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Education

Early Career Casual Teachers: The Role of Relationships

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Developing relationships with colleagues has been identified as one way to enhance teacher resilience and assists in negotiating a professional identity. For early career teachers, opportunities to participate in induction and mentoring programmes and engage in professional learning can assist in developing these relationships. Helen Dempsey discusses how relationships are pivotal in the development of a strong teacher identity.

Image courtesy of interviewee. March 18, 2024

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This video video discusses the experiences of early career casual teachers, particularly focusing on the importance of relationship-building in their professional lives. The speaker, who has a background in casual teaching, reflects on the unique challenges faced by new teachers who lack the experience and connections that might help them secure regular employment.

Key points include:

1. **Relational Work**: Teaching is fundamentally about developing relationships with students, parents, caregivers, colleagues, and school administrators. For casual teachers, these relationships are crucial in securing work opportunities.

2. **Differences in Experience**: Casual teachers with more experience have different conditions compared to early career casual teachers, who often struggle to find consistent employment, especially during times when there is no teacher shortage.

3. **Casual Teaching and Identity**: Early career casual teachers face challenges in forming their professional identity. They often feel they are on the periphery of the school community, which complicates their ability to navigate their roles as teachers.

4. **Research Gaps**: Previous research largely focused on the challenges faced by casual teachers, with little information specifically addressing the experiences of early career casual teachers.

5. **Importance of Teacher Resilience**: Research indicates that developing good relationships can enhance resilience among teachers, which helps them navigate the ups and downs of their profession.

6. **Methodology**: The speaker's study employed a case study approach with focus groups and interviews conducted over a year to explore the experiences of early career casual teachers.

7. **Findings**: The study revealed that building relationships both with students and colleagues significantly impacts casual teachers' job security and sense of professional identity. Regular employment fosters a sense of belonging and leads to more substantial professional interactions.

8. **Challenges in Professional Development**: Early career casual teachers often have limited access to professional learning and development opportunities, hindering their progress toward full registration as teachers.

9. **Recommendations**: This video video concludes with a call for teacher education providers and schools to emphasize the importance of building relationships and creating supportive environments for early career casual teachers.

Overall, the text highlights the relational dynamics in teaching and the unique context of early career casual educators, emphasizing the need for strong professional networks and support systems to foster teacher identity and retention.

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X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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I was actually a casual teacher for many years.

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Um, I've moved around a lot.

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Um, and I, I always found it rewarding occupation,

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but I always wondered about what was, what was the life

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of the early career teachers who didn't have that breadth

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of knowledge that I did as an experienced teacher

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before going into casual.

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And one of the things that I've always felt

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that basically teaching is all relational work

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where we are trying to develop relationships

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with our students, relationships with the parents

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and caregivers, but relationships with colleagues, the,

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the administration at the front,

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the principals and things like that.

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And particularly for casual teaching, when,

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when I did casual teaching, this idea that, you know,

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if you said hello to the people at the front office

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that you might get work the next day,

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they knew you were available, they knew you were friendly.

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So part of that relational work is the core business

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of all teachers, but especially for casual teachers.

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Um, and the, the idea is I think the,

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the conditions are quite different

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for a casual teacher who's got many, many years experience,

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and a lot of people will choose to be a casual teacher

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because there's less marking.

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They've got some ability to sort of say no thanks.

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But for an early career casual teacher,

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and when I was doing my research,

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this was in a time when there was actually

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not a teacher shortage.

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So there was actually people who graduated

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and they couldn't get work, they couldn't find any work.

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And so their, their only option was to do casual work,

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but it's quite different.

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They're in a quite a different situation than,

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really experienced teachers.

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And a lot of research

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that's done on casual teachers was

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all focusing on the challenges.

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How challenging was it?

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And, and there were, there were surveys, so there were a lot

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of surveys that were done for casual teachers,

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but I hadn't found anything that was dedicated

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to just early career casual teachers.

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And so I wanted to explore

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what their experiences were like, the literature.

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Fundamentally, a starting point too is when they look at,

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Dupre did this huge study in, in Europe looking at

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the number of days of employment

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and retention in the profession.

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So if you had less than three months worth

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of work in your first year,

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there was an 8.5% increase in attrition.

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So that is a real concern when we think about what happens

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for early career teachers

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who may not get much work in the first bit of time.

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But, and,

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and it's particularly relevant now

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where there's an increasing number

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of teachers leaving the profession.

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So when we look about what, what are some of the things

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list they're related to teachers leaving the profession.

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And one of the things, and there was a lot of studies done

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by, certainly in Australia by Mansfield and Belman

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and things like that, looking at, teacher resilience.

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And so one of the things when they look about teacher

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resilience at that if they were resilient,

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they could actually handle the ups and downs of teaching.

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And they looked at sort of protective factors.

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And one of the protective factors

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As far as resilience was concerned is actually

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developing good relationships.

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And it was one of the things

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that they put into their bright modules,

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which was all about relationships.

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And so having effective relationships, helped lead,

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you know, lead to teacher resilience.

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And then when we look about,

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relationships help maintain sup a supportive network,

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so you have to work on those, the, the, your network.

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But also this is particularly important when you're stepping

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into a new environment.

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So, how do you manage, you know,

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when you step into a new workspace, what is it like?

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And you don't know your way around.

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So having the skills to be able

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to build relationships was really important.

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And interestingly enough, when you look at the,

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for teacher education here in Australia, we look at,

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there's the early years framework

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for people working with really young children.

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There's also the eights l standards for teachers working

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with, with older children.

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And both of them have elements that relate

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to building relationships with parents and carers.

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And, and there's a little bit about colleagues as well.

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So relationships are seen as really important.

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So once we know that, when we link

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that into teacher identity, so they go actually from the,

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from the UK did, did a huge longitudinal study about looking

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at teacher retention over in, in fact,

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all the different levels of, a teacher's career

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and teacher identity seemed to be highly leaped

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to staying in the profession.

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So, so developing a strong teacher identity,

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it was seen as important.

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And developing relationships is actually an important

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component about negotiating a professional identity.

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Um, mainly

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because your identity as a teacher is developed

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through interactions, whether it's interactions

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with students or whether it's interaction with,

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colleagues or parents.

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That's all part of developing a who am I?

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And that's for all teachers.

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But for importantly, employment was seen

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as like, you know, the, the different levels

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of employment opportunities actually did

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impact on teacher identity.

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So lack of employment, seemed to be an indicator that,

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you know, were you really a teacher.

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What's interesting is for early career casual teachers,

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not only are they trying to, I, you know,

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develop their identity as a teacher in those early years,

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but they're also trying to negotiate this space

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of casual worker and how do those two fit together?

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And charter has talked a lot about the you,

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when you're a casual teacher,

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if anything goes wrong, it's your fault.

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Um, regardless of the fact you haven't been keys to,

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you haven't been given keys to the classroom,

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you have no one's told you who the students are

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with special needs, but if anything goes wrong,

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you are at fault when you are the casual teacher.

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And that's really exacerbated

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by someone who's an early career teacher who's

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still trying to find their way.

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And a lot, lot of the research

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around early career teachers talks about, you know,

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relational work and, and how that's really important.

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And then when we think about within this community,

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so a school community, that's

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where identity formation happens.

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So it's actually, and that's where was important for me.

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I, I used a lot of drew on that work of communities

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of practice, looking at that, having a shared meaning,

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shared practice helps build a teacher identity

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and sense of belonging to a community.

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And why I liked ER's work is

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that they talked about peripheral participation.

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And when we consider occasional teacher,

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they actually are on the periphery

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of a school a lot of the time.

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So how do they get an inbound trajectory

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and how, what, what keeps them on the,

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the edges of a community.

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Um, and so when we think about the school community,

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how do you sort of navigate that space

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with developing relationships with students,

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with the parents, and with leadership,

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which we've talked about, you know,

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relationships being important at such a relational, job.

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So how are these students, sorry.

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How are these early career teachers

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negotiating their identity within this?

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Um, often multiple, communities of practice.

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So the methodology that I approached I used in this

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particular study is I used a case study approach, mainly

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because I wanted to really define who are my people,

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who are the people I wanted to talk to?

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So it was very much to be part of the study.

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You had to be an early career teacher

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that's in the first five years,

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and you had to have only worked as in a casual capacity.

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And so I was not looking at people who had maybe a terms

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work, it was people who were, what we would,

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we would call day-to-day casual teachers.

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So they might have had a weak, but not a whole term.

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So this was very much a very bounded case.

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However, it's really a nested case study

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because each one of the participants had a very different,

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context that they were working in.

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Some had chosen to be relief teachers,

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others were actually looking for full-time work.

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So they were all within that same case.

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But there it is nested because they were all individual.

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My approach was taking it, there were two phases.

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The first phase was really looking at,

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I did some focus groups that about, you know, three

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to five people in a focus group.

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And this was really to try

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and get some sense of what their experiences were like,

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because all the literature I'd read that some

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of them would look at, so casual teachers were caught up in,

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there were casual teacher research

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and sometimes they would talk about the

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early career teachers.

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Then some, there was some research about early career

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teachers and that some of them happened to be casual.

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So I wanted to get a better sense of what it was like

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for these particular students.

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So that was through, the focus groups

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and that helped me fine tune the types of questions

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and activities I did in phase two.

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So then phase two I had five participants,

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and part of that was there were three interviews

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and within, between each interview there was tasks.

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So, because we all the research about identity talks

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about how it changes over time.

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So I wanted to do more of a longitudinal study.

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So it was over about a year period.

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I had three different interviews with them.

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And so the first one was really getting to know them,

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what are your experiences of casual

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teachings as simple as that?

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And trying to delve into that.

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And then between that

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and the next interview, I sent them just an email,

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a different time saying, can you describe one

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of the days that you worked this week?

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So they got to sort of come home from work

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and go, blah, this is what happened to me.

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Then the next one was about, you know,

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who are the supportive people in your life in,

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in your profession and in your personal life.

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Then another one was about what professional learning have

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you had opportunities to do?

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And then how do you, talk,

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who do you talk to about teaching?

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Um, so that was, that was the first block.

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Then the second interview that I had

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with them was really more of an activity based interview.

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So I had a whole lot

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of statements about the type of work teachers do.

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So it was like managing students, engaging students,

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building relationships, building

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relationships with colleagues.

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There was a whole range of things.

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And it was as simple as, here are these statements,

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sort them out however you like, how does, how do,

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how does this relate to you?

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And that was then the springboard

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for discussing why did you put those there,

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why did you put these statements here?

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And I actually took a snapshot of that and photo of that.

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And so, the actual,

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how they've arranged them became part of the data and

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and then how they talked about them.

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And so we, it finished up being, here's, here's the core,

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my core jobs here are some

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that it depends on whether they're pro the opportunities

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to provide to me

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and then others that I never had an opportunity to do this.

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And, so that, that was interesting.

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And then it was also, I did got them

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to sort statements about who you are.

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So from teacher babysitter,

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general dog's body.

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And, and it was interesting how, they ordered those.

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Then after that I gave Gavin small tasks,

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but you know, what was their perception

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of a community practice, their self as a teacher,

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you know, what was their future as a teacher?

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What do they consider their perceptions,

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other people's perceptions were of casual teachers.

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And in our final interview, we talked about

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who they felt they were as a teacher,

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but then also reflected back on all their tasks.

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And that's when you got to see people saying,

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that was a bad day.

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I've changed my mind about

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what I think of myself as a teacher.

11:36.355 --> 11:38.895
And so the data sets I used were the interview transcripts

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that the actual sorting activities

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and, the task responses.

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What was interesting is that

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although they, I'd asked them about

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how did you gain employment, they gained employment

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through lots of ways, but the most successful way

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of getting employment was actually

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through personal contacts.

11:55.745 --> 11:58.045
So if it had been a somewhere where they'd done one

11:58.045 --> 12:00.885
of their placements, especially their final placement,

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they already built relationships with the school,

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so they were more likely to pick up work.

12:05.545 --> 12:08.605
Um, and also if they were a parent at a school,

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they might pick up work at their, their child's school,

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or they had a friend who

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was a teacher who would call on them.

12:13.265 --> 12:16.115
Because at the time in Australia, a lot of it was,

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there would be a relief teacher list

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and somebody gets on the phone when

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someone rings up and they're sick.

12:21.215 --> 12:23.195
And so if you aren't known at a school,

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you might be right down the bottom of the list of people.

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'cause they go to their go-to people.

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So they felt that was a really strong thing.

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And for Chloe, that was very much

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what had happened to her.

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She started off meeting a few people, and then

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because she was a science teacher

12:40.455 --> 12:42.835
and that's in high schools, they tend to like

12:42.835 --> 12:44.835
to have a science teacher, as a science teacher.

12:45.615 --> 12:47.915
Um, then, then she started getting work.

12:50.455 --> 12:52.615
Interestingly, the, the findings about relationships

12:52.615 --> 12:56.095
with students, that was for every single participant,

12:56.595 --> 12:57.895
it was, that was their core business.

12:58.895 --> 13:01.475
So that became, really important.

13:01.535 --> 13:03.195
And, and it's interesting, other,

13:03.285 --> 13:05.715
other research talked about classroom management, et cetera.

13:06.135 --> 13:08.395
And although these people did talk about classroom

13:08.515 --> 13:11.835
management, their big idea was if we built a good

13:11.835 --> 13:13.995
relationship with students, we have less problems

13:13.995 --> 13:14.995
with classroom management.

13:15.495 --> 13:17.315
And they talked about strategies like talking

13:17.315 --> 13:19.035
to students at when you're on duty,

13:19.425 --> 13:20.715
because often,

13:20.715 --> 13:22.755
casual teachers get extra duties here in Australia.

13:22.935 --> 13:27.175
So you, they got to talk to students, getting

13:27.175 --> 13:29.095
to know the students' names,

13:29.125 --> 13:30.415
talking about their interests.

13:30.415 --> 13:32.855
And, and everyone thought it was really important.

13:32.955 --> 13:35.155
And certainly Chloe felt that

13:35.155 --> 13:37.315
that was really important in developing relationships

13:37.315 --> 13:38.555
with the students when you were

13:39.135 --> 13:41.195
at different classes and in different schools.

13:41.775 --> 13:45.835
But once you had, she'd started building, relationships

13:45.865 --> 13:47.075
with the school then,

13:47.375 --> 13:49.875
and she was getting more regular work, you didn't have

13:49.875 --> 13:51.555
to work as hard with those relationships.

13:51.655 --> 13:52.915
And she, she thought,

13:53.215 --> 13:54.275
and in fact most of 'em thought

13:54.275 --> 13:55.555
that if you were there all the time,

13:56.145 --> 13:58.475
they stopped considering you as a casual teacher

13:58.495 --> 13:59.875
and you were just one of the teachers.

14:00.135 --> 14:01.595
And that was a real turning point in

14:01.595 --> 14:03.275
how they felt about themselves as a teacher.

14:04.625 --> 14:07.525
Um, and with colleagues, it was the same type of thing.

14:07.525 --> 14:09.525
So when they were, when they did a sorting activity,

14:10.145 --> 14:11.965
it was fundamentally, if we get,

14:11.985 --> 14:14.085
if we're given the opportunity, we like to do that,

14:14.185 --> 14:16.925
but sometimes we can't because there's no time.

14:17.335 --> 14:20.205
We've got extra duties or people aren't very friendly.

14:20.905 --> 14:24.485
So you go into the staff room and can I sit with you

14:24.505 --> 14:27.485
and, no thanks, that's where, so that was a bit

14:27.485 --> 14:31.765
of a fraught space, but once again, regular employment meant

14:31.765 --> 14:34.085
that you were seen by the, by the teachers,

14:34.145 --> 14:39.125
and particularly in a secondary context, that you,

14:39.125 --> 14:41.325
you're often in with a, with all the science teachers

14:41.325 --> 14:42.925
or all the maths teachers and things like that.

14:42.945 --> 14:44.605
So once again, you've got more opportunities

14:45.025 --> 14:46.805
to develop the relationships with your colleagues.

14:47.545 --> 14:50.965
Um, and once, once you'd had regular employment,

14:51.475 --> 14:54.285
like Chloe was saying that the conversations change from

14:54.585 --> 14:55.965
how are you, how was your weekend

14:56.105 --> 14:58.285
to actual professional conversations.

14:58.625 --> 15:01.165
And once again, those professional conversations about

15:01.885 --> 15:05.405
pedagogy or students makes them feel more like a teacher.

15:05.505 --> 15:07.605
So it helps build that teacher identity rather than a

15:07.605 --> 15:10.565
babysitter identity, entity.

15:10.565 --> 15:12.525
Um, and then also when you, when they were there

15:12.525 --> 15:14.605
with regular employment, Chloe was saying, you know,

15:14.605 --> 15:15.725
she shared resources

15:16.025 --> 15:17.605
and they were able to collaborate together.

15:18.225 --> 15:20.845
And one of the, the big things is that sometimes

15:20.875 --> 15:22.205
that then they're actually invited

15:22.265 --> 15:26.055
to professional learning days, so that that kind of real

15:26.865 --> 15:29.615
sense of belonging to the community helped build

15:29.615 --> 15:30.695
other capacities.

15:31.035 --> 15:34.605
Um, but a lot of those kind

15:34.605 --> 15:36.165
of opportunities only happen

15:36.165 --> 15:38.365
with regular work at a particular school.

15:39.605 --> 15:42.145
And the relational work is particularly important,

15:42.145 --> 15:45.025
important when they're asked to teach out of field.

15:45.995 --> 15:49.055
So in primary that that looks like something,

15:49.195 --> 15:51.415
you're being asked to be the music specialist when really

15:51.415 --> 15:53.975
music is new specialization or, or art

15:53.995 --> 15:57.255
or something like that, that if you've got a already built

15:57.255 --> 15:58.775
relationships with students and staff,

15:58.955 --> 16:00.815
you can actually manage that more

16:01.095 --> 16:02.375
challenging teaching situation.

16:02.675 --> 16:05.695
And certainly in high school, it's quite common

16:05.695 --> 16:06.735
that you're teaching out a field,

16:06.855 --> 16:08.175
they want you there for the whole day.

16:08.515 --> 16:10.495
The teacher might only have three lines that day,

16:10.495 --> 16:11.815
so suddenly you're out there doing

16:11.875 --> 16:13.135
PE and you're going, heck.

16:13.675 --> 16:16.615
So it was, if you built the relationships, it was easier

16:16.635 --> 16:17.695
to manage that space.

16:18.645 --> 16:21.975
Um, and, and Chloe was very interesting

16:21.975 --> 16:23.375
because when you look at identity,

16:23.435 --> 16:26.215
she had a very strong identity personally

16:26.755 --> 16:29.615
and identity, they talk about this personal identity,

16:29.615 --> 16:32.375
professional identity, and sometimes they can be at

16:32.375 --> 16:33.415
intention with each other.

16:34.295 --> 16:36.515
So she was a scientist, so she came

16:36.515 --> 16:38.195
as a mature age student into teaching.

16:38.335 --> 16:40.115
So she had a very strong identity as scientist,

16:40.655 --> 16:43.275
and she'd come into teaching because she had children.

16:44.095 --> 16:48.035
So she had, her identity was about parent scientist,

16:48.135 --> 16:50.475
and then she was trying to develop that teacher identity.

16:51.015 --> 16:52.195
And that only started

16:52.195 --> 16:53.915
to happen when she was getting regular work.

16:54.495 --> 16:57.435
In summary, the, the, relationships basically

16:58.265 --> 17:00.875
have many roles for early career casual teachers.

17:00.945 --> 17:04.115
Fundamentally, that's how they can get access to,

17:04.115 --> 17:06.475
schools and, and employment.

17:06.695 --> 17:09.395
But, but also one of the, one of the things that happens in,

17:09.575 --> 17:11.355
in Australia, we have teacher registration.

17:11.355 --> 17:13.115
And when they're, when you're an early career teacher,

17:14.075 --> 17:16.455
you start out on what's called provisional registration.

17:16.595 --> 17:18.095
So once again, you're not quite a teacher,

17:18.095 --> 17:19.375
you're just a provisional teacher.

17:20.075 --> 17:23.135
And then within the next three years you have to,

17:24.935 --> 17:27.475
you have three years to move to fully registered teacher.

17:28.405 --> 17:30.985
So casual teachers are actually in this very strange place.

17:30.985 --> 17:32.465
It's very hard to get that evidence.

17:32.805 --> 17:35.465
So if you've got strong relationships with the school,

17:35.935 --> 17:38.345
they might give you access to professional learning,

17:38.845 --> 17:40.785
and then you can actually get access

17:40.945 --> 17:44.775
to the resources on the, the website.

17:46.165 --> 17:48.625
So relationships with students, the core activity,

17:49.425 --> 17:52.525
and that's a real challenge for all early career teachers.

17:53.105 --> 17:55.405
Um, so they're not, they're not

17:55.405 --> 17:57.685
that different from all early career teachers,

17:57.685 --> 17:58.965
except the complexity is

17:59.605 --> 18:01.625
if they're not getting regular employment at a school,

18:01.815 --> 18:04.065
then it's hard to build those really strong relationships

18:04.065 --> 18:06.145
with students and with colleagues.

18:07.405 --> 18:09.625
And, and one of the, the things that has come out

18:09.625 --> 18:11.905
of this sort of the implications really is

18:11.905 --> 18:15.025
that it initial teacher education providers such

18:15.025 --> 18:18.225
as the universities, we need to highlight the importance

18:18.225 --> 18:21.345
of developing relationships with students and,

18:21.405 --> 18:22.585
and when you are on your placements,

18:22.585 --> 18:24.265
because you, you know, if you're trying to get work.

18:24.725 --> 18:26.545
So we need to highlight that.

18:27.205 --> 18:30.705
Um, interestingly, our university, we now do a graduate stay

18:30.765 --> 18:32.985
and I give, I give a whole session,

18:32.985 --> 18:35.305
which is always packed on casual teaching.

18:35.805 --> 18:37.545
Um, because I think a lot of students know

18:37.545 --> 18:38.545
that they're going to be doing that,

18:38.545 --> 18:39.865
so they wanna know, how do I do this?

18:39.865 --> 18:44.595
Well, schools also need to be providing opportunities

18:44.935 --> 18:49.145
for their early career casual teachers to engage

18:49.895 --> 18:53.385
with mentors and, help build relationships.

18:53.725 --> 18:54.905
And we know that's complex

18:54.905 --> 18:57.145
because often professional learning days is

18:57.145 --> 18:58.265
a cost per person.

18:58.725 --> 19:01.465
And unless you're a regular teacher, you relief teacher,

19:01.465 --> 19:02.505
you're not going to be in there.

19:02.765 --> 19:04.705
But they could still do other things

19:04.845 --> 19:08.065
by maybe not giving them duty every single time they're

19:08.065 --> 19:09.225
there, like recess and lunchtime.

19:09.525 --> 19:11.305
So it's giving them opportunities to do that.

19:11.985 --> 19:14.045
But there is also a bigger picture here.

19:14.465 --> 19:18.265
Um, the education department in Western Australia have,

19:18.265 --> 19:20.385
they've created these graduate modules.

19:20.685 --> 19:23.025
So once people have graduated as a teacher, they can go

19:23.025 --> 19:25.705
and do all these modules to help get full registration.

19:26.285 --> 19:31.085
And at the time of my study, it wasn't really obvious

19:31.155 --> 19:32.805
that a casual teacher could do that

19:32.805 --> 19:34.285
because you needed a department number

19:35.055 --> 19:37.595
and to get a department number, you had to be in an email,

19:37.595 --> 19:38.995
you had to be a full-time teacher.

19:39.575 --> 19:42.035
And so once again, they're sort of stuck on the periphery.

19:42.575 --> 19:44.515
And I actually rang them up and was talking to 'em.

19:44.515 --> 19:46.595
I said, they can, they can come to all of these,

19:46.595 --> 19:47.675
they just need to ring us up.

19:47.675 --> 19:49.315
And I went, it'd be nice if you told them that.

19:49.575 --> 19:51.755
And they've actually since changed the website.

19:52.175 --> 19:55.035
So it's more easily accessible for,

19:56.005 --> 19:58.235
early career teachers who are working as a casual.

19:58.665 --> 20:01.595
However, they still, it still seems a lot

20:01.595 --> 20:03.515
of early career casual teachers

20:03.515 --> 20:04.755
aren't aware that that's available.

20:05.335 --> 20:06.595
And so they don't know. And,

20:06.815 --> 20:09.675
and the schools generally will send an early career teacher

20:09.855 --> 20:12.355
to those modules, see, you need

20:12.355 --> 20:14.155
to do your graduate modules now here's the day off.

20:14.155 --> 20:15.475
Whereas the casual teachers,

20:15.475 --> 20:17.115
and that's the other thing, they have to be on the,

20:17.575 --> 20:19.555
during school holidays because

20:19.555 --> 20:22.855
otherwise they're giving up a day's work to do a module

20:22.855 --> 20:24.375
that may not actually get them more work

20:24.435 --> 20:25.935
and may not really lead to a lot.

00:00 - I was actually a casual teacher for many years. I've moved around a lot. and I, I always found it rewarding occupation, but I always wondered about what was, what was the life of the early career teachers who didn't have that breadth of knowledge that I did as an experienced teacher

00:14 - before going into casual. And one of the things that I've always felt that basically teaching is all relational work where we are trying to develop relationships with our students, relationships with the parents and caregivers, but relationships with colleagues, the, the administration at the front, the principals and things like that. And particularly for casual teaching, when, when I did casual teaching, this idea that, you know,

00:40 - if you said hello to the people at the front office that you might get work the next day, they knew you were available, they knew you were friendly. So part of that relational work is the core business of all teachers, but especially for casual teachers. and the, the idea is I think the, the conditions are quite different for a casual teacher who's got many, many years experience, and a lot of people will choose to be a casual teacher because there's less marking.

01:06 - They've got some ability to sort of say no thanks. But for an early career casual teacher, and when I was doing my research, this was in a time when there was actually not a teacher shortage. So there was actually people who graduated and they couldn't get work, they couldn't find any work. And so their, their only option was to do casual work, but it's quite different. They're in a quite a different situation than,

01:31 - really experienced teachers. And a lot of research that's done on casual teachers was all focusing on the challenges. How challenging was it? And, and there were, there were surveys, so there were a lot of surveys that were done for casual teachers, but I hadn't found anything that was dedicated to just early career casual teachers. And so I wanted to explore

01:54 - what their experiences were like, the literature. Fundamentally, a starting point too is when they look at, Dupre did this huge study in, in Europe looking at the number of days of employment and retention in the profession. So if you had less than three months worth of work in your first year, there was an 8.5% increase in attrition. So that is a real concern when we think about what happens for early career teachers

02:19 - who may not get much work in the first bit of time. But, and, and it's particularly relevant now where there's an increasing number of teachers leaving the profession. So when we look about what, what are some of the things list they're related to teachers leaving the profession. And one of the things, and there was a lot of studies done by, certainly in Australia by Mansfield and Belman and things like that, looking at, teacher resilience.

02:45 - And so one of the things when they look about teacher resilience at that if they were resilient, they could actually handle the ups and downs of teaching. And they looked at sort of protective factors. And one of the protective factors As far as resilience was concerned is actually developing good relationships. And it was one of the things that they put into their bright modules, which was all about relationships.

03:07 - And so having effective relationships, helped lead, you know, lead to teacher resilience. And then when we look about, relationships help maintain sup a supportive network, so you have to work on those, the, the, your network. But also this is particularly important when you're stepping into a new environment. So, how do you manage, you know, when you step into a new workspace, what is it like? And you don't know your way around.

03:37 - So having the skills to be able to build relationships was really important. And interestingly enough, when you look at the, for teacher education here in Australia, we look at, there's the early years framework for people working with really young children. There's also the eights l standards for teachers working with, with older children. And both of them have elements that relate to building relationships with parents and carers.

04:03 - And, and there's a little bit about colleagues as well. So relationships are seen as really important. So once we know that, when we link that into teacher identity, so they go actually from the, from the UK did, did a huge longitudinal study about looking at teacher retention over in, in fact, all the different levels of, a teacher's career and teacher identity seemed to be highly leaped to staying in the profession. So, so developing a strong teacher identity,

04:35 - it was seen as important. And developing relationships is actually an important component about negotiating a professional identity. mainly because your identity as a teacher is developed through interactions, whether it's interactions with students or whether it's interaction with, colleagues or parents. That's all part of developing a who am I? And that's for all teachers.

04:59 - But for importantly, employment was seen as like, you know, the, the different levels of employment opportunities actually did impact on teacher identity. So lack of employment, seemed to be an indicator that, you know, were you really a teacher. What's interesting is for early career casual teachers, not only are they trying to, I, you know, develop their identity as a teacher in those early years, but they're also trying to negotiate this space

05:28 - of casual worker and how do those two fit together? And charter has talked a lot about the you, when you're a casual teacher, if anything goes wrong, it's your fault. regardless of the fact you haven't been keys to, you haven't been given keys to the classroom, you have no one's told you who the students are with special needs, but if anything goes wrong, you are at fault when you are the casual teacher. And that's really exacerbated

05:51 - by someone who's an early career teacher who's still trying to find their way. And a lot, lot of the research around early career teachers talks about, you know, relational work and, and how that's really important. And then when we think about within this community, so a school community, that's where identity formation happens. So it's actually, and that's where was important for me. I, I used a lot of drew on that work of communities

06:18 - of practice, looking at that, having a shared meaning, shared practice helps build a teacher identity and sense of belonging to a community. And why I liked 's work is that they talked about peripheral participation. And when we consider occasional teacher, they actually are on the periphery of a school a lot of the time. So how do they get an inbound trajectory and how, what, what keeps them on the,

06:45 - the edges of a community. and so when we think about the school community, how do you sort of navigate that space with developing relationships with students, with the parents, and with leadership, which we've talked about, you know, relationships being important at such a relational, job. So how are these students, sorry. How are these early career teachers negotiating their identity within this?

07:12 - often multiple, communities of practice. So the methodology that I approached I used in this particular study is I used a case study approach, mainly because I wanted to really define who are my people, who are the people I wanted to talk to? So it was very much to be part of the study. You had to be an early career teacher that's in the first five years, and you had to have only worked as in a casual capacity. And so I was not looking at people who had maybe a terms

07:40 - work, it was people who were, what we would, we would call day-to-day casual teachers. So they might have had a weak, but not a whole term. So this was very much a very bounded case. However, it's really a nested case study because each one of the participants had a very different, context that they were working in. Some had chosen to be relief teachers, others were actually looking for full-time work. So they were all within that same case.

08:07 - But there it is nested because they were all individual. My approach was taking it, there were two phases. The first phase was really looking at, I did some focus groups that about, you know, three to five people in a focus group. And this was really to try and get some sense of what their experiences were like, because all the literature I'd read that some of them would look at, so casual teachers were caught up in, there were casual teacher research

08:33 - and sometimes they would talk about the early career teachers. Then some, there was some research about early career teachers and that some of them happened to be casual. So I wanted to get a better sense of what it was like for these particular students. So that was through, the focus groups and that helped me fine tune the types of questions and activities I did in phase two. So then phase two I had five participants,

08:56 - and part of that was there were three interviews and within, between each interview there was tasks. So, because we all the research about identity talks about how it changes over time. So I wanted to do more of a longitudinal study. So it was over about a year period. I had three different interviews with them. And so the first one was really getting to know them, what are your experiences of casual teachings as simple as that?

09:22 - And trying to delve into that. And then between that and the next interview, I sent them just an email, a different time saying, can you describe one of the days that you worked this week? So they got to sort of come home from work and go, blah, this is what happened to me. Then the next one was about, you know, who are the supportive people in your life in, in your profession and in your personal life.

09:46 - Then another one was about what professional learning have you had opportunities to do? And then how do you, talk, who do you talk to about teaching? so that was, that was the first block. Then the second interview that I had with them was really more of an activity based interview. So I had a whole lot of statements about the type of work teachers do. So it was like managing students, engaging students,

10:09 - building relationships, building relationships with colleagues. There was a whole range of things. And it was as simple as, here are these statements, sort them out however you like, how does, how do, how does this relate to you? And that was then the springboard for discussing why did you put those there, why did you put these statements here? And I actually took a snapshot of that and photo of that.

10:30 - And so, the actual, how they've arranged them became part of the data and and then how they talked about them. And so we, it finished up being, here's, here's the core, my core jobs here are some that it depends on whether they're pro the opportunities to provide to me and then others that I never had an opportunity to do this. And, so that, that was interesting. And then it was also, I did got them

10:55 - to sort statements about who you are. So from teacher babysitter, general dog's body. And, and it was interesting how, they ordered those. Then after that I gave Gavin small tasks, but you know, what was their perception of a community practice, their self as a teacher, you know, what was their future as a teacher? What do they consider their perceptions, other people's perceptions were of casual teachers.

11:22 - And in our final interview, we talked about who they felt they were as a teacher, but then also reflected back on all their tasks. And that's when you got to see people saying, that was a bad day. I've changed my mind about what I think of myself as a teacher. And so the data sets I used were the interview transcripts that the actual sorting activities and, the task responses.

11:43 - What was interesting is that although they, I'd asked them about how did you gain employment, they gained employment through lots of ways, but the most successful way of getting employment was actually through personal contacts. So if it had been a somewhere where they'd done one of their placements, especially their final placement, they already built relationships with the school, so they were more likely to pick up work.

12:05 - and also if they were a parent at a school, they might pick up work at their, their child's school, or they had a friend who was a teacher who would call on them. Because at the time in Australia, a lot of it was, there would be a relief teacher list and somebody gets on the phone when someone rings up and they're sick. And so if you aren't known at a school, you might be right down the bottom of the list of people.

12:25 - 'cause they go to their go-to people. So they felt that was a really strong thing. And for Chloe, that was very much what had happened to her. She started off meeting a few people, and then because she was a science teacher and that's in high schools, they tend to like to have a science teacher, as a science teacher. then, then she started getting work. Interestingly, the, the findings about relationships

12:52 - with students, that was for every single participant, it was, that was their core business. So that became, really important. And, and it's interesting, other, other research talked about classroom management, et cetera. And although these people did talk about classroom management, their big idea was if we built a good relationship with students, we have less problems with classroom management. And they talked about strategies like talking

13:17 - to students at when you're on duty, because often, casual teachers get extra duties here in Australia. So you, they got to talk to students, getting to know the students' names, talking about their interests. And, and everyone thought it was really important. And certainly Chloe felt that that was really important in developing relationships with the students when you were

13:39 - at different classes and in different schools. But once you had, she'd started building, relationships with the school then, and she was getting more regular work, you didn't have to work as hard with those relationships. And she, she thought, and in fact most of 'em thought that if you were there all the time, they stopped considering you as a casual teacher and you were just one of the teachers.

14:00 - And that was a real turning point in how they felt about themselves as a teacher. and with colleagues, it was the same type of thing. So when they were, when they did a sorting activity, it was fundamentally, if we get, if we're given the opportunity, we like to do that, but sometimes we can't because there's no time. We've got extra duties or people aren't very friendly. So you go into the staff room and can I sit with you and, no thanks, that's where, so that was a bit

14:27 - of a fraught space, but once again, regular employment meant that you were seen by the, by the teachers, and particularly in a secondary context, that you, you're often in with a, with all the science teachers or all the maths teachers and things like that. So once again, you've got more opportunities to develop the relationships with your colleagues. and once, once you'd had regular employment, like Chloe was saying that the conversations change from how are you, how was your weekend

14:56 - to actual professional conversations. And once again, those professional conversations about pedagogy or students makes them feel more like a teacher. So it helps build that teacher identity rather than a babysitter identity, entity. and then also when you, when they were there with regular employment, Chloe was saying, you know, she shared resources and they were able to collaborate together. And one of the, the big things is that sometimes

15:20 - that then they're actually invited to professional learning days, so that that kind of real sense of belonging to the community helped build other capacities. but a lot of those kind of opportunities only happen with regular work at a particular school. And the relational work is particularly important, important when they're asked to teach out of field. So in primary that that looks like something,

15:49 - you're being asked to be the music specialist when really music is new specialization or, or art or something like that, that if you've got a already built relationships with students and staff, you can actually manage that more challenging teaching situation. And certainly in high school, it's quite common that you're teaching out a field, they want you there for the whole day. The teacher might only have three lines that day,

16:10 - so suddenly you're out there doing PE and you're going, heck. So it was, if you built the relationships, it was easier to manage that space. and, and Chloe was very interesting because when you look at identity, she had a very strong identity personally and identity, they talk about this personal identity, professional identity, and sometimes they can be at intention with each other.

16:34 - So she was a scientist, so she came as a mature age student into teaching. So she had a very strong identity as scientist, and she'd come into teaching because she had children. So she had, her identity was about parent scientist, and then she was trying to develop that teacher identity. And that only started to happen when she was getting regular work. In summary, the, the, relationships basically have many roles for early career casual teachers.

17:00 - Fundamentally, that's how they can get access to, schools and, and employment. But, but also one of the, one of the things that happens in, in Australia, we have teacher registration. And when they're, when you're an early career teacher, you start out on what's called provisional registration. So once again, you're not quite a teacher, you're just a provisional teacher. And then within the next three years you have to, you have three years to move to fully registered teacher.

17:28 - So casual teachers are actually in this very strange place. It's very hard to get that evidence. So if you've got strong relationships with the school, they might give you access to professional learning, and then you can actually get access to the resources on the, the website. So relationships with students, the core activity, and that's a real challenge for all early career teachers. so they're not, they're not that different from all early career teachers,

17:57 - except the complexity is if they're not getting regular employment at a school, then it's hard to build those really strong relationships with students and with colleagues. And, and one of the, the things that has come out of this sort of the implications really is that it initial teacher education providers such as the universities, we need to highlight the importance of developing relationships with students and, and when you are on your placements,

18:22 - because you, you know, if you're trying to get work. So we need to highlight that. interestingly, our university, we now do a graduate stay and I give, I give a whole session, which is always packed on casual teaching. because I think a lot of students know that they're going to be doing that, so they wanna know, how do I do this? Well, schools also need to be providing opportunities for their early career casual teachers to engage

18:49 - with mentors and, help build relationships. And we know that's complex because often professional learning days is a cost per person. And unless you're a regular teacher, you relief teacher, you're not going to be in there. But they could still do other things by maybe not giving them duty every single time they're there, like recess and lunchtime. So it's giving them opportunities to do that.

19:11 - But there is also a bigger picture here. the education department in Western Australia have, they've created these graduate modules. So once people have graduated as a teacher, they can go and do all these modules to help get full registration. And at the time of my study, it wasn't really obvious that a casual teacher could do that because you needed a department number and to get a department number, you had to be in an email, you had to be a full-time teacher.

19:39 - And so once again, they're sort of stuck on the periphery. And I actually rang them up and was talking to 'em. I said, they can, they can come to all of these, they just need to ring us up. And I went, it'd be nice if you told them that. And they've actually since changed the website. So it's more easily accessible for, early career teachers who are working as a casual. However, they still, it still seems a lot of early career casual teachers

20:03 - aren't aware that that's available. And so they don't know. And, and the schools generally will send an early career teacher to those modules, see, you need to do your graduate modules now here's the day off. Whereas the casual teachers, and that's the other thing, they have to be on the, during school holidays because otherwise they're giving up a day's work to do a module that may not actually get them more work

20:24 - and may not really lead to a lot.

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