Vocational teachers in school settings: career pathways and motivations

Vocational programmes offered to school students form an essential segment of senior secondary education, providing opportunities for students to develop employability skills, complete their senior secondary certificate and gain credit towards a vocational qualification. While school systems are experiencing teacher shortages across the board, these are both acute and ongoing in vocational programmes in many countries and attracting and retaining vocational schoolteachers is a critical policy challenge. While career pathways, motivations and intentions, and job satisfaction for mainstream schoolteachers have been extensively studied there has been less research on vocational teachers, and very little on those teaching in a school setting. We sought to understand motivations for teaching, satisfaction and career pathways of teachers who teach Vocational Education and Training in schools (VET in schools) in Australia. This study employed structured interviews with nine VET teachers working within a secondary school setting. Self Determination Theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000b) was the analytical framework used to understand factors influencing their entry into teaching and engagement. We found commonalities with the research on attraction and retention into teaching more broadly, but identified additional specific factors shaping vocational teachers' career journeys and motivation. We identify implications for policy and practice to support the attraction, retention and career satisfaction of VET in schools teachers.