Casual Beginning Teachers: Who Cares?

Abstract

This paper reports findings of a study on recent UNE graduates from a range of Primary and Secondary initial teacher education programs who are employed as casual beginning teachers and, specifically, their lived experiences. There are some positives, for example, lifestyle flexibility but mostly it's about on-going struggle to maintain personal motivation and well being in the face of unpredictable and transient teaching assignments, low professional status and negligible professional development and support. Given the increasing casualisation of teaching, the proportion of early career teachers leaving the profession and the need for better classroom pedagogy, there are important messages here for both employers and university teacher educators.