Chapter 7: Findings and Discussion (II): Factors Helping to Sustain Teachers Career-Long in the Teaching Profession

As discussed in Chapter 6, the teachers’ perceptions of the ways in which policy since 1988 had affected their daily work largely confirmed the findings of a range of other researchers, discussed in Chapters 1 and 2. The teachers’ accounts of how and why they had managed to stay in the profession long-term were, however, enlightening and original. These findings offer new understandings of how this generation of teachers navigated the changes. They had found ways to stay in control of, and motivated in, their work.

The teachers’ accounts reflected the sense they made of the combination of factors that had helped them to sustain their career-long commitment to teaching. It was possible to identify the following as key factors: