categories that referred to the interviewees’ future career decision and reasons for this decision. Future Career Decision consisted of categories of ECTs’ intentions to stay in the teaching profession or not and reasons for their opinion about future career intention.
Among the six interviewees, four of the interviewees wanted to stay in the teaching profession as a teacher for the next five years. The main reason to stay in the teaching profession was they loved teaching. One of the interviewees (T2) said, “teaching is one of the most important
jobs in the world”. T4 also said she will be “teaching a class. Definitely just the fact that I see the students change”. T4 said that teachers can see students changing and growing not only physically
but cognitively and emotionally. Sometimes students told them they, “love coming to school
because they are having fun” (T4). She added watching students’ change “moved my heart”.
Some days students’ behaviour made the interviewees’ days very challenging. However, the students’ behaviour did not seem to influence the intentions to stay in the teaching profession of the interviewees. They believed their teaching practice had become sharper through the early years of experience. Their ability to differentiate and behaviour management had grown as well. T1 understood how challenges to engage with inclusive practice affected teachers, and drained them so they left the teaching profession. However, T1 said the challenges of engaging with inclusive practice had not affected her career decision because she loved teaching and teaching was her
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From these findings, it is predicted that future career intentions that influence teachers are related to teacher resilience. Resilience refers to “the capacity to continue to ‘bounce back’, to recover strength or spirit quickly and efficiently in the face of adversity” (Gu & Day, 2007, p. 1302). Resilience helps ECTs adjust to stressful or negative events by applying environmental and/or personal resources when facing adversity. Further, resilience assists ECTs to deal with any fatigue from burnout and stress in relation to teaching (Bowles & Arnup, 2016; Gribbs & Miller, 2014).There were two interviewees who wanted to change their job in the next five years. This was because they were passionate about other things. One of the interviewees wants to stay in the profession but in a different position as a librarian. She said “I really enjoy doing library. I really
like it. I just enjoy it. …I really love reading and I love literature”. She also liked “having the opportunity to get to know every student in the school”.
Another interviewee had a “passion to share with people about how to have a relationship
with God and Jesus” (T3). He added “even though I’m very passionate about teaching, that [sharing God with people] would be a stronger passion than my teaching passion”. He had a lot of
wonderful times seeing people give their lives to Jesus and begin a relationship with God. He commented that would draw him out of teaching.
5.4 Chapter Summary
This chapter reported the process of the data analysis and the results of interviews
undertaken after the analysis of the survey. The data analysis was conducted using the grounded theory analysis process. This was because a grounded theory analysis process provided systematic process analysis for the six interviews. At the first level of analysis, open coding, data was broken down into line by line then coded. A total of 159 open codes were drawn. At the second level of analysis, axial codes, open codes were grouped into categories based on the similarity of open codes. A total of 15 categories were drawn. During the selective coding, the 15 categories were subsumed under one of the three themes: Teacher Variables, School Climate and Future Career Decision. The findings of the data analysis were explained based on the three themes. Inferences were also made while presenting the findings. In the next chapter, the meta-inferences of the findings from the survey and the interview in the current study will be discussed.
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Discussion
The current study examined ECTs’ experience in engagement with inclusive practice and the relationship between their intentions to engage with inclusive practice and to stay in the profession using a mixed-methods research design. The study explored to what extent and how variables such as attitudes towards inclusion, subjective norms, perceived behavioural control, and background information influenced ECTs’ intentions to engage with inclusive practice, and their future career intentions, within a framework of the Theory of Planned Behaviour (Ajzen & Fishbein, 2005). An underlying assumption of the current study was that the experience ECTs had in engaging with inclusive practice would influence their intentions to stay in the teaching profession.
According to the Theory of Planned Behaviour, one’s intention to perform a behaviour is formed through three related constructs: attitudes towards the certain behaviour, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control. These constructs are framed by background variables such as experience, education, and gender (Ajzen & Fishbein, 2005). To apply the Theory of Planned Behaviour in the current study, it was theorised that ECTs’ intentions to engage with inclusive practice are influenced by attitudes towards inclusion, subjective norms of significant others within a school, and perceived behavioural control. In addition, that ECTs’ intentions to stay in the teaching profession were influenced by attitudes towards teaching, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control. In the current study, attitudes towards teaching and subjective norms
regarding intentions to stay in the teaching profession were not included to examine ECTs’ future career intentions. This is because one of the foci of the study was examining the relationship between ECTs’ experience with inclusive practice and their intentions to stay in the teaching profession.
Background variables, identified through the review of the literature, included in the current study were: previous experience, successful completion of a unit of study in special and inclusive education undertaken at university, school support, and the number of years of teaching experience. Figure 6.1 is the theoretical framework presented in Figure 1.5 for better understanding of research questions. Based on the guidance of the research questions, how, and to what extent, ECTs’ experience with inclusive practice influenced their intentions to engage with inclusive practice and their intentions for their future career were examined. The research questions were formulated to undertake this examination:
1. What are the variables that affect ECTs’ intentions to engage with inclusive practice? 2. What background variables influence the attitudes towards inclusion, subjective
norms, and perceived behavioural control and in turn, affect the intentions of ECTs to engage with inclusive practice?
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In the previous two chapters, the data analyses of the survey and semi-structured interview were outlined. A total of 79 respondents completed the survey. Multiple regression and PROCESS were utilised for the survey data analysis. A total of six ECTs participated in the interviews. The interview data were analysed based on the analysis technique of grounded theory.In this chapter, the results from the survey and the interview of the current study will be discussed. When doing meta-inferences, the inferences obtained from the survey and interview results were integrated so that the researcher was able to obtain an overall conclusion (Teddlie & Tashakkori, 2009). While discussing the results, the existing literature in the topics will be addressed. The discussion will be triangulated with results from the survey and semi-structured interviews, and discussed in regards to the theoretical framework of the study – the Theory of Planned Behaviour. Finally, the results will be juxtaposed in regards to the existing literature.