Mature age professionals: Factors influencing their decision to make a career change into teaching

Abstract

This paper presents the early findings from a study that addresses the topic of mature age professionals making a career change into the secondary teaching profession by undertaking a postgraduate coursework initial teacher education program. The paper specifically addresses the factors that affect the decision for mature age professionals to make such a change. Education systems worldwide are encouraging mature age professionals to make a career change into secondary teaching to fill teacher shortages in specialist subject areas. However, the literature shows there has been little recent research about this aspect of mature age career changers. The study on which this paper is based utilised a qualitative, narrative inquiry approach to explore the stories of mature age professionals who were making a career change into teaching. The paper focuses on the resonances across the stories of 17 mature age professionals as they outline the factors that influenced their decision to make a career change into teaching. The findings of this study would be of interest to educational policy makers and academic administrators responsible for the recruitment of mature age professionals into secondary teaching.