Supportive School Workplaces for Beginning Teachers' Motivations and Career Satisfaction^*

We pay tribute to the work and influence of our dear friend and colleague Professor Stuart A. Karabenick, in particular his research and commitment to supporting teachers' engagement and positive development during their career. His interest in teacher professional learning and development grew from a wellspring of understanding of how people seek out help and advice in pursuit of personal and professional growth in particular contexts.

Supporting and sustaining positively motivated teachers is important for themselves and their students. A burgeoning literature has begun to establish the importance of teachers' motivations and motivational beliefs for their professional practice and well-being. In our FIT-Choice (Factors Influencing Teaching Choice; www.fitchoice.org) continuing program of research, we have found that teachers' motivations to teach affect outcomes including their early career professional engagement and career development aspirations, as well as positive and negative dimensions of teaching style (Richardson & Watt, 2014). An open question is whether and how beginning teachers' initially positive motivations and career satisfaction may change, dependent on their early career experiences. Our longitudinal data enable us to examine relations between beginning teachers' experienced excessive demands versus supportive aspects of their school workplace environments, with their potential evolution. Little is known about their malleability or response to early career school contexts. We examine how initial motivations and career satisfaction change from entry to teacher education until early career teaching, and relations with experienced excessive demands, alongside school context factors that should support teachers' positive motivations and satisfaction. Against a political backdrop of concern regarding teacher attrition and burnout in many countries including Australia, the role of school environment demands and supports is an important question, toward influencing and potentially modifying beginning teachers' motivations to teach and career satisfaction.