Monday 29 December 2008

Turning to teaching: gender and career choice

an article by Andrea Raggl and Geoff Troman (School of Education, Froebel College, Roehampton University) in British Journal of Sociology of Education Volume 29 Issue 6 (November 2008)

Abstract

As the largest public sector institution in the United Kingdom, education is a key site for studying the context of “choice” and changes in the identities of professional workers in contemporary society. Recruitment and retention problems in education have led to the creation of new routes into teaching to attract career changers from other professions and occupations. In this paper we focus on career changers within the Economic and Social Research Council project “Primary Teacher Identity, Commitment and Career in Performative School Cultures” who have entered teaching from other private sector occupations. The authors analyse these career changes in terms of “turning points” in the participants’ lives in order to assess the extent to which choices are “self-initiated”, “forced” or “structural”. They are interested in the basis on which these choices were made and the impact of gender on career decisions.

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