Factors Influencing the Professional Employment of Experienced Educated Teachers
Creators: name: Machuk, Yvonne
Publisher: name: Graduate Studies
Year: 2016
Subjects: subject: Education--Teacher Training
subject: Immigrant
subject: Teachers

description: Many experienced, internationally educated teachers (IETs) come to Alberta and other parts of Canada each year intending to rejoin their chosen profession of teaching. This study examined the factors that may influence their success of attaining employment as teachers in Alberta. The study employed mixed methods formulated as a sequential explanatory research design. The data collection was conducted utilizing questionnaires and semi-structured interviews with a range of stakeholders. Web-based questionnaires were conducted with participants in a university transition program in a university in Western Canada. This program was designed to facilitate the re-accreditation and integration of IETs into the Alberta teaching force. This program also established a practicum for IETs to be paired with Alberta teachers (referred to as cooperating or mentor teachers) who received IETs into their classrooms so that IETs were able to experience first-hand the realities of teaching in Alberta. Web-based questionnaires were also conducted with mentor teachers. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with stakeholders involved with the transition program: IETs, Alberta mentor teachers, school principals, university instructors in the transition program, a university professor charged with liaison responsibilities with government, Alberta Education personnel, a representative of the Alberta Teachers’ Association, and school district human resources personnel. The major themes to emerge from the data were: • difference and diversity in many contexts • philosophy of teaching and learning • language issues • mentorship and the practicum • roles and expectations • fear of the unknown. The major finding of the study revealed that all stakeholders perceived IETs as having the potential to enrich the teaching and learning context in Alberta but that challenges and barriers still exist for IETs in their search for employment as teachers in Alberta. Findings suggested that IETs’ self-efficacy may be eroded during the practicum experience and that covert issues of racism and discrimination may be creating a situation that has implications for social injustice within Alberta schools. A new model, the Internship Model for IETs, emerged from the findings. This model articulates a new approach to the practicum for IETs that presents a more dignified and respectful orientation for the learning experience for IETs. It is founded on collegial, peer relationships with mentor teachers which is in contrast with current student teaching experiences that favour a mentor-protégé model, a model which has the potential to belittle or ignore the wealth of experience and expertise IETs bring with them to the role. The model describes a new conceptualisation of the roles of each of the major stakeholders – government, the university transition program, and school districts – in the development of a differently configured field experience for IETs.