in the Scandinavian countries’ teacher education programmes, and TFAll has, until now, had a relatively modest impact in Scandinavia. Nevertheless, the TFAll programmes offer a fast-track opportunity to enter the teaching profession in a period characterised by high teacher attrition rates, which makes these programmes interesting research sites.

In the Scandinavian countries, TFAll was quite recently introduced; the Norwegian programme was established in 2010, while the Swedish and Danish programmes came into being in 2013 and 2015, respectively.Footnote 1 In Norway, the Teach First Norway (TFN) programme was initiated during a period marked by strong criticisms of the teacher education provision. One of the factors that intensified the debate about the quality of schools and teacher education in Norway is related to the nation’s below average performances in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) surveys from 2001 onwards (for further discussion about the Nordic countries’ transnational policy collaborations, see Chap. 14 in this book). In Scandinavia, the TFAll programmes are small in scope but are thus part of a larger international discourse related to the quality development of schools and teacher education.

In Norway, 148 graduates have completed or are enrolled in the programme. In Sweden, the number is 330, while Denmark has 250 graduates (Teach First DK, 2021; Teach for Sweden, 2021). Not surprisingly, many of the participants do not remain as teachers in schools after completion of the TFAll programme. In Norway, the educational authorities report that 55% of the candidates continue to work in the education sector after their 2-year commitment. This includes not only those who continue to work as teachers in schools but also those in leadership positions in the sector and those who have transferred to PhD positions (www.Teach First Norway.no).

In this chapter, I take a closer look at the career motivations and professional development of participants in the TFN programme. I find the topic highly relevant because educational programmes such as TFN (and Teach for Sweden and Teach First Denmark) recruit young professionals with multiple career opportunities and provide them with professional experiences that could give rise to new career values and beliefs. Although I use TFN and the Norwegian context as an example, I believe the analysis will apply to the Swedish and Danish contexts as well.

Contemporary career choices can be understood as fluid and negotiable (Mayrhofer et al., 2011), which has implications for the design of programmes aiming to effectively recruit highly competent professionals for long-term careers as teachers. Traditionally, research on motivation for choosing the teaching profession is based on an assumption that people will be committed to teaching as a long-term career. This might be a decreasingly relevant analysis as many people seem to consider, and possibly pursue, a range of career possibilities. In this chapter, I will examine how candidates in the TFN programme think about careers and professional development. The following research questions is explored: How can we understand the career motivations and development of professional identity among TFAll participants?

2 Conceptual Background

Conceptually, this chapter rests on theoretical and empirical insights from several areas. The first, and overarching, discourse relates to studies investigating changing career values. Among young professionals, there is an assumption that they will change their careers several times during their work life. Changes in the nature of work and employment practices and a labour market with a high level of requests for knowledge workers have ensured that young professionals have different career options compared to previous generations (Mayrhofer et al., 2011). Also, people may find that their work motivations extend beyond the bounds of a single profession and thus engage in multiple professional roles to fulfil those motivations. Due to the changes in how young people relate to career choices and career commitment, a greater emphasis is put on self-expression and self-development (Inglehart & Welzel, 2005; Maccoby, 1988; Mayrhofer et al., 2011). In turn, changes tend to occur in the relationship between professionals and their employers. The notions of long-term employment and job security have weakened, whereas job mobility (Mayrhofer et al., 2011) and instability (Ingersoll et al., 2014) have increased. This also implies that in contemporary society, the array of professional identities is widened, and more frequent identity changes occur across people’s professional lives (Albert et al., 2000). A number of individuals find themselves transitioning from one profession to another at some point in their career (Caza & Creary, 2016; Ibarra, 1999, 2005; Ibarra & Petriglieri, 2010), and people might explore a variety of career options (e.g. as an engineer, a teacher or a leader) without necessarily wishing to embrace any of these on a permanent basis. TFN provides participants with a unique and diverse set of competencies (e.g. teaching and leadership skills) to choose from when designing their career trajectories, either as teachers or in other vocations; that is, they are provided with multiple career opportunities. TFAll thus provides an arena where participants can purposefully explore two kinds of competencies – teaching in schools and developing leadership skills.

A second relevant discourse relates to individuals’ motivations for choosing teaching as a profession. Reviews of the field (Brookhart & Freeman, 1992; Richardson & Watt, 2014) have suggested that people are attracted to teaching for different reasons. In particular, the following three main reasons have emerged as influencing teachers’ professional motivation: altruistic values, such as a desire to work with children and shape future generations; intrinsic values, such as the enjoyment of teaching itself, a desire for a challenge or a need for self-development; and extrinsic values, such as salary, job security, working hours and vacation time (Kyriacou & Coulthard, 2000; Roness & Smith, 2010; Richardson & Watt, 2014).

However, student teachers have different perspectives on their teaching careers. Watt and Richardson (2008) found that a group of teacher graduates from traditional teacher education (27%), which they termed ‘highly engaged switchers’, chose to pursue teaching for the experience and competence and not because they planned a long-term career in teaching. Similarly, Smethem (2007) found that some teachers saw teaching only as a stepping stone in their career paths and thus introduced the notion ‘portfolio teachers’ to describe this group. Roness and Smith (2010) found that 24% of teacher candidates in their study reported ambivalence towards teaching as a career and reported to have chosen teacher education to obtain a variety of options in the job market. In studies examining career motivation among participants in alternative teacher education programmes, altruistic motivation (i.e. wanting to give back to society) is common (Gottfried & Straubhaar, 2015; Straubhaar & Gottfried, 2016). However, the most striking feature of these findings is that participants do not have a long-term perspective on teaching even though they might enjoy being a teacher. Rather, they use the teaching experience as a part of their future career development (Gottfried & Straubhaar, 2015; Heineke et al., 2014; Nesje et al., 2018b; Straubhaar & Gottfried, 2016).

A third discourse relates to individuals’ professional identity development.

In this chapter, I explore how TFN participants experienced and evaluated teaching as a profession and, furthermore, how their experiences and evaluations may have had an impact on their professional identities. I use the idea of identity play as the foundational concept that provides a basis to investigate specific aspects of the professional identity development process (Ibarra & Petriglieri, 2010). In identity play, people explore professional possibilities through experimenting with possible selves, that is, self-knowledge concerning how individuals think about their potential and their future (Markus & Nurius, 1986; Oyserman & James, 2011) rather than adapting to an initially desired professional identity. Through the process of identity play, individuals’ possible selves might be shaped and elaborated and may also be changed when faced with school realities. For TFN (and other TFALL) participants, it could be particularly relevant to view their professional trajectories as exploratory and non-linear as they may or may not maintain the teaching profession as a career endpoint. Accordingly, the chapter is concerned with individuals’ exploration of a possible teacher self, which may or may not be pursued further in their professional life.

In a broad sense, choosing an occupation is usually (although not exclusively) based on the values and beliefs attached to the choice – that is, the degree to which a person will experience the work as rewarding or feel a sense of belonging (Brophy, 2009). At the same time, values and beliefs constitute important parts in both the construct of motivation and the construct of professional identity. In this sense, career choices can be regarded as identity-relevant decisions (Brophy, 2009; Eccles, 2009; Kaplan & Flum, 2009). This is most emphasised in Watson (2006): Who we perceive ourselves to be motivates what we do. Against the backdrop of a trend towards an increased focus on individualisation and self-development, professional identity development becomes an important issue.

3 Research Context

Norway is a small country with a population slightly exceeding five million. It has become one of the world’s richest due to its natural resources, particularly oil and gas. The education system is mainly public, with 96% of children and youth attending public primary and lower-secondary schools and the remaining 4% in private schools. Equity is a key principle of the system. Education, including higher education, is free and available to all. The system offers 10 years of compulsory primary and lower secondary education (pupils aged 6–15 years) and an additional 3 years of optional upper secondary education (pupils aged 16–18 years). In compulsory education (grades 1–10), the same curriculum is used in all schools (see also Chap. 5 in this book).

TFN came into being in 2010 through a collaboration involving the municipality of Oslo’s educational authorities, the University of Oslo and Equinor (an oil and gas company: ‘the world’s largest offshore operator’). Equinor characterises its support for TFN as corporate social responsibility contributing to the development of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education in Norway. Equinor’s interest in TFN also reflects its aim of recruiting high-skilled workers. As with other TFAll programmes, TFN is framed within the concept of a mission, which in Norway involves improving science education by turning skilled science graduates into effective teachers and leaders. TFN recruits high-achieving graduates from STEM programmes, a focus that distinguishes it from other TFAll programmes. It collaborates with Teach First in England (TFUK) and sends its graduates to a five-week summer institute in the UK. TFN is a small programme that to date has graduated about 148 candidates (www.teachfirstnorway.no) with diverse motivations for participating (Nesje, 2016). Candidates in TFN are selected through a process comprising motivational interviews, tests (including personality and IQ tests) and assignments (ethical and cooperative). High academic performance is a prerequisite. The candidates begin teaching with full responsibilities at the start of the school year. While teaching, they attend formal, university-based teacher-education (part time) courses organised by the educational authorities and leadership training from Equinor.

Organisations participating in the TFAll network, which was established in 2007 by the founders of TFA and TFUK, share a common mission to improve education and to fight social inequity (www.teachforall.org; Rauschenberger, 2021). Lately, the number of TFAll programmes has increased significantly, with new programmes being established in Europe (e.g. Sweden and Denmark), South America, the Asia-Pacific region and the Middle East. Currently, the network has 59 member countriesFootnote 2 (http://teachforall.org/en).

Marketing for the programme has heavily emphasised leadership development (www.teachfirstnorway.no). As a teacher education and leadership development programme, TFN combines the development of practical teaching skills with management training, internship opportunities and mentoring (www.teachfirstnorway.no).

By requiring a 2-year commitment and continuous professional development, TFN tries to ensure that around half of the candidates will remain teachers after completing their training (www.teachfirstnorway.no). By 2018, 55% of the TFN candidates worked in the education sector, however, many of these were in leadership or PhD positions (www.teachfirstnorway.no).

4 Sample and Methods

The research design that I adopted in this study focused on individual TFN teachers and used a multi-method approach to examine their experiences as participants in an alternative and largely employment-based route into teaching. I chose the individual TFN participant as my unit of analysis because of my focus on career motivations and professional identity development among the teachers.

Aiming for an investigation into participants’ initial motivations for entering the TFN programme and the development of their professional identities throughout the programme, I invited one cohort of candidates to participate in my research project. The TFN cohorts are small, and this sample consists of 13 participants. Of these, six participants were subjected to an analysis of their professional identity development. These six participants constitute a sub-sample of the cohort, obtained through a nested sampling technique (Johnson & Christensen, 2019). The six TFN candidates were selected based on their motivational profiles identified in the first phase of the study (see Nesje, 2016) and were subsequently followed during their 2-year programme commitment (see Nesje et al., 2018b). The participants ranged in age from 24 to 31, with a mean age of 26.3 years. The participants holds master’s degrees in biology, chemistry, engineering, mathematics, nanoscience, physics and feed science (Table 13.1).

Table 13.1 Participants’ demographics (N = 6)
Full size table

5 Data Sources

The data were collected through an instrument measuring the participants’ motivations for teaching (the FIT-Choice scale, Watt & Richardson, 2008; see below), qualitative interviews and reflection notes. The measurement sample consisted of the 13 participants (three female) who constituted one cohort of TFN students. The participants’ motivations for teaching were measured using the Factors Influencing Teaching (FIT) Choice scale (Watt & Richardson, 2008).Footnote 3 Based on the results from the FIT-Choice scale, the participants’ motivational profiles were extracted (for additional information, see Nesje, 2016). The participants’ responses on the FIT-Choice scale were treated individually as test scores involving a norm-referenced measurement approach with inter-individual comparison (Sattler, 2001). Z-scores were calculated based on the participants’ responses on the FIT-Choice scale and the mean scores and standard deviations from a norm group of 635 Norwegian student teachers. The z-scores thus provide information on how the participants’ scores are positioned compared with the large norm group (the norm group and results are presented elsewhere; see Nesje et al., 2018a). From these motivational profiles, six participants were selected to be interviewed when they started TFN and at the end of the programme. I used a semi-structured interview protocol with questions relating to the participants’ experiences with teaching, their perceptions of the TFN programme and their career plans. The average length of the interviews were 85 min. All interviews were recorded and fully transcribed. In addition, when the participants were halfway through the TFN programme, they wrote a reflection note based upon questions similar to those in the interviews.

The texts resulting from the transcriptions were coded (using NVivo 10 data analysis software), and a thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) was applied to the participants’ statements and reflection notes.

6 Core Findings

This section presents the key findings of the study (for additional results, see Nesje, 2016; Nesje et al., 2018a, b), which had the following research question: How can we understand the career motivations and development of professional identity among TFAll participants?

6.1 Motivation for Joining TFN

In the analysis of the participants’ responses on the FIT-Choice scale, I found the following three motivational profiles (see Nesje, 2016): altruistic motivation predominant (profile 1), interest in teaching (profile 2) and low altruistic motivation (profile 3). These profiles were elaborated by the participants’ interviews. The interview data revealed that the TFN candidates’ motivations for teaching and attending the programme were complex and unique to the three profiles. From the perspective of this particular cohort, TFN has recruited participants with different motivations for the teaching profession. The involvement of the business industry (Equinor) in the TFN partnership attracted some of the participants who considered their participation in TFN as a part of their overall building of competence and not primarily based on motivations to teach (low altruistic motivation). One of the participants from the low altruistic motivation profile stated the following:

I don’t actually think I am going to become a teacher. I am not driven by strong motivations for the teaching profession. I’ve chosen the programme for more selfish reasons. I have an attractive science education. I would really like to become a manager in an industrial context. So, I will probably be searching for a new job in about a year. It is important for me to have a job that involves personal challenges. And I can always turn back to teaching.

The participants in the low altruistic motivation profile emphasised the importance of being professionally challenged, and the TFN programme was perceived as an opportunity to learn and build competence for use in work areas other than schools. Another participant from this profile stated:

Since I started studying, I have been very much aware that I will build leadership skills. And Teach First seems like a different way of doing it. For me it was a ‘kill two birds with one stone’ situation. So when I apply for jobs in about a year, I am going to apply for jobs that take my leadership career one step further. I will not go into a typical engineering job like several of my friends are doing now. For me, the professional competence as a teacher is not important. I want the leadership competence.

For the respondents in this profile, TFN is primarily perceived as a good place to develop leadership skills. Teacher education and the work as a teacher seem to be subordinate for this group of participants.

The participants grouped in the two other motivational profiles displayed more adaptive motivations to teach, underscoring that their TFN participation was based on an interest in and enjoyment of teaching (high interest in teaching) or that they were committed to giving back to society and helping future generations (altruistic motivation predominant). The participants from the high interest in teaching profile expressed an interest in the subject matter being taught, and becoming a teacher was an option for several of the participants even before they were familiar with TFN.

The actual teaching situation is interesting. Perhaps it has something to do with the power and influence, what the pupils learn and how they learn. Not to say I am forcing my own opinions on them. But I like being able to tell them things. If we read things in the newspaper, for example, and then being able to explain about science subjects, tell them why what the journalist writes is wrong, as is often the case, and to make them aware that everything is natural science! Disseminating this knowledge and observing how the pupils respond is very fun.

Several of the participants emphasised the enjoyment related to teaching and their relations to their pupils.

Being in the classroom makes me wake up. I get a little excited. In my old job, I often felt I didn’t contribute anything. I didn’t see the results of the job I did. That is hardly rewarding. But in the classroom, it is different. I get a lot in return from the students. And that is motivating.

The participants in this profile were also initially motivated to join TFN because of a need for challenges, which they believed TFN could offer them. Although some of the participants in this group had not considered teaching as a career option before entering the programme, they underscored that the TFN experience had exposed them to new career options.

The participants in the profile labelled altruistic motivation predominant displayed a high interest in teaching combined with high scores on altruistic motivations. Research has shown that altruistic motivation is an important motivation for teachers (Jungert et al., 2014; Pop & Turner, 2009). One of the participants stated the following:

I think I have the abilities of a good teacher. A good teacher is one who is interested in youth and who is interested in getting young people to perform their best and wish them well. One has to be interested in pursuing social inclusion. One must have a desire to achieve something together with others. One thing that I find really cool about the Teach First programme is that we have to work in a multicultural school. Get to meet people from all over the world, see if we can work towards the same goal. You have to find some pleasure in helping others if you are working as a teacher. One must be altruistic, quite simply.

Interestingly, however, participants in this profile talked about teaching as a fall-back career opportunity. Teaching was perceived as a short-term commitment, and as with participants in the first profile (low altruistic motivation), TFN was viewed as a provisional period allowing participants to plan their future, learn about teaching and achieve competence applicable in other work areas.

6.2 Professional Identity Development

In the examination of the participants’ professional identity development, the motivational profiles presented above were used as a starting point. Two participants from each profile were included in this second part of the study. The participants’ motivational profiles constitute representations of their possible teacher selves and thus are the raw materials of their identity play as they explore the teaching profession. Table 13.2 gives an overview of the themes emerging from the participants’ interviews and reflection notes.

Table 13.2 Overview of themes in the participants’ narratives
Full size table

As already mentioned, the participants offered different reasons for participation in TFN. In the first round of interviews, two of the six candidates expressed a clear intent to become a teacher, while the remaining four were more open to other career options. The time-limited and non-binding aspects of the TFN programme was underscored in several of the interviews as an important reason to attend. One participant, Theodore, explained:

I like that TF is project-based and limited to two years. What it means is that I do not have to decide to become a teacher. I’m having trouble with committing myself for a long time. In whatever job I take, including in industry, I would have trouble saying that I will be here for very long. I think of TF as a way to explore a job that I consider interesting.

As shown in Table 13.2, the participants’ exploration of their teacher selves meant that they encountered the classroom, their pupils and the school in different ways. The participants’ thoughts and feelings are evoked and act as conditions in which the process of professional identity development takes place.

The participants’ conceptions about teaching differed considerably when entering the TF programme. The two candidates from the altruistic motivation predominant profile conveyed that teaching was primarily about caring and helping adolescents in their learning and development. The two participants from the high interest in teaching profile displayed considerable reflection on classroom management and relations with pupils as key elements in teaching. In their conceptions of teaching, they also highlighted correctness and ethics as key characteristics of teaching. Peter stated that

Being able to stand in front and being a leader is not always easy. It is, however, very important because being a teacher is being a leader. A bad teacher will be a bad leader. Classroom management is much more important than subject knowledge. Subject knowledge is not the problem. It is classroom management that is important. No one can learn anything if you don’t have classroom management.

The two participants from the low altruistic motivation profile strongly anchored their understanding of themselves as teachers in their subject knowledge. At the beginning of the TFN programme, they conveyed a strong belief in their own academic abilities. When talking about their conceptions of teaching, they emphasised subject knowledge and the dissemination of knowledge as the most salient elements and that the most important part of a teacher’s job is ensuring that pupils learn as much as possible.

After 1 year in the TFN programme, the participants in the low altruistic motivation profile described their experiences as teachers in more negative terms than at the start, 1 year earlier. Their conceptions of teaching matched the realities of their classrooms only to a limited extent. One of the participants was disappointed by the behaviour of his students, who seemed to him uninterested and disrespectful. Adrian explained:

I think dissemination of knowledge is fun. Unfortunately, it’s only a small part of a teacher’s job in lower secondary school. I perceive my role more like an overqualified kindergarten teacher than a knowledgeable person sharing his expertise.

After 1 year in the programme, one of the participants from the altruistic motivation predominant profile expressed how he had received positive feedback on how he carried out his work as a teacher and his teacher identity. Theodore stated the following:

I see that there is a need for me in school, and I feel that the work I do is extremely meaningful. It is important for me to do something I find valuable. That I have the opportunity to forge strong relational ties in my professional life and that I can contribute to developing something or someone.

The other participant from this profile faced considerable challenges in her work as a teacher. After 1 year in teaching, she expressed that the work pressure and the social context in which she functioned in school resulted in low motivation for remaining a teacher. Strong themes of her narrative were disappointment and loneliness. She felt she had little connection with her colleagues and little support from her supervisors.

At the end of TFN, the participants’ different trajectories of professional identity exploration became even more apparent than in the reflection notes or the first interviews. While some participants continued the construction of a professional identity suited to the realities of teaching and the larger school system, other participants discarded their professional identity as a teacher as they searched for other career options. Although some of the participants’ development had continued positively during the second year, the majority of participants were planning to pursue career aspirations other than staying in teaching. One of the participants explained his future feared possible self as a teacher:

What scares me is to stand there as a 50-year-old teacher. I very much enjoy what I do now, but I hope that I one day will get tired of it all and get a desire to do something else.

This fear of what one would become in the future was emphasised by other themes that emerged during the interviews. The lack of career progression in teaching was mentioned by several of the participants as a drawback as were feelings of academic stagnation, the prospect of low wage growth and constraints related to teachers’ working hours and general working conditions. Peter explains:

I’m going to work as a teacher again sometime in the future. I have great motivation to work with people and to develop myself as a leader and expert. I have not been scared away from the profession, but I am looking with horror at the developments around working agreements and working hours in schools. The actual work, however, gives me great pleasure.

Summarising the participants’ narratives, the findings show that in addition to a teacher self, other salient possible professional selves exist, making the non-binding TFN programme a convenient place to be for a limited time. The findings also show that some motivations for and beliefs and perceptions about teaching provide a better match with the realities of classrooms than others. Furthermore, the findings show that the identity play within TFN offered opportunities for new possible selves to emerge during the course of the programme. Based on the reality check of the participants’ experience in the schools, possible selves might be integrated as a part of a professional identity, they might be rejected or changed or new insights regarding one’s teacher identity might emerge from the experience.

7 Discussion

This chapter has explored the introduction of Teach First/TFAll in Scandinavia based on empirical evidence from the Norwegian context. As a point of departure, the chapter describes some features of contemporary work life and young professionals’ values and beliefs related to work, embracing self-development and self-realisation (Beck & Beck-Gernsheim, 2002; Maccoby, 1988). Higher education offers qualifications leading to individualised career opportunities (Beck & Beck-Gernsheim, 2002). Some people even engage in several educational programmes or courses, providing themselves with several credentials and multiple career opportunities. The participants in Teach First/TFAll programmes represent this growing group of professionals (Baethge, 1992; Mayrhofer et al., 2011).

The findings presented in this chapter provide insights into the beginning teacher identities of participants in the TFN programme. Although the participants displayed adaptive motivation for teaching and perceived the work as meaningful and interesting, teaching was not a salient part of their career planning. The findings rather suggest that their motivations for joining TFN and the teaching profession promoted a superficial and short-term engagement in the profession (Fokkens-Bruinsma & Canrinus, 2012; Jungert et al., 2014; Nesje, 2016).

TFAll is perceived and marketed as a fast-track opportunity to recruit the highest-achieving graduates to teach in schools. Such recruitment is greatly needed as some prognoses indicate inadequate coverage of future teacher needs in Norway and Sweden. Denmark anticipates inadequate coverage until the year 2022 although a sufficient supply of teachers is anticipated further into the 2020s. The current and future supply of teachers can also partly be viewed in the context of many teachers leaving the teaching profession, thus creating a need for extraordinary recruitment. However, from a recruitment perspective, which aims to ensure that more teachers stay in the profession, the TFAll model proves to be unsatisfactory. The findings presented in this chapter show that the motivation for participating in the programme is complex. The programme is perceived by many as an opportunity for self-development and building a resume. The participants from the low altruistic motivation profile expressed less interest in teaching and less emphasis on altruistic motivations, thus expressing maladaptive teaching motivations, as specified by Fokkens-Bruinsma and Canrinus (2012). Maladaptive motivations, which are associated with a loss of commitment to and engagement in teaching, are important indications of a misfit between the individual and the choice of profession, making insights into participants’ motivations important for the TFN partnership in order to be able to facilitate and support the TFN participants’ experiences during the programme.

The TFN participants may have entered the programme with an exploratory attitude towards being a teacher. Self-development was an important underlying value relating to this group’s professional identity (Maccoby, 1988; Mayrhofer et al., 2011). Participation in TFAll programmes might be viewed as a part of a self-development project in which the candidates are given the opportunity to ‘try on teaching for fit’ (Nesje et al., 2018b). The majority of TFN participants included in this study have long-term career objectives other than being a teacher, and these participants justify their participation in the programme with developing competencies applicable to a range of working contexts. Teaching skills are appreciated in many areas of work life, and the relational competence offered by teacher education is valuable in most work contexts, whether working in leadership positions, such as a project manager, or simply in order to be a good colleague. Thus, if the TFN participants’ attempts at self-realisation were hampered, such as by negative classroom experiences, a limiting system or organisational obstacles, they moved on to other work contexts in the hope of finding better conditions for self-development.

Among young people, there is an embedded assumption that they will change their career several times throughout their lives (cf. Mayrhofer et al., 2011). This expectation can provide an incentive to acquire competencies that are applicable in several work areas, and, as mentioned above, teaching skills represent precisely such a competence. When participants in this study explored the teaching profession through TFN, they perceived different experiences as salient and as important push-and-pull factors contributing to their professional development. These different ways of exploring the teaching profession were related to their initial motivations and possible teacher selves when they entered TFN and teaching. Self-realisation and self-development seemed to be an important underlying aspect of this group’s professional identity. The study shows that identity play (Ibarra & Petriglieri, 2010), proposed as the process by which possible selves are tested against experience, can be a fruitful analytical concept for understanding professional identity development in contemporary work situations.

8 Concluding Remarks

Higher education systems both in the Scandinavian countries and internationally have been subject to profound reform pressures in recent years. The universities’ external environment has increased in complexity. At the same time, researchers argue that the European space for higher education is increasingly being homogenised through the Bologna process and through innovations such as the TFAll network, leading national systems to adopt common international models (Crawford-Garrett et al., 2021; Olmedo et al., 2013; see this chapter in this book for a discussion on the impact of the Bologna process on the governing of Teacher education in the Nordic region).

TFN is an alternative teacher education programme initiated outside the government’s policy formulation but nonetheless welcomed in the Norwegian educational landscape. The programme joins a public discourse on solving society’s problems within a network organisation (Olmedo et al., 2013). However, as shown in this chapter, TFAll is thus far a marginal phenomenon when it comes to the Scandinavian societal challenges of obtaining qualified teachers. TFAll is neither able to solve the challenges associated with attrition from the teaching profession nor the challenges related to the fact that about 15% of Norwegian teachers in primary school and about 21% of teachers in upper secondary school lack formal teaching qualifications (Ghosh, 2020). The situation is similar in Sweden, where a shortage of 45,000 qualified teachers is expected in 2033 (Skolverket, 2019).

The Scandinavian (and Nordic) higher education system has been described as successful in combining economic growth with social protection, inclusion and equality (Christensen et al., 2014). Thus, an interesting question pertains to how the general altruistic mission of TFAll – to make a difference – is redefined in the Scandinavian context. In Norway, TFN is framed as a remedy in the work on the so-called science subject crisis and thus in the recruitment of capable science and mathematics teachers. As a key partner in the TFN collaboration, the energy company Equinor demonstrates social responsibility by participating in the partnership and financing parts of the TFN programme. However, Equinor’s motives for participation are also related to recruiting the best candidates for future employment (Nesje, 2020). As shown in this chapter, TFN is a small programme with few openings (between 13 and 20 students each year). The chapter demonstrates that the programme recruits participants with different motivations for participation, many of whom are motivated to acquire competencies for use in a wider context than solely teaching. Thus, from a recruitment perspective, the Teach First model appears unsatisfactory. The participants’ experiences within the programme and working as teachers were perceived as a form of identity play while trying out possible selves as a teacher and a leader.