21st century teachers: how non-traditional pre-service teachers navigate their initial experiences of contemporary classrooms

ABSTRACTIn the twenty-first century, teachers’ work has become more complex with high levels of accountability, increased bureaucratic responsibilities and unprecedented levels of public scrutiny. However, teaching fundamentally remains a caring profession, requiring well-developed social skills and emotional labour to successfully engage and motivate students. Teachers need resilience to thrive in these environments of intense and often conflicting pressures. Drawing on a transactional-ecological modelthis qualitative study explored the resilience and teacher identity development of a cohort of pre-service career-change teachers as they navigated their initial experiences in contemporary classrooms. The findings indicate that this cohort arrived to teacher education with teacher identities strongly aligned with a broad conceptualisation of care as active practice. This paper discusses how their identities and capacities for resilience were challenged and reviewed during their classroom experiences and th...