Abstract
This study aims to clarify the challenges faced by returning female teachers regarding teaching-career development, and how to support such development. The author, a former teacher, conducted in-depth conversations with a female teacher who had returned to a teaching position and enrolled in a graduate school program for teacher education. In-depth conversations produced co-constructed narratives. An analysis of the narratives indicated that the returning female teacher faced challenges associated with returning to work and rebuilding her career. She first chose to work as an adjunct instructor because of having left her former full-time teaching position. However, the participant felt dissatisfied and experienced a conflict between her initial decision to return in an adjunct teaching position and her desire to return to work as a full-time teacher. In addition, because there were no teachers with similar career experiences with whom she could discuss this issue in her workplace, she had no opportunity to discuss the options. Consequently, she self-regulated her sense of dissatisfaction by deciding not to think about opportunities to develop her teaching abilities. This “self-handicapping” resulted in her having low motivation to pursue career development after returning to teaching. The analysis also indicated that the participant’s experience in the graduate-level teacher education program enabled her to consider an alternative role, namely as a coordinator to facilitate her colleagues’ ongoing teacher development. This suggests that a graduate-level teacher education program can offer valuable career development opportunities by supporting the professional development of a returning teacher.
