The TeachersCareers had four objectives: [1] to explain the nature of teacher policy over the last thirty years in different educational systems (England and France); [2] to understand the changing status of the teaching profession and its impact on the diversification of the teaching workforce; [3] to analyse the processes by which teachers are allocated into increasingly diverse working and professional conditions; and [4] to model and predict teacher attrition and migration within a common but differentiated multilevel framework.
Regarding [1], we found empirical support for EU teacher policy as a bridging issue field, characterised by relatively slow and non-linear change, and demonstrate the elaboration of issue framings and institutional infrastructure, as well as the mobilisation of actors and networks, since the mid-2000s (Sorensen & Dumay, 2024). We also demonstrated the limited capacity of teacher unions and professional associations in this field despite their intensified activities (Sorensen & Dumay, 2023), which contrasts with the increased regulatory capacity of the EC based on the EU Semester. At the domestic level, we found highly contrasted trajectories of teacher policies in England and in France. England has since the mid-1980s undergone a process of de-regulation and increased marketisation under a strong neo-liberal logic that has been largely triggered by the state (Helgetun & Dumay, 2021), while in France, teacher policies follow a neo-statist path characterised by the harmonization of training structures and the strengthened protection of the state-regulated internal labour market and teachers’ careers (Pons, 2021).
Regarding [2], we compared evolutions in internal and external forms of employment flexibilisation in both systems from 2005 to 2020. We found in England that the internal flexibility is more pervasive than any forms of external flexibility (Mathou et al, 2022, 2023a). We also demonstrated that the development of internal and external forms of flexibilization reflects distinct organisational and social dynamics, which have important implications for educational inequalities. Although the external flexibilisation is low on average, we found it is prevalent in low SES schools, or in under-performing schools having been forced to convert as academies. In contrast, we also found that hiring teachers working part-time is much more common in high SES schools and converter academies which indicates more voluntary forms of flexibilisation. For France, we demonstrated the strong development of external flexibilisation of teacher employment relations (e.g. contract teachers) in line with the hypothesis of dualisation of the employment regime (Bertron et al, 2023; Dumay, 2024). We also found that teachers employed on the basis of non-standard employment relations have been progressively desegregated over time, with strong implications for the status of the teaching profession and the quality of teaching on average.
Regarding [3] and [4], we demonstrated, in England, the striking fragmentation in career types and forms of commitment that we can directly relate to teacher policies in terms of the fragmentation of labour markets, the flexibilisation of work conditions, and the multiplication of teacher training models (Mathou et al, 2023b). In France, analyses indicated the rising precariousness of employment linked to the developing dualisation and the gradual destandardization of employment relations and work conditions (Bertron et al., 2023).
