Developing Teachers: A Necessary Condition for Quality Retention

A special issue of Education Sciences (ISSN 2227-7102).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 May 2025) | Viewed by 2503

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Institute of Education, University College London, 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AL, UK
Interests: teacher professional learning and development; school leadership; school improvement; educational change

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Guest Editor
Faculty of Education, University of Warsaw, PL-02-089 Warszawa, Poland
Interests: teachers’ professionalism and ethics; educational leadership and school development; teacher education and teache education policies in Europe

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue provides an exciting opportunity for the global research community to submit timely, high-quality and original papers that aim to advance the theoretical and empirical knowledge base on teacher learning, professional development, and retention. timely high-quality research findings. 

Building and sustaining the quality of teachers is not only an agenda for the future (Day, 2017; Madalińska-Michalak, 2023), but equally importantly, for the wellbeing, learning and achievement of the children who attend schools today. A central task for all concerned with enhancing quality and standards in schools is not only to have a better understanding of what influences teachers’ quality over the course of a career, but also to identify the means through which the necessary teacher quality can be nurtured in the contexts in which they work. Promoting and cultivating healthy individual and collective learning and achievement cultures in schools is essential to how teachers perceive themselves as professionals. 

The question of how to retain the hearts, minds and effectiveness of teachers who work in intellectually, emotionally and physically challenging places called ‘school’ (Goodlad, 2004) has been a subject of contemplation across various countries for many years. In essence, this is a quality retention question (as opposed to teachers’ physical retention). In confronting this question, we encounter more fundamental issues of what constitutes teacher learning and professional development, why teacher learning and development matters to retention, and what schools and systems can do to enable them to learn to live new lives in which they are able to sustain their capacity to teach to their best over time. 

We welcome submissions of papers firmly grounded in original empirical investigations. They may represent a variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives and approaches and explore a wide range of issues and topics relevant to teacher professional development and retention. 

Thank you for considering this invitation, and we look forward to your valuable contributions to this vital discourse. 

Prof. Dr. Qing Gu
Prof. Dr. Joanna Madalińska-Michalak
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

  • teacher professional development
  • teacher learning
  • teacher retention
  • teacher quality
  • teacher change

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

23 pages, 3569 KB  
Article
Building Personal Resources for Professional Lives: Pre-Service Teachers’ Experiences of Professional Learning Communities
by Sue Duchesne, Saskia Ebejer and Noelene Weatherby-Fell
Educ. Sci. 2025, 15(10), 1288; https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci15101288 - 29 Sep 2025
Viewed by 320
Abstract
Initial teacher education is an important contributor to teacher retention through teachers’ identity and their resilience in teaching. Relationships are key elements of teachers’ resilience and identity formation. During teacher education, professional learning communities can build these relationships and dispositions that support pre-service [...] Read more.
Initial teacher education is an important contributor to teacher retention through teachers’ identity and their resilience in teaching. Relationships are key elements of teachers’ resilience and identity formation. During teacher education, professional learning communities can build these relationships and dispositions that support pre-service teachers’ persistence during challenges they encounter professionally and as students during their teacher education program. While previous research has shown the value of learning communities in professional experience in teacher education, the effects of a learning community approach to the delivery of an entire teacher education program has not previously been examined. A professional learning community approach to delivery of a postgraduate initial teacher education program was designed and has been implemented at regional campuses of an Australian university since 2018. This interpretivist study evaluated the contribution of the program to pre-service teachers’ personal resources for their professional lives as teachers. Focus groups were held with all students enrolled in the regional program in 2018 and 2021, and self-selected alumni of the program in 2022, as well as four teacher educators involved in delivering the regional program in 2021 and 2022. A thematic approach was employed to analyze the transcripts. The professional learning communities built a number of resources for teaching, including relational resilience in the form of strong relationships that offered support during the program, teacher education student engagement, and teacher identity. In the process, the learners obtained skills and dispositions that would equip them to continue to work in professional learning communities during their teaching careers. The findings highlight the importance of relationships in teacher education and have implications for the design of initial teacher education programs for teacher retention. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Developing Teachers: A Necessary Condition for Quality Retention)
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24 pages, 432 KB  
Article
Developing Pre-Service Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge: Lessons from a Science Methods Class
by Dalila Dragnić-Cindrić and Janice L. Anderson
Educ. Sci. 2025, 15(7), 860; https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci15070860 - 4 Jul 2025
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1563
Abstract
A citizen’s ability to thrive in today’s technologically advanced society necessitates robust and nimble scientific literacy. The development of such literacy is rooted in science instruction that engages students with appropriate cognitive tools that enable active knowledge construction through scientific practices. One such [...] Read more.
A citizen’s ability to thrive in today’s technologically advanced society necessitates robust and nimble scientific literacy. The development of such literacy is rooted in science instruction that engages students with appropriate cognitive tools that enable active knowledge construction through scientific practices. One such instructional approach with proven positive science learning outcomes is project-based learning. However, little is known about future teachers’ takeaways from participation in project-based learning science methods courses and how those takeaways connect to teachers’ developing pedagogical content knowledge. In this qualitative study, we examined pre-service teachers’ end-of-semester reflective blogs and identified the main themes and connections to the five dimensions of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). Across three cohorts of pre-service science teachers, we found nine common themes connected to the four dimensions of PCK that involve teachers’ orientations towards science teaching, their knowledge of science curricula, instructional strategies, and students’ understanding of science. We found no prominent connections to the dimension that emphasizes a teacher’s knowledge of the scientific literacy assessment. These findings suggest the asymmetrical development of pre-service teachers’ PCK. Teacher educators should explicitly address the scientific literacy assessment and support pre-service teachers as they develop their knowledge of it. We discuss additional implications for research and practice. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Developing Teachers: A Necessary Condition for Quality Retention)
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