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Policies to Build a Strong, Quality and Stable Teaching Workforce: In Spite of…

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Out-of-Field Teaching and Education Policy

Abstract

Teacher retention is of the utmost importance to the building of a stable, strong, quality teaching workforce. Research (Du Plessis in Understanding the out-of-field teaching experience 2014, Out-of-field teaching: What educational leaders need to know. Sense Publishers, Boston, MA 2017, Professional support beyond initial teacher education. Springer, Singapore 2019) shows that with support, engaged leadership and professional trust interrelationships, teachers in challenging positions such as out-of-field teaching perceive their teaching situation as manageable and tend to remain in the teaching profession, often staying at the school where they have been supported. Out-of-field teachers shared that it takes them from 3 to 5 years to develop expertise in a specific subject area or field, information that is of considerable value when school leaders make decisions about micro-education policies to improve their students’ achievements. Decisions to assign teachers to different out-of-field subjects on a continual basis have a crushing impact on the development of teachers’ expertise. Out-of-field teachers need time to adjust to an unfamiliar subject and/or year level to develop sound content and pedagogical content knowledge, and to “settle down” in an out-of-field subject area, field or year level.

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  1. Griffith University, Mt Gravatt, QLD, Australia

    Anna Elizabeth Du Plessis

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  1. Anna Elizabeth Du Plessis
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Correspondence to Anna Elizabeth Du Plessis .

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Du Plessis, A.E. (2020). Policies to Build a Strong, Quality and Stable Teaching Workforce: In Spite of…. In: Out-of-Field Teaching and Education Policy. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1948-2_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1948-2_7

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-15-1947-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-15-1948-2

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