The Sustainability of Educators in the Teaching Profession

Dear Colleagues,

Sustaining educator growth and development is a phenomenon that plays out across the entire arc of a teaching career. Researchers are often interested in instructional interventions and pedagogical practices proven to support students' engagement and learning. And when educators demonstrate excellence in the classroom, they spotlight, and rightly so, the attributes of these practices. It is still equally important to consider how and why these practices are possible, for who, and under what schooling conditions these practices may be deepened and sustained over time.

For instance, a well-established evidence base has demonstrated that ethnoracially diverse educators can have a positive impact on student learning and school engagement, which is important for all students. At the same time, these educators often encounter barriers and challenges in a variety of school and professional spaces that threaten their retention and engagement with the teaching profession in the future. This means the teaching and learning experiences teachers encounter as they matriculate along the educator development continuum matters. The effective instructional practices of teachers do not occur in a vacuum, and are not likely to take place consistently, without leadership and structures in place to ensure teaching is a sustainable profession.

Professional sustainability starts at the very beginning of the continuum as teachers are being equipped to become effective instructional leaders. This requires nuanced recruitment strategies, financial and academic incentives, and tailored program designs that center and accelerate teacher engagement and learning. Once educators are placed in schools as instructional leaders, they assume the task of implementing their preparation effectively in specific school contexts. At the placement phase, human resource development, induction, mentorship, and professional development can play vital roles in molding teachers’ effective instructional practices for all students, including culturally, linguistically and ethnoracially diverse students. With this initial foundation, supporting educators to have positive and sustained long-term impact on students, schools, and communities paves the way for professional sustainability.

To investigate the sustainability of educators in the teaching profession, this Education Sciences special issue is designed to feature conceptual, empirical, and research literature review articles representing a range of theoretical and methodological approaches to explore evidence-based problems and solutions related to educator sustainability across varying programmatic, school, district, state, and national contexts. Potential topics may include the following:

• the preparation supports, related to recruitment and program design, that make the teaching profession academically and financially accessible
• the placement supports, related to induction, mentorship, and professional development, that increase the likelihood of teachers’ instructional effectiveness
• the school-based challenges teachers face and the types of diverse restorative teaching and learning interventions designed to mitigate them
• the wellness, restoration and/or social development supports teachers need for professional sustainability and growth
• the role of cultural, interfaith and/or religious institutions in supporting mental and social health for sustainability in the teaching profession
• the differentiated types of teaching and learning practices that advance professional sustainability for ethnoracially diverse educators
• the sustainability of high-quality instructional practices by educators over time in light of the intellectual, emotional, and physical demands of the work
• the school and working conditions, including leadership practices, tailored to augment teaching sustainability
• the research studies from other service professions, such as medicine, nursing, and social work, related to teaching and learning designs that support professional sustainability
• the design of restorative educator development and practitioner research networks that better equip and sustain future and current educators
• the policies, be they financial, educator learning and development, infrastructure, and/or research focused, that support educator sustainability in the profession with particular attention to implementation approaches and scalability

Dr. Conra D. Gist
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Education Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• professional sustainability
• educator development
• educator preparation programs
• ethnoracially diverse educators
• educator wellness and mental health
• diverse teaching practices