Chapter 14: Looking Ahead: The Future of the Teaching Profession

In recent years, news headlines and scholarship about the teacher shortage crisis have become increasingly commonplace (Edelman, 2021; Garcia & Weiss, 2019). These shortages have been fueled by dramatic enrollment declines in teacher preparation programs across the nation (Partelow, 2019) and large concentrations of teacher attrition (Carver-Thomas & Darling-Hammond, 2017). While some critics argue against the existence of a nationwide teacher shortage (Cowan et al., 2016), less controversial is the robust body of evidence that suggests, for teachers of certain subject matters/ specialty areas (e.g., science, technology, engineering, math, special education) or contexts (e.g., high poverty and low performing districts; Partelow, 2019; Tran & Smith, 2020), the presence of the shortage problem is less disputable.