Being a second-career teacher: insights from the Troops to Teachers Initial Teacher Education programme in England

In 2012, the UK Troops to Teachers (TtT) initial teacher education (ITE) programme was introduced by the UK government as part of plans to solve the joint problems of diminishing teacher recruitment and retention and to provide ex-service personnel with new career options. This paper presents findings from a Longitudinal Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (LIPA) where five participants describe their experiences of that route into secondary school teaching. Data were gathered using semi-structured interviews at three time-points; during the two-year course and at the end of the Newly Qualified Teacher (NQT) year, in order to facilitate a deep description and offer a nuanced account of participants’ perspectives. The study builds on previous research, which found that the anxiety caused by returning to novice status from the position of expert was substantial, and the psychic (intrinsic) rewards of teaching enabled participants to remain in the profession when faced with other challenges, most notably workload and behaviour management. The study finds little evidence that having a military background had prepared participants to cope with the demands of becoming a teacher any better than other second-career or traditional entry teachers. This paper concludes that the particular needs of second-career teachers more widely need to be openly discussed during their ITE programme in order to enable them to prepare for the challenges they will inevitably face.