ECEC educators play a vital role in educating and caring for children during the first five years of life, a critical period for learning, growth, and development. University-trained early childhood teachers make a particularly significant contribution to overall service quality. This exploratory interview study brings an ecological lens to the…

This study examines professional standards policy documents for teachers and school leaders in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States of America to ascertain where and how the concepts of wellbeing and resilience are addressed and enacted within each nation's policy. Eight policy documents comprising four professional…

This paper draws together academic and policy literature around the value of a culturally, linguistically and racially diverse (CLRD) teacher workforce in Australia. While Australia's population is becoming more diverse, the teaching population is significantly less so, with far fewer teachers born overseas and/or speaking a language other than…

There is growing concern that casual academics operate in an environment characterised by precarity and inequality which has implications for motivation and well-being. This study examines how various factors support or inhibit casual accounting academics' motivation and well-being in Australian universities. Using Herzberg's two-factor theory and…

A key tool amongst the strategies used by teachers to combat stress at work is the construction and development of a professional identity. The underlying idea is that professional identity has the potential to prevent or help teachers to overcome burnout, a problem that is increasingly common within the profession. We conducted a multiple case…

Teacher job satisfaction is pivotal for retaining competent, qualified teachers, and for enhancing their overall well-being. School working conditions play a vital role in shaping teachers' perspectives on their career and profession. However, international comparative research is still limited in pinpointing the specific elements of the…

In this paper, we report on some early findings from a project that explores the experiences of teacher shortages in hard-to-staff schools in Australia. We provide an in-depth account of the experiences of teachers who remain at schools characterised by unfilled vacancies, high staff turnover and a limited casual relief workforce. These…

This article investigates the key factors associated with Australian teachers' intentions to leave their roles by examining their working conditions, experiences of work and mental health through the concept of the psychosocial work environment. Utilising a dataset of 744 primary and secondary teachers in mainstream Australian government schools,…

In Australia, there is a growing concern about the well-being of teachers with many expressing their intention to leave the profession or indeed have already left. Various reasons have been suggested for this trend, with burnout being identified as one of the factors. This study investigates burnout in Australian teachers as one of the constructs…

Workplace bullying in the early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector is a pervasive and significant issue in Australia and globally. Workplace bullying can negatively impact early childhood professionals' mental health, contributing to staff turnover and attrition. Given the current, and predicted, future shortages of ECEC staff, it is…

Sessional staff are commonly excluded from opportunities which can enhance their professional development, despite being responsible for the majority of university teaching. For educators teaching in widening participation or enabling programs, this can create additional separation or feelings of being 'illegitimate'. This article interrupts such…

Teacher shortages are a global problem. One solution to this problem, offered in Australian policy, is the notion of the career change teacher (CCT). This study analyses the responses from 23 teacher educators who were asked what they themselves thought might enable and/or constrain this cohort entering teaching as well as those they saw for the…

In this autoethnography I present three narratives exploring how I understood and experienced my identity as a gay beginning teacher working in a rural Australian secondary school, where my sexuality was generally not accepted. Reading these narratives through a phenomenological lens highlights how my subjectivity as a gay man was entangled in my…

Autistic people are under-represented in university student populations, but their numbers are growing, and the barriers to their inclusion are being recognised. Outside of the student body, autistic people in academia are often overlooked, although this is starting to change with the growth in inclusive autism research. However, they remain…

Early childhood education and care (ECEC) has been impacted by COVID-19. Australia's ECEC has not been spared this impact. Australia's ECEC sector was positioned as an 'essential' service providing vital childcare support for frontline workers. This meant the ECEC workforce was positioned as frontline workers caring for young children. It was not…