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Journal of Educational Change

, Volume 15, Issue 3, pp 231–252 | Cite as

Ensuring the ongoing engagement of second-stage teachers

  • Cheryl L. Kirkpatrick
  • Susan Moore Johnson
Article
First Online:

Abstract

Research and policy have increasingly focused on the importance of staffing schools with effective teachers. A critical variable affecting teacher effectiveness is the enthusiasm, energy and effort teachers bring to their work, or teachers’ work engagement. Better understanding teachers’ work engagement and how it may change over stages in a teacher’s career is the subject of this exploratory interview study of second-stage teachers—teachers with 4–10 years of experience. Participants in this study described engaging in their work to different degrees and in very different ways. As beginning teachers, their interest in and enthusiasm for teaching was typically high and they focused a great deal of energy on conducting their classes. However, over time they acquired a sense of competence and had been granted considerable professional autonomy. Although competence and autonomy inspired and energized some of these teachers, it also made it unnecessary to be highly engaged. Their administrators reportedly paid little attention to their choices and did not intervene. Ultimately, the decision about whether and how to engage in teaching was theirs to make. Although all participants reported a continued interest in and enthusiasm for teaching, three stage-related patterns emerged in how they engaged in their work. Some teachers chose to modify their engagement, re-directing a portion of their effort to activities other than teaching, including their families or coursework for recertification. Others decided to focus their engagement, by attending to more fine-grained, interesting aspects of their subject or pedagogy, now that they had the basics under control. Still others chose to diversify their engagement—engaging in new and interesting extensions of teaching, such as leadership roles and extracurricular activities. A few, whose efforts to improve their practice or contribute to their school had been ignored or discouraged, either said they would leave teaching or had disengaged as an alternative to leaving. These findings suggest that having a better understanding of teachers’ engagement and the role that the school plays in their decisions about how to engage is important for promoting effectiveness and retention among teachers who have moved beyond their novice years.

Keywords

Second-stage teachers School culture Teacher autonomy Teacher efficacy Teacher retention Teacher support Work engagement Professional culture 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

The first author is a recipient of a Spencer Research Training Grant and would like to thank the Spencer Foundation for supporting this work. Many thanks to colleagues at Harvard Graduate School of Education for their support, especially colleagues in the Urban Impact Project and (removed to ensure anonymity). Additionally, thanks to several second-stage teachers from Teach Plus who reviewed and provided feedback on this article.

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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Lowell Public SchoolsLowellUSA
  2. 2.Harvard Graduate School of EducationCambridgeUSA
  3. 3.ConcordUSA

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