Career-Long Growth - Enhancing Teacher Identity and Competence
OER 07/22 LEL - Building an Evidence-base to Support Teacher Growth: A Career-long Perspective (Phase II)
“…while there are many implementable policies and practices that policymakers, school leaders and educators can take that will enhance teacher well-being (TWB), it is worth bearing in mind that the absence of negative well-being does not equate to positive well-being, and vice versa. It is worth continually striving to seek out new methods of enhancing the well-being of our teachers who are caring for and nurturing the future of our communities, societies and nations” (p. 232).
Excerpt from Low, E. L., Goh, S.-E., Tan, J. S. Y., & Tam, J. C. P. (2024). Enabling factors to enhance teachers’ career-long well-being. In O.-S. Tan, E. L. Low, I. S. Caleon & E. L. Ng (Eds.), Enhancing holistic well-being of children and youth: Insights from Singapore education and research (pp. 221–235). Springer.
Project Team
PI: Professor Low Ee Ling, AFA and ELL, NIE
Co-PI: Dr Wong Hwei Ming, CRPP, NIE
Co-PI: Dr Goh Sao-Ee, CRO, MOE
Collaborators:
Mrs Chua-Lim Yen Ching, CEL, MOE
Mrs Tham Mun See, AST, MOE
Dr Tay May Yin, ELIS, MOE
Ms Heng Pei Yun, HR Group, MOE
Professor Alexander Yeung, Australian Catholic University, Australia
Prof Anne Lin Goodwin, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Dr Pan Qianqian, CRPP, NIE
Project Description
Why and how do teachers’ identity, competence and commitment differ across career stages? How can these be developed in order to both support teachers’ career-long professional growth and commitment to the profession? Building an Evidence-base to Support Teacher Growth: A Career-long Perspective (Phase II) seeks to answer such questions. Extending the findings from its Phase I, Phase II characterises the impact of cumulative and episodic experiences on local teachers’ career-long development and motivation across six career stages. The objectives of the project are (1) to compare and contrast the professional outcomes consisting of teacher identity, competence and commitment across different career stages; (2) to identify major factors and examine to what extent these factors affect the professional outcomes of different career stages; and (3) to understand how and why these professional outcomes may differ between the career stages. We will propose suggestions on how to strengthen the professional outcomes so that teachers may be supported and remain committed throughout their careers.
Project Implications
Findings from the study highlighted the importance of the need for teachers to be supported in their career-long development and commitment to the profession. As schools are complex ecosystems, creating supportive environments is essential to the positive development of teacher identity, competence and commitment, and this is likely to have a lasting impact on their careers. The preliminary quantitative findings surfaced important insights for policy, programmes and practice.
Insights for Policy:
- To build a highly competent teaching workforce, rigorous teacher preparation and career-long professional development is beneficial for all teachers, regardless of gender, years of teaching, levels of teaching and career tracks.
- To develop competent teachers, we need to build up our teachers’ sense of self-efficacy and confidence to teach well.
- To retain teachers in the profession career-long, we need to ensure that their motivations for entering teaching (e.g., their passion for their subject and for passing their knowledge on to students) is sustained. To do this, we need to develop an ecosystem that supports the growth of teacher resilience system-wide.
Insights for Programmes & Practice:
- Professional development focusing on developing competencies in Classroom Teaching has been found to be beneficial. Examples include:
- Connecting teaching to students’ prior knowledge
- Connecting teaching to real-life contexts
- Being able to design activities that meet students’ learning needs
- Being able to ask questions that can trigger students to think deeper and more critically
- A strong programme for professional development and an entire ecosystem designed to support the growth of teachers’ professional outcomes will help build teacher resilience system-wide.
Resources
Project website: https://teachergrowth.nie.edu.sg
Publications
- Low, E. L., Goh, S.-E., Tan, J. S. Y., & Tam, J. C. P. (2024). Enabling factors to enhance teachers’ career-long well-being. In O.-S. Tan, E. L. Low, I. S. Caleon & E. L. Ng (Eds.), Enhancing holistic well-being of children and youth: Insights from Singapore education and research (pp. 221–235). Springer.
- Low, E. L., Goh, S.-E. & Tan, J. S. Y. (2022). The future of work in education: Teachers’ professional commitment in a changing world. New England Journal of Public Policy, 34(1), 1–19.
Conferences
- Redesigning Pedagogy International Conference 2024
- American Educational Research Association 2024
- American Educational Research Association 2025 (submitted)