Early career teachers' negotiation of a marketised hierarchy of schools: From the safety net to the high wire

Abstract

The secondary schooling market in New South Wales (NSW), Australia, is complex and diverse, with the encouragement and growth of ‘choice’ having a range of impacts for students, parents, and schools. This dissertation examines the experience of teachers, who enter into an increasingly differentiated system and must make choices about where and how they might work within it. Taking a qualitative multi-case approach, the thesis explores interviews with nine early career teachers as well as relevant figures surrounding them: a colleague; and a friend, partner, or family member. The coverage that this design enables has allowed the development of a more nuanced understanding of participants' perspectives on their work as well as the institutional contexts within which it takes place. Teacher participants were drawn from a range of contrasting schooling sites, from the high wire schools of the elite to those of the residualised safety net, the latter enrolling students who are often experiencing significant disadvantage; the study accordingly explores contexts within both public and private sectors. The work of Bourdieu, and in particular the concepts of habitus and field, are drawn upon to assist in understanding the work of these teachers across this market spectrum. It is argued that context is central to the experience and work of teachers, and yet more than this, that teachers’ own background will mediate either convergence or collision in the dynamic and ever-developing relationship between teacher and school. In doing so the study contributes new knowledge regarding the operation of dis/advantage in and through schools, and how the school system is currently structured to exacerbate such divisions. It also contributes a fresh and new perspective on the sustainability and efficacy of market-oriented schooling systems, such as that currently operating in NSW, Australia, through a thorough and nuanced exploration of teachers’ experiences within it.