Making teaching more attractive: Ways forward for policy, in research and for practice

Addressing teacher supply has been a persistent and longstanding concern across diverse education systems, spanning both high-income and lower-income countries. Over the past 50 years, the pages of the British Educational Research Journal (BERJ) have repeatedly returned to questions of teacher recruitment, retention and, crucially, the status of the profession. As we mark the 50th anniversary of BERA's flagship journal, it is both timely and fitting that this special issue revisits one of the most enduring challenges in education policy and research: how to make teaching a more attractive profession and, in doing so, strengthen the status of teachers and teaching. Articles in the special issue come from scholars working across a wide range of national contexts and disciplinary traditions. This reflects the complexity of the issue, encompassing professional identity, career motivation, leadership, working conditions, equity, governance and political priorities. Collectively, the articles offer conceptual innovation, empirical depth and geographic breadth. Five of the papers originate from projects funded between 2022 and 2026 as part of the ESRC Education Research Programme on the theme of teacher recruitment, retention and development across the four nations and jurisdictions of the United Kingdom. The special issue has deliberately broadened the analytical lens by providing grounded and contextually sensitive insights into the challenges facing the profession beyond Anglophone education systems. Individual contributions draw on research conducted in England and Wales, Finland, Malawi, Thailand, Uruguay and Australia. Together they illuminate the complex interplay between motivation, status, professional learning, leadership pathways, system structures, organisational conditions and policy-driven reform. Across the contributions, a central message emerges: the challenge of teacher supply is structural. It is not only about attracting more individuals into classrooms but also about how teaching is imagined, structured, governed and sustained across the life course of a career. The papers can be broadly grouped into four inter-related themes. Many of these issues are not specific to any region yet looking across contexts provides new insights and interpretations of the complexities involved. Attracting new entrants into the profession remains a key concern across many education systems. Two papers in this section explore motivations and career choices from the perspective of potential teachers. Drawing on empirical data from a longitudinal in-depth study, Emily MacLeod examines how young people's aspirations to teach develop and change from childhood into early adulthood. Her analysis highlights the importance of two interrelated concepts—status, understood as social respect, and safety, understood as minimal risk in shaping how teaching is perceived as a career. How young people balance these two concerns determines the career choices they ultimately make. MacLeod argues that these factors may be more relevant to understanding who does or does not decide to teach than the reasons commonly cited by teachers who leave the profession. Complementing this perspective, Sophie Thompson-Lee, Rebecca Snell, Hui Wang and Robert Klassen analyse survey data from 16- to 19-year-olds in nine schools and colleges across England and Wales to explore emerging career intentions. Their findings indicate that although many students remain uncertain about their future careers, teaching ranks among the least preferred options, particularly for male students, students from minority ethnic backgrounds and those interested in STEM-related fields. Although participants recognised teaching's contribution to social value, many sought careers offering greater intellectual excitement, innovation and alignment with personal interests. The authors suggest that recruitment strategies could more effectively highlight the profession's opportunities for intellectual and creative engagement. The two other papers in this group address policymakers' interests in increasing teacher supply. The first, by Sam Sims, Harriet Lowes-Belk and Clare Routledge, synthesises evidence from survey experiments using hypothetical job offers to clarify the relative importance of different factors influencing job choice. Their findings suggest that enhanced professional development opportunities, flexible working arrangements, shifts in compensation from pensions towards salary and reductions in the working week could all contribute to strengthening teacher supply. Peter Mtika and Edward Sosu's study of teacher supply in Malawi provides a contrasting perspective using semi-structured interviews with 16 practitioners and policymakers. The study shows that teacher shortages can co-exist with surplus qualified teachers remaining unemployed. Financial constraints on government spending, particularly debt repayments and limits on public sector wage bills, restrict the recruitment of new teachers. At the same time, limited infrastructure in rural areas discourages teachers from taking up posts there. These findings challenge the assumption that teacher shortages are primarily a supply problem and show how global economic pressures can shape national teacher labour markets. These papers remind us that decisions about entering teaching are shaped by identity, the status of the profession and the wider job market. Recruiting teachers is only part of the challenge. Retention and long-term career sustainability depend heavily on teachers' working conditions and well-being. Several papers in this issue examine how education policies shape the environments in which teachers work. One paper from Uruguay by Cindy Mels, Solange De Lema and Marta Irigoyen uses a combination of survey and focus group data to examine teacher well-being within a system where multiple job holding is structurally embedded. Their analysis identifies organisational support and a strong sense of school connectedness as protective factors in mitigating stress. The findings point to the importance of systemic reforms in addressing workload, remuneration and opportunities for collaboration. Evidence from Thailand offers a different perspective but raises related concerns. Thornchanok Uerpairojkit interviewed 18 teachers to examine how their experiences of system reform led to a sense of deprofessionalisation. Although the reforms were designed to strengthen professionalism, they had the opposite effect by increasing pressures from bureaucratic control and strong expectations to report upwards through hierarchical systems. This has contributed to feelings of burnout and distance from their professional identity. Two papers look closely at the current policy framework for teacher development in England. Amanda Nuttall, Ed Podesta, Aimee Quickfall and Megan Stephenson examine the idea of the ‘golden thread’. This is intended to link initial teacher education, early career support and later professional qualifications into a single pathway. Drawing on evidence from teachers at different career stages, the authors argue that in practice this framework can encourage a narrow and compliance-driven approach to professional learning. They suggest that teacher development should instead recognise the complexity of teaching and support collaboration, reflection and professional judgement across the whole career. Mark Innes, Elizabeth Gregory and Louisa Dawes analyse the kinds of knowledge, attitudes and behaviours promoted on the National Professional Qualifications (NPQs). They argue that the current frameworks place strong emphasis on prescribed behaviours and not enough on intellectual engagement and critical reflection. They suggest that strengthening these aspects of professional learning could help make teaching a more attractive long-term career. These papers show that working conditions and structural reforms play a central role in shaping the attractiveness of teaching as a profession. The cases of England and Thailand, in particular, illustrate how centralised policy frameworks and accountability regimes can reshape professional life in ways that may ultimately undermine its appeal. How teachers continue to learn and develop throughout their careers plays a crucial role in whether they remain in the profession. The papers in this section explore the contribution professional development can make in deepening professional knowledge, strengthening collaboration and sustaining a sense of professional agency. They also highlight the role research can play in promoting critical reflection on the contexts in which teachers work. Using a case study approach, Alexandra Anton, Juli-Anna Aerila and Elizabeth Steed examine the support available to teams of early childhood educators in Finland working with children from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. The study highlights the importance of both institutional support and opportunities for educators to reflect collectively on their practice. Collaborative reflection enables teachers to surface the complex challenges they encounter in increasingly diverse classrooms and encourages a shift in focus towards educational practices that promote equity and justice for all learners. A second paper reflects on a 15-year programme of research on Quality Teaching Rounds (QTR), an approach to professional learning centred on structured lesson observations and collaborative reflection. Jennifer Gore, Sally Patfield, Leanne Fray, Andrew Miller, Brooke Rosser and Matthew Harper argue that by recognising the realities of classroom life, clarifying what constitutes quality teaching, and treating teaching as intellectual work, QTR helps to foster purposeful and respectful dialogue about pedagogy. Such collaborative professional learning is presented as central to building a strong sense of professionalism and sustaining teachers' engagement with their work. Two further papers start from a broader analysis of the conditions that shape teachers' professional lives. Using survey data and a series of focus group discussions on digital technology use in the classroom, John Gordon, Kristi Nourie and Helen Steward find that although EdTech is often promoted as a solution to systemic challenges, its design and implementation can intensify workload and constrain professional autonomy. They call for policy frameworks that support teacher autonomy and informed choice in technology use. Based on case studies conducted in four primary and three secondary schools, Steph Ainsworth, Carrie Adamson, Claire Agius and Jez Oldfield outline a participatory process that enables staff to reflect on the changes they can make to support teacher resilience in their context. The study suggests that by working together, schools can take meaningful steps to improve working conditions and support teacher well-being, even within the constraints of wider policy pressures. In their different ways, these contributions highlight the importance of professional environments that support reflection, collaboration, autonomy and resilience, conditions that appear central to sustaining teachers' professional learning and long-term commitment to the profession. Clear and equitable career progression pathways have been identified as an important factor in enhancing the attractiveness of teaching. Research by Antonina Tereshchenko, Feyisa Demie, Stephen Gorard, Yiyang Gao, Beng Huat See and Nadia Siddiqui draws on semi-structured interviews with school teachers to identify persistent barriers to career progression. Despite improvements in the recruitment of minority ethnic teachers, the study identifies continuing obstacles to advancement, particularly for Black teachers. Representation in leadership emerges as a critical factor for retention, highlighting the need for structural changes that enable meaningful and equitable career progression within the profession for minority ethnic teachers. Attention then turns to leadership pathways. As part of a wider mixed methods study on succession planning for headship in the United Kingdom, Toby Greany, Pat Thomson, Tom Perry and Mike Collins examine how the increasingly fragmented school system in England affects routes into headship. Their analysis highlights a lack of system capacity to address complex challenges such as increasing diversity within the leadership pool and responding to headteacher workload and retention pressures. These issues represent significant barriers to building a sustainable leadership workforce. The study suggests that the more difficult the headship role becomes, the number of applicants declines, potentially leaving less experienced leaders facing increasingly complex responsibilities. The authors therefore argue for a shift in national policy towards supporting locally responsive strategies that strengthen professional networks and broaden the resources available to those considering leadership roles. The papers in this special issue show that making teaching an attractive profession requires more than recruitment campaigns or small policy changes. It involves recognising teaching as an intellectually demanding and socially valuable profession, supporting teachers' learning and professional development throughout their careers, improving working conditions, creating fair opportunities for progression and addressing wider financial and policy constraints that shape the profession. If teaching is to become and remain an attractive profession, policy and research must recognise the complexity of teachers' work and the many factors that shape teachers' professional lives. The challenge is not only to solve teacher shortages but also to rethink the profession in ways that enable teachers to truly grow and thrive in their work, not merely cope with the conditions they are offered. Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study.