Cultures of career development: senior leaders' and early career teachers' views of career

Background The TDA-funded NQT Quality Improvement Study is a 4 year, England-wide longitudinal, combined methods study of both SLT and early career teachers (ECT's) views of key issues in the first few years of teaching. The first two phases of the study focussed on entry into the NQT year and the NQT year itself; the third phase looked at the second year of teaching. This paper utilises data from this third phase - particularly case study interviews with teachers and SLT members - to consider the issues of ECTs' careers and career development. The topic is of particular interest, since whilst the picture in terms of teacher supply and retention in the profession overall is much improved in recent years (for example, proportions of unfilled vacancies have declined according to DCSF data, and Smithers and Robinson (2003, 2004, 2005) found that the retention issue tailed off and stabilised over the period of their studies), it is clear that schools vary widely in their ability to recruit and retain staff in their early careers. This paper aims to explore these variations in different contexts and school cultures, to illuminate these differences. Research Questions This focus of this paper is to examine how SLT members in different contexts and cultures manage, and view, career development for ECTs in their schools and to compare these views with those of ECTs in the same schools.