Abstract

Maintaining the teacher workforce through recruitment of new teachers, or by retaining existing teachers, is high on the political agenda in the UK (House of Commons Education Committee, 2017). Furthermore, primary school teacher supply is of global concern (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation Institute for Statistics (UIS), 2016). Therefore, when preservice teachers make the decision to drop out of their teacher training programmes before completion this is worthy of further investigation. This mixed-methods institutional case study focussed on one English higher education institution’s Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) (Primary) teacher training programme to better understand patterns in enrolment, and the preservice teachers’ sense of attachment or detachment to it. The research questions were:
i. How and to what extent are gender, age and undergraduate degree classification associated with a successful PGCE (Primary) programme outcome?
ii. What is the lived experience of a group of student teachers enrolled on a PGCE (Primary) programme and how does this impact their sense of attachment to or detachment from the programme and to primary school teaching as a career?
As part of the mixed-methods approach, a quantitative methodology was adopted that explored institutional patterns of student teachers success in the gaining of qualified teacher status (QTS) and of programme dropout. Data were collected from five cohorts of student teachers (n=705) enrolled on the one-year PGCE (Primary) programme. Regression analysis revealed that statistically, male student teachers were 2.6 times more likely to drop out of the programme than females, and dropout became more likely with increasing age. However, despite the statistical significance, the practical significance of these findings was limited and there were groups of student teachers for whom the regression model did not fit.
Descriptive phenomenological analysis of participant interviews (n=8) revealed a complex social experience driven by the quality of relationships; the student teachers’ developing teacher identity, and the extent to which they could reconcile their individual identities and values. These findings led to a revised conceptual framework for the PGCE (Primary) experience that illuminated a discrete but transient PGCE (Primary) community of practice in which individual student teachers feel able to persist with their teacher training and enter a career in teaching or make the decision to drop out. There are implications for teacher training programme design and support mechanisms for student teachers.