Teacher Development

An international journal of teachers professional development

ISSN: 1366-4530 (Print) 1747-5120 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rtde20

Early career teacher attrition: new thoughts on an

intractable problem
Andrea Gallant & Philip Riley
To cite this article: Andrea Gallant & Philip Riley (2014) Early career teacher attrition:
new thoughts on an intractable problem, Teacher Development, 18:4, 562-580, DOI:
10.1080/13664530.2014.945129
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13664530.2014.945129

Published online: 18 Aug 2014.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 581

View related articles

View Crossmark data

Citing articles: 2 View citing articles

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rtde20
Download by: [RMIT University Library]

Date: 06 July 2016, At: 22:58

Teacher Development, 2014

Vol. 18, No. 4, 562580, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13664530.2014.945129

Early career teacher attrition: new thoughts on an intractable

problem
Andrea Gallanta* and Philip Rileyb*
a

School of Education, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia; bFaculty of Arts and

Education, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, Australia

Downloaded by [RMIT University Library] at 22:58 06 July 2016

(Received 26 March 2012; nal version received 9 June 2013)

Early career exit from teaching has reached epidemic proportions and appears
intractable. Previous attempts to nd solutions are yet to make much of an inroad.
The aim of the research was to discover what nine beginning teachers required to
remain in the classroom, by adopting a phenomenological approach. The authors
identied participants common experiences through semi-structured interviews
and unprompted written narratives. Data were examined for trustworthiness by
reference to the literature. Key words from the narratives were synonyms, or
broadly synonymous with, optimism, arrested development or disillusionment.
The process of leaving involved entry, characterised by optimism; early
experiences, characterised by arrested development; pre-exit, characterised by
disillusionment; and exit.
Keywords: early career teachers; attrition; phenomenology; arrested development

Early career exit from teaching has reached epidemic proportions (Ewing and
Manuel 2005). Our interest in the phenomenon was sparked by the similarity in
attrition rates between three continents. In recent years nearly half the graduating
teachers in North America (Centre for Innovative Thought 2006; Clandinin,
Downey, and Huber 2009), the UK (Rudow 1999), Europe and Hong Kong
(Kyriacou 2001; Santavirta, Solovieva, and Theorell 2007) and Australia (Ewing
and Manuel 2005; Riley 2011; Skilbeck and Connell 2003) ll positions vacated by
teachers who have left with less than ve years experience. While there is some
localised variation in attrition rates, particularly in Canada, in general the rate of loss
to the profession in many countries is around 4050% over the ve years post entry.
On current trends, nearly one in every two of these new teachers will also follow
their predecessors out of the profession in relatively quick time (Ravitch 2011).
A number of reasons for high levels of attrition have been provided. One of the
most common arguments is poor teacher education (National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education 201012; Skilbeck and Connell 2003). However, these
reports come mainly from the US and may mean that the problem of pre-service
education is only an issue there. Others include: burnout (Goddard and Goddard
2006; Korthagen 2004; Maslach 2003; Maslach and Leiter 2008); lack of support
for new teachers (Centre for Innovative Thought 2006), and working conditions
(Cochran-Smith and Zeichner 2005). Working conditions tend to be further broken
*Corresponding authors. Emails: andrea.gallant@deakin.edu.au, philip.riley@acu.edu.au
2014 Teacher Development

Downloaded by [RMIT University Library] at 22:58 06 July 2016

Teacher Development

563

down to discipline issues, lack of administrative support and negative school

cultures (Ewing and Manuel 2005). In reviewing this literature, two issues emerged
for us. First, the similarity in patterns of attrition across multiple continents, cultures
and teacher education programs suggests that the process of becoming a teacher,
teaching and choosing to continue or leave needed to be investigated more holistically. Second, previous attempts to identify key issues and offer solutions to the
problem are yet to make much of an inroad. A more fruitful line of enquiry may be
to examine factors related to the human condition, such as identity formation and
maintenance as a teacher. Some recent studies are beginning to move in this direction (Beauchamp and Thomas 2009; Devos 2010; Hamman et al. 2010; Hochstetler
2011; Hong 2010; OConnor 2008).
In this article we examine attrition from a more holistic perspective. Buchanan
(2009) and Day and Gu (2009) have argued the issues surrounding attrition have
been under-problematised, suggesting that there may be other key drivers yet to be
identied. Manuel and Hughes (2006, 6) made the point that attrition is not just
about nding replacements, but building the cultural and intellectual capital of the
profession. This point is important, as it suggests that the costs of attrition go well
beyond the teachers who leave any particular school and have a knock-on effect
amongst those who remain. At worst, morale is reduced in high-turnover schools for
both students and teachers. Consequently, we reviewed literature from different educational contexts for new signposts into the problem of early exit. We were looking
to see if we could discover the necessary and sufcient conditions for early career
teachers successful transition to longevity in the profession. We began this investigation with pre-service practicum education.
Dufeld (2006) investigated the impact of Professional Development Schools
(PDS) on pre-service teachers from K12. These were demonstration schools specifically set up to provide pre-service teachers with opportunities for success through
closer partnerships with the university. Gimbert (2001, 40) claimed PDS schools
create learning opportunities that are different from and richer than the opportunities
either the school or the university can offer alone. The PDS cooperating teachers
who were welcoming, trusting and shared ownership in the classroom provided teacher candidates the most successful experience (Dufeld 2006). Pre-service teachers
dened successful working interrelationships with classroom teachers as recognisably positive. As one of Dufelds (2006) participants outlined:
I was able to just hone in on three teachers that I really liked. I learned a lot from
them, and I liked their classroom atmosphere. (172)

Dufeld (2006) found pre-service teachers who had positive experiences used
words like nice, welcoming and supportive (172). Therefore, carefully examining
new teachers language may reveal clues about attrition. Dufeld found success
followed pre-service teachers feeling they were treated as equals and when trust
underpinned collegial relationships. Experienced teachers could prevent a positive
experience by not responding to the intern and even by actively making the experience difcult for them (Dufeld 2006, 176).
Dufelds work supports common sense: all teachers need support and respond
more favourably to supportive work environments. However, this is a complex
rather than simple conclusion to draw from the research. Support offered to teachers
at any stage of their career needs to be dynamic and on-going. Dynamic support is
reected in the argument that the type and degree of support is likely to change

564

A. Gallant and P. Riley

Downloaded by [RMIT University Library] at 22:58 06 July 2016

depending on career stage (Gallant 2013; Gallant and Riley 2013; Huberman,
Grounauer, and Marti 1993). The need for acute support is reected in Day and
Gus ndings (2009; see also Gu and Day 2007) that the individual and systemic
support offered at times of challenge is crucial to long-term wellbeing and teachers
ability to sustain motivation and enthusiasm. After reviewing the literature we came
to the view that early exit indicators may be the level of perceived support, or lack
of support, for the development of an identity as teacher, through examination of the
leavers language choices. These would be mediated by how the teachers positioned
themselves. In essence we were searching for evidence of person-environment t.
Aim of the study
The aim of the research was to discover what nine beginning teachers required to
remain in the classroom. We looked for the presence or absence of elements identied in the literature. These were:
 conditions for success (Dufeld 2006);
 being welcome
 trust
 being treated as equals
 emotional support (Hobson, Giannakaki, and Chambers 2009);
 how new teachers positioned themselves (Huisman, Singer, and Catapano
2010).
We were keen to distinguish between affective, collegial support and positive working conditions once teachers had entered schools from technical knowledge acquired
during pre-service education that could be attributed to poor teacher preparation. A
lack of technical knowledge (about the what and how of teaching) has been viewed
as an attrition contributor (Darling-Hammond 2003). And, a meta-analysis of
34 teacher attrition studies found that attrition was higher in schools with a lack of
collaboration, teacher networking, and administrative support (Borman and
Dowling 2008, 396).
Methodology
A phenomenological approach was chosen as the existing literature appears blame
orientated. For example, as outlined above, the blame for attrition has focussed on
individuals or programs; lack of resilience or poor levels of training. This runs the
risk of oversimplifying the complex phenomenon of attrition through the theoretical
ltering of information. When the focus is a theoretical binary, such as early career
teachers having enough or not enough resilience, or adequate versus inadequate
training, important other information may be overlooked. For these reasons we
chose phenomenology as it is more exploratory. Phenomenology allows the complexity of interrelated issues to become apparent and explored. Without discounting
existing explanations, we were interested to discover how participants made sense of
teaching experiences and the language they used to explain them (Husserl 1980).
Our analysis was focussed on the language of common collective experiences.
Language positions people and it shows how they position themselves.
Phenomenology assumes that we do not know why the phenomenon occurs and

Downloaded by [RMIT University Library] at 22:58 06 July 2016

Teacher Development

565

allows for an examination of language as the primary access to participants

common experience. We are simply trying to understand the phenomenon of early
career attrition with the aim of adding to the corpus of knowledge.
An empirical phenomenological approach allowed us to ask participants to
reect upon their experience as beginning teachers, gather detailed descriptions
(Moustakas 1994), nd shared meaning and discover the essence of their leaving
(McCaslin and Scott 2003). Would the essence reveal participants were not ready to
begin teaching, and therefore experienced limited conditions for success similar to
those described by Dufeld (2006)? Or, would we nd the essence underpinned by
Hobsons (2009) argument that the provision of effective psychological or emotional support [is] an absolutely necessary condition for retaining early career
teachers (314)? We were also mindful of Huisman, Singer, and Catapanos (2010,
485) conclusions and considered how novice teachers position themselves greatly
affects their ability to feel successful in their jobs and thus to be resilient. The
methodology best positioned us to consider if participants leaving was prompted by
key events, such as a violent student or parent interaction, or a longer, more complex cumulative process.
Methods
After receiving approval to conduct the study from the university ethics committee,
two methods of data collection were employed. The rst involved semi-structured
interviews, which were transcribed for analysis. The structure of the interviews was
very broad with only three lead questions: Describe becoming a teacher; Describe
your teaching experience(s) and Describe the decision to leave teaching? Open
questions were deliberately chosen in order to avoid steering the responses.
The second form of data collected were completed leaving stories, written without any prompts. Again, it was a deliberate decision to not provide any prompts that
might inuence the narrative content. This method allowed the participants full
ownership of the experience. The participants were asked if they would write their
leaving narrative and that there was no style, guide or desired length; how they presented the narrative was their decision. The length of the narratives ranged between
4 and 18 pages.
Data and analysis
Data were analysed to discover the essence of the stories that might point to a new
way of perceiving the leaving phenomenon. This began with looking for links to the
current literature to test for trustworthiness, followed by keyword analysis across the
narratives that might point to the essence of the experience for these participants.
Analysis for links between the leaving narratives and literature
Each narrative was examined for patterns of experience to discover if a shared
narrative could usefully be extracted. A shared narrative was determined by
evidence of either similar key events or more complex patterns in the process of
events that built to the nal decision to leave. The commonalities across the stories
were then re-examined in relation to expectations drawn from the literature. This
analysis involved uncovering: the level of condence in their technical knowledge,

566

A. Gallant and P. Riley

Downloaded by [RMIT University Library] at 22:58 06 July 2016

organisational conditions for success (Dufeld 2006), the level of perceived

emotional support (Hobson 2009) and self-positioning (Huisman, Singer, and
Catapano 2010, 485) within the school and the classroom. This aspect of the
analysis was important, as participant numbers were small; we were keen to see if
participants data indicated concordance with attrition literature.
Distilling initial analysis
The next stage of analysis involved identifying keywords within and across the narratives to determine if they contained the essence of the attrition phenomenon: a
leaving process. All of the 110 keywords from the narratives were found to be either
synonyms for, or broadly synonymous with, the following words: optimism, arrested
development or disillusionment. The process involved entry, characterised by
optimism; early experiences, characterised by arrested development; pre-exit,
characterised by disillusionment and exit. Synonyms of the words optimism
appeared 41 times, arrested development 43 times and disillusionment 25 times (see
Appendix 1). This process enabled identication of the key component of the leaving essence as arrested development. When we re-examined the narratives to see if
the whole narrative could be categorised using the concept of arrested development
as an underlying cause of early career attrition, we found that the term described the
data well. Arrested development appeared to be the key element implicated in
the change from optimism to disillusionment and eventual exit. Below we present
the detailed analysis that led to the discovery of the essence.
Researchers
Both authors were classroom teachers for many years and held senior positions in
schools, before entering higher education. We have both worked with pre-service
teachers, and teachers in the eld. The second author also works with aspiring leaders and principals.
Participants
The research reported is based on data gathered from nine beginning teachers who
left classroom teaching within ve years of entering and within three years of exit.
As resources for nding participants were limited, snowball sampling (Goodman
1961) was adopted for recruitment. We acknowledge that this type of sampling has
limitations. Those with a traumatic leaving narrative might be more likely to take
the opportunity to participate. Equally, a dramatic exit is more likely to be remembered by others than a prosaic one, so it might be only those with dramatic stories
were recommended for participation by their colleagues.
We were aware that leavers are likely to tell acceptable stories at the time of exit
for a number of reasons (Clandinin 2006). These include gaining a positive reference from their employer so as not to prejudice their chances of future employment;
preserving a sense of identity as an educator if not teacher; and coping with possible
perceptions of career failure and time wasted. So our aim was to collect ex-teachers
narratives once they had some emotional distance from the experiences that caused
their exit, but were not so distant that recall of the events may have been compromised through the passage of too much time.

Downloaded by [RMIT University Library] at 22:58 06 July 2016

Teacher Development

567

The nine participants could very easily have been described as among the best
and brightest candidates from their pre-service cohorts. One was the top student in
her nal year and the others were within the top 10% of their cohorts. They were
drawn from four different universities in greater Melbourne. Six completed a oneyear Post Graduate Diploma of Education, two undertook a four-year double-degree,
and one completed a four-year Bachelor of Education degree. All were relatively
satised with their pre-service education and felt they had the necessary technical
knowledge to begin teaching, but all expected that they would be learning a great
deal about how to teach from their more experienced colleagues.
They entered a wide variety of environments. Four went into schools with long
histories and stable staff structures. Four entered schools that also had long histories,
but without stable leadership. One entered a newly merged school on a greeneld
site. Two began life as on-going, full-time teachers, four on short-term, one-year
contracts, and two decided to begin their professional life as relieving teachers,
employed for single days or short periods by a number of schools. Six of the participants were primary teachers, and three were secondary (see Table 1). Our aim in the
following section is to provide enough detail to give the reader a sense of the
individuals and illustrate the variety of issues they identied as causal. Not all
participants data can be presented owing to space; however, those selected are representative of their peers experiences. The headings that appear reect experiences
of commonality among the participants as we grappled to distil the essence of their
leaving experiences.
Essence: arrested development
The data are presented under subthemes that broadly reect the developmental
stages of the leaving process. As the participants awareness of school functioning
changed with their growing experience of it, so did their expectations of key players,
including themselves. The data are presented in such a way that we hope captures
this development and provides a structure for the reader to engage with the
narratives.
Pre-service education
Providing a context is important to allow readers the insights that distinguish the
commonality across participants. In this section participants describe their
pre-service education and their readiness to begin teaching.
Table 1. Participant demographic information.
Name

Pre-service

Tanya
Robert
James
Sarah
Teri
Julie
Emily
Lisa
Daniella

Grad. Dip.
Grad. Dip.
Grad. Dip.
BEd
BA/BEd
BEd
Grad. Dip.
Grad. Dip.
Grad. Dip.

School type
Ed.
Ed.
Ed.

Ed.
Ed.
Ed.

Sec
Sec
Prim
Prim
Sec
Prim
Prim
Prim
Prim

No. of schools

Years service

1
2
Relief
1
1
2
1
Relief
2

2
5
4
3
3
3
3
3
5

568

A. Gallant and P. Riley

Sarah recalled:
the university course was good. I enjoyed it. It was challenging and hard but I did
enjoy it and I think it did get me ready.

For Julie:
[university teachers] taught critically, and at times that frustrated the hell out of me
because they spent a lot of the time teaching you what not to do. [insisting we
should be] making up your own mind, becoming your own teacher which I liked, but
towards the end I got very frustrated [I said to them] Id like some suggestions.
you dont have to worry about brainwashing me but Id like some practical suggestions
and I felt like sometimes we didnt get that.

Downloaded by [RMIT University Library] at 22:58 06 July 2016

What stood out for James was the lecturers teaching style as role modelling:
it is truly present with me every day. I felt that my atypical and fairly radical thoughts
(about life and education) were unacceptable until I attended [lecturer]s classes. I now
feel a strong sense of condence about my ideals.

Whereas for Robert:

Doing personal development and trust and working on yourself and trying to better
yourself. They were the attributes I really got attracted to and cemented it for me.

The conditions that emerged from all participants data were perceptions of being
trusted to think, encouragement to develop while feeling emotionally supported. The
participants collective keywords were of growth or progress. Participants felt they
were ready and prepared to teach. Although Robert suggested that:
the only criticism I have of the system at University, [is] they didnt teach us how
to deal with dysfunctional administrations. And thats what created a lot of the
clashes that I had with the system.

For Daniella:
I found my lecturers, the content and my fellow students to be inspiring and exciting. I
did perceive some political difculties through some of the lecturers comments, but I
didnt pay much attention to this until I became a classroom teacher.

Perceptions of teaching
What became evident in all narratives was the mismatch between participants ideals
and expectations of teaching and the reality of the school setting. They saw themselves as change agents and teaching as both meaningful and social construction.
The keywords reect positioning themselves as part of something expansive; participating actively in educating societys next generation. They also reveal a global
perspective.
Emily emphasised how she:
really believed that through education I could help build a better future and perhaps
ignite some social change in our complicated world.

Julie saw education:

in the naivety of it at the time, as, I can get in here, I can make a difference, I can
change the world in my own little way I want to do something meaningful, I
can see how I can do that in education.

Teacher Development

569

As for Daniella:
I travelled through the developing world after my DipEd, and found myself becoming
more convinced of my path and plight as a teacher as I considered the role of education in both the local and global societies.

These data seem to conrm Hardys (1999) assertion that optimism and disillusionment would be evident in the stories.

Downloaded by [RMIT University Library] at 22:58 06 July 2016

The personal nature of the beginning teachers experiences (e.g. school placements,
personal biographies) suggests that impressions about teaching could range from those
of disillusionment to those of optimism, and that the type of support provided in
schools would not necessarily underpin their beliefs about teaching or extend them professionally. (Hardy 1999, 109)

All the participants expressed a desire to make a better future through education.
However, this broad ideal of improvement was underspecied in the narratives.
After examining perceptions of preparation we began to look at what was occurring
for the participants once they began teaching. In all cases, their internal ideals of
classroom teacher as change agent were challenged by the reality of life in the
schools entered. We were left to wonder about how much their ideals had been
examined and/or challenged during their pre-service and practicum experience.
Perceptions of leadership
All participants identied a lack of emotional support from school leadership. Lack
of support occurred as a consequence of (a) leadership migration, a feature of some
schools, where the average length of a principals tenure may be only one year; (b)
lack of trust, awareness of the other, and empathy. The keywords for the second
consideration reect positive self-esteem being prevented, and educational ideals
being obstructed, hindered and/or checked.
Leadership migration
When Tanya rst started, she felt the support of leadership and really appreciated
the impact that this had on her and others around her. However, this level of support
was not sustained. As she recalled:
[My faculty head] was fantastic for all of us, but at the time unfortunately, she was
head of all the PE [physical education] and sport and so about halfway through the
year one of the other people took on the sport part. Things started to change. In the
two years I was there we had four different principals.

Sarah (like Tanya) started teaching in a school that provided leadership support that
she found very important as a beginning teacher. Sarah reected how:
there were two [Assistant Principals] because it was quite large and they were both male
and one of them left and he was a lovely, lovely, lovely, supportive man but he left.

Lisas narrative captures the extremes of leadership migration as part of her schools
history and current situation:
There had been a stream of principals come and go through the school over the past
15 or 20 years. Every new principal resigned after a year or eighteen months. It was a
similar narrative for assistant principals.

570

A. Gallant and P. Riley

Leaders lack of trust

Tanya recalled how she was often checked by:
one coordinator [who] seemed to always think every time there was an issue it was the
teachers fault. I know Im not the only one that felt that way.

Tanyas response shows she felt a lack of trust from the coordinator towards staff. The
sense of being equal among peers and respected was also missing from her account.

Downloaded by [RMIT University Library] at 22:58 06 July 2016

Leaders lack of support

Sarah reported a lack of support during a serious family illness that eventually led to
the death of one of her parents. This was a particularly bleak time for her as she
recollected:
as weeks went on it sort of became more difcult I went to [the principal] at one
point and I said Look, Im not coping, Im not coping with the grade, Im not coping
with whats going on at home, and she made me feel quite silly and at the time I guess
I believed her and my self-esteem just went down. she seemed to have no human
emotion at all, she was like a robot.

In an attempt to take control of her teaching career, Julie changed schools assuming
that she had begun in an atypical environment. Her account provides insights into
how signicant positive conditions and leadership support affected her.
Julie (at rst school):
I had an initial meeting with the three principals and [the senior principal] let rip at
me. She went off! She told me how bad my teaching was. She accused me of making my students ill by making them anxious.

Julie (at second school):

I turned around and all the kids were climbing the walls like literally, and [the principal] was walking across the yard and saw me. He comes trotting over and said, Do
you need me to put on my grumpy voice? Yes please. Right! Everyone sit down!
and, you know, they all went, Oh OK you know. Its the principal and it was all
ne. hed built a really good rapport with the community and so he was really well
respected that was what I wanted my principal to do.

Julies account illustrates the emotional support and conditions for her success set
by school leaders. She recalls a principal who noticed her need for support, stepped
in, consulted with about how he should help and then carried out those actions.
Julies account in this setting reects her growing condence.
In contrast to this, Teri described her principals way of dealing with an incident
involving one student injuring another in class:
[the principal]s way of operation was to come down and tell my home group that
[teacher X] and I were being stood down, pending investigation because [the principal]
knew how much the kids cared for us. [She did not intend to actually stand us down, just
frighten the kids] I dont know what she thought. I still dont know what she thought
And that happened on more than one occasion. It happened to other teachers.

Lisa described the lack of support, graphically describing a staff meeting that she
and both the principal and assistant principal knew would be difcult because of
timetable changes to give students time to rehearse for the upcoming school musical.
After the meeting she reported:

Teacher Development

571

The assistant principal was also very apologetic that he hadnt supported me enough
during the meeting. The principal was the one, to my mind, who should have supported me when I was under attack, and he hadnt, even though he had led me to
believe before the meeting that he would. I think it was just that we expected a storm
and got a hurricane, and they werent ready for it.

Teri recalled how, when she began teaching, the principal actively moved against
certain teachers:

Downloaded by [RMIT University Library] at 22:58 06 July 2016

Wed lost one staff member in the rst year who had a falling out with the principal
and we lost two other teachers, both along those lines.

The participants experiences show that the leadership often failed to provide emotional support or the conditions they needed for their success. Analysis of the key
words indicates how their development was hindered or in more serious cases
stopped.

Expectations of the beginning teacher

Sarah was the only participant who started team teaching with a mentor teacher.
And her narrative reveals that having a team teaching mentor for the rst year led to
the expectation in her second year that she was ready to be treated as an experienced
teacher. She described the difference between her rst and second year:
in the rst year I had quite a good year. I was with my mentor teacher, we team-taught
together and I was really able to get condent around the kids but in the second
year I got put over the other side of the school, away from the ofce, by myself in this
classroom with about 20% of the kids with severe learning or behaviour problems, and
I was second year out of teaching. Im not trained in psychology. I had no idea how to
deal with these children. I dont know how, as a graduate teacher, I ended up with
this grade. I nished out the year but as the year sort of went on I was getting those
same sorts of feelings as far as support starting to fade away.

Sarah later revealed the communication to her following her reaction to being placed
in such a situation was:
Deal with it yourself. Figure out your own strategies. And I was trying to come up
with my own strategies, but I was looking to my experienced peers and leaders in the
school to support me, and they were sort of saying Oh well, if you cant handle it then
thats sort of it. they didnt know what to do so they just pretended I wasnt there.

Sarahs professional development was being arrested by the expectations placed her
as a second year out teacher. All participants reported being given very difcult classes, and sometimes roles that experienced teachers didnt want. Taking on difcult
roles early in their careers is recognised as being a contributing block to their experiences of success (Cochran-Smith and Zeichner 2005).
As Robert explained:
they offered me a one year contract. And then in my second year there [on a second
one-year contract] there was no one that wanted to be a Year 8 assistant coordinator.
So the coordinator asked me and I said OK, ne. They had me teaching a year
11/12 [ICT] course that Ive never taught before no laptop, no functioning network,
trying to teach two of these courses. I also had a year 10 who didnt want to do
anything so they were just chucked into a class as a child-minding exercise. So I had
to deal with that . I was in tears and it was just like, what am I doing?

572

A. Gallant and P. Riley

Teri started teaching while also taking on a coordinating role:

I had to create and teach a class, separate class of 12 kids who were deemed unteachable by half of the school.

Unrealistic expectations were also demonstrated by heavy workloads, as Tanya

recalled:
I think I had nine classes in the rst year. Nine separate classes. I think I had one or
two for health and PE but its nine lots of reports basically, which is a lot. I had years
7, 8, 9 and 11.

For Teri, team teaching didnt lessen her load but increased it, as she explained:

Downloaded by [RMIT University Library] at 22:58 06 July 2016

I was doing something like 70 hours just correction and because of the nature of team
teaching it also meant that Id see every book [80]. I was burnt out and angry a lot.

Emily recognised how she:

was left aoat in a sea of unknown and I either swam or sank.

We found keyword evidence of unrealistic expectations and a lack of emotional support for these early career leavers in every narrative. The feelings of loneliness, isolation, lack of offers of expert suggestions, support and resources appeared in all
their accounts. They also reect how participants were being positioned: in
unwanted roles that required expertise they did not have.

Self-positioning
The analysis uncovered an internal conict among participants arising from how
others positioned them and how they positioned themselves.
James explained how he was being positioned:
Education is a production line. There is no time for critical thinking in the classroom
and there is certainly no time for genuine exploration and play. I was told by the
Deputy Principal not to waste time on philosophical questions that children cannot
afford to think about [while preparing for literacy and numeracy tests]. Id happily
undertake the challenging workload if I thought I was doing something worthwhile.

The participants self-positioning as change agents was generally associated with

developing new pedagogies and learning environments underpinned by creativity
and innovation. Others mentioned how their developing creativity or innovation was
arrested. This was a common experience across the narratives, leaving all feeling
obstructed and unsuccessful in their work with children.
Julie was keen to be an agent of change and innovation, but realised her worldview was incompatible with her peers. She recalled how she had differently positioned herself from her colleagues:
[They] all still lived at home, had never left home, had gone to school in the area, had
gone to uni in the area, were now teaching in the area. I just did not relate at all,
and wasnt experienced enough in the workplace to be tactful. I wasnt rude or condescending or anything but that impacted probably on how I related to them. I got
along quite well with [a new teacher in my second year, but] the moment I knew it
was all really, really bad was when we were sitting in a staff meeting and she was ne.
She tted in better than I did.

Teacher Development

573

Robert recalled one moment of success where he felt free:

to use the techniques that Id learnt. I got [students] working, cooperative learning,
teaching each other. And it got me away from the usual setup of the older teachers and
the way they were teaching.

Emily stated:
The public school was so bogged down in reporting and testing that it seemed like I
did more of that than actually educating.

Downloaded by [RMIT University Library] at 22:58 06 July 2016

A further element across all the experiences reects how signicant school culture
can be in setting the conditions for success.

School culture
A positive school culture reects conditions for success and emotional support and
is one that activates and encourages staff professional development. One of the conditions for pre-service teachers success is feeling able to ask questions and have
them engaged with receptively by staff (Dufeld 2006). From the narratives this was
very important. They saw collegial dialogue as fundamental to their growth.
When reecting on her experience, Julie highlighted:
I reckon what put the school off me was that I asked a lot of questions. I was genuinely like, Well Ill do this if you tell me why youre doing it, like if youve got a
good reason for doing it Ill do it but I dont understand why youre doing it. Can you
explain it to me? I was expected to just follow suit and do exactly what my mentor
told me to, exactly what the school told me to. I was really not expected to experiment
or try anything new.

Participants found themselves in workplaces full of conict. For Emily:

[the teachers] were too embroiled in their own affairs and internal politics to really
give me the guidance that I needed. made it difcult to steer clear in spite of
my desire to JUST want to be a good teacher. The school was a bit too wrought
with politics.

While Tanya considered her school setting as one where:

I think students just see teachers as the enemy full stop.

For Lisa and Robert, the conict was personal and on-going. Lisa highlighted how:
Being in that school was like living in a state of siege. I couldnt do anything without
coming under attack or having obstacles put in my way. It was exhausting and demoralising. It made every simple little thing into a problem that took energy and time to
deal with, and then was unlikely to be resolved anyway.

For Robert:
[a teacher colleague] made my life a misery... in a really subtle way nothing was
said to my face, it was just all rumours and innuendo. I came to work and all my stuff
thrown out of the ofce. All my personal stuff and my work was all there in the hallway. And I said Whats going on? The coordinator said, Theres another teacher
coming in next year and we want her to come in now. I went to the assistant principal and he couldnt believe it and basically came with me and made them put all my
stuff back [but nothing really changed].

574

A. Gallant and P. Riley

The keywords in their attrition narratives signify how their professional development
was being arrested by school culture. There was little evidence of conditions for
success or emotional support.

Downloaded by [RMIT University Library] at 22:58 06 July 2016

Decisions to leave: the end of a protracted process

The participants decision to leave was protracted and cumulative; it was not evoked
by one key event or issue. But all felt galvanised to leave. For some it was about
letting go, others record a sense of release or becoming free.
For Sarah, it was the decision that followed a process of wearing down her
emotional wellbeing, as she highlights:
These people here dont care about me and my self-esteem was just going down and
down and down and so Im never teaching again. Im looking at the old teachers
who are always complaining and not enjoying what theyre doing and thinking do I
want to be that person in twenty years time? I feel like at the end of the day the reason
I left teaching is because the main sort of big umbrella areas are lack of support, and
mentoring and lack of experienced teachers with enthusiasm. I was never inspired by
anyone. I just went to work every day and I went Oh its a slog, its a slog. Wheres
the inspiration, wheres the fun and the excitement?

Tanya takes a more pragmatic view, outlining how over time she realised:
I wanted to do something else but it helped that school wasnt the most enjoyable place
to be.

Robert felt beleaguered by the small team he worked closely with and was eventually worn down:
thats what they did to me; they stacked me up [with extra administrative work]. So
that was the nal [straw].

James narrative reveals the decision is painful, and harked back to the clash with
his entry ideals:
My decision to leave education was difcult to make and caused me high stress and
genuine sorrow. I chose to leave education because I believe that the child is dead in
western culture. There are countless reasons why I believe that the child is dead: viewing children as future economic assets.

Lisas decision to leave was a moral one:

I do not want to work in an environment where children are not respected and taken
care of. I do not want to work in an environment where it is considered to be a bad
thing if children speak, or move, or have ideas of their own. I do not want to have relationships with children that are based on me asserting my authority with a loud voice
and the threat of punishment.

While Teri still has a desire to teach, her leaving process is continuing:
[an expert teacher who left her school after one and a half terms] said, I cant believe
that youre here. She emailed me at some stage [later] and said, you know, youre
going to burn out and youre going to leave teaching and youve got to get out. I
would be devastated to think that I wouldnt go back but I wont go back [to a similar
school set-up].

Teacher Development

575

Julie would like to return. Her leaving also remains in process. She generally
enjoyed her teaching in a remote location, but missed her friends and family and
decided to return to the city. The remote school:

Downloaded by [RMIT University Library] at 22:58 06 July 2016

comparatively was a breath of fresh air because I had a lot more independence, I got to
try so many things. Im not condent that I can nd a school that I would be happy
in [in the city]. I want to go back and try to be a better teacher, now that I feel I have a
better understanding of what would make a good teacher, but Im a bit scared to be
honest. I dont want to be forced, pigeonholed into teaching one way.

Discussion
The major nding of this study was that early career exit from teaching is a drawnout process. A number of previous studies have described the optimistic beginning
teacher who changes into a disillusioned leaver (Beauchamp and Thomas 2009;
Centre for Innovative Thought 2006; Cochran-Smith and Zeichner 2005; Goddard
and Goddard 2006; Hong 2010; Korthagen 2004; Maslach 2003; OConnor 2008;
Steffy 2000). However, the process of moving from one to the other has remained
under-described. This study identied four key elements that describe the complex
process of attrition: entry, early experiences, pre-exit and exit. All participants
entered teaching optimistically: condent about what they would contribute, positive
about their own on-going development and hoping to make a difference in young
peoples lives. Their early experiences reected blocked growth and their progress
prevented. This we labelled arrested development. This has not been outlined in the
literature to date and represents the contribution of this study to the attrition literature. The pre-exit phase of leaving involved considerable sense of disillusionment.
The participants felt let down by leadership and/or veteran colleagues and lost any
expectation of things improving.
Analysing the participants language led to the discovery of the missing element between their initial optimism, disillusionment and exit as arrested development (see Appendix 1). This nding extends Day and Gus (2009) contention that
attrition is a process not an event. For these participants the critical time period in
which the wearing-down took place was two to two and a half years of service,
and the eventual decision to leave was reported as being able to grow again. Our
nding that the essence of the stories was arrested development is based on two
key elements of each narrative: lack of emotional support, and school cultures that
impede growth.
Lack of emotional support from leaders
The presence or absence of emotional support for these new teachers appears to
have had a powerful and lasting impact. All nine narratives revealed that adequate
emotional support during times of professional or personal challenge was not
provided. This negatively affected their personal sense of wellbeing and self-esteem
as beginning teachers. Lack of support was attributed to leadership migration, or
lack of trust and empathy displayed by leaders. Participants valued leaders who provided emotional support and mourned its loss when those leaders left the school and
were not replaced by equally supportive substitutes. Lack of emotional support led
to feelings of isolation.

Downloaded by [RMIT University Library] at 22:58 06 July 2016

576

A. Gallant and P. Riley

School culture
School cultures, as tacit rule books, set the conditions for success and prescribe
acceptable levels of emotional support and emotional labour (Johnson et al. 2005;
Zapf et al. 1999). For these early leavers, the cultures also determined how they perceived tting into the school community. Their reports indicated that the conditions
for success were not present. They reported not feeling welcome, not tting in and
noted a lack of sharing of veterans expertise and practice, adding to feelings of
inadequacy and exclusion. All participants identied the schools they entered as
places of conict, often nding themselves in conict with other staff, sometimes
without knowing how or why this had occurred. A contributing factor to the process
of leaving was a negative school culture where the new teachers perceived that too
much emphasis on improving test results prevented time for other educative experiences. All participants had positioned themselves as change agents. This positioning
was obstructed in every one of their school settings. Each rejected what they felt
was an over-emphasis on uniformity and conformity. This suggests that the entry
ideals were difcult to translate into daily actions aimed at achieving the broad goal
of change.
These ndings support Botterys (2003, 188) argument that an emerging unhappiness within schools based on increasing accountability and lack of individual
autonomy generates a crisis of morale, recruitment and retention.
Conclusions
The participants enjoyed engaging with ideas and teaching practice during their preservice education, and especially enjoyed undergoing this process with their cohort
peers, people they felt they could genuinely explore the meaning of teaching with.
However, on entry into schools they found that the level of collegial support they
had become used to was missing. Our analysis of the language each one used to
describe their process of leaving suggests to us that the missing element in their
leaving was arrested development. They each reported that the schools they entered
did not foster their growth as teachers or as individuals, and that this was an unexpected cost that led to an overwhelming sense of disillusionment. Returning to
growth, as a direct result of choosing to leave, permeated all the narratives. This
interpretation of data has many implications for the way in which new teachers are
inducted into schools and raises more questions about why some teachers stay and
become veterans under the same conditions. We believe this might be fertile ground
for future research aimed at providing a suite of induction, support and professional
learning opportunities for all teachers that builds on Manuel and Hughes (2006)
notion of teaching as facilitating as opposed to arresting personal and professional
development.
We have suggested the concept of arrested development as a useful way to
explore existing data repositories and as a focus for new qualitative studies into
the issue. A phenomenological approach uncovered new ways of describing some
of the issues involved in early career attrition and might lead to expanded theorising about the problem in future research projects. While we do not draw any
further conclusions from the data reported here, revising previous datasets, particularly from the UK and the US, may prove useful in conrming or setting aside
these ndings.

Teacher Development

577

Downloaded by [RMIT University Library] at 22:58 06 July 2016

Limitations of the study and future research opportunities

The most signicant limitation of this study is the small number of participants.
However, the trustworthiness of the data is supported by the extant literature
strongly enough to give us condence that the concept of arrested development is
perhaps more widely applicable. Therefore, it offers new ways for researchers to
conceive the issues and develop support structures and induction processes for new
teachers that can be trialled in the eld. If arrested development is a useful conceptualisation of the antecedents of attrition, replication of these ndings is a necessary
rst step. We would encourage readers who have existing qualitative data from early
leavers to re-examine the transcripts using the synonyms from Appendix 1 to see if
arrested development is the essence of other leaving narratives too. We would be
very interested to hear from researchers who can undertake this analysis, as well as
those collecting new data.
Notes on contributors
Andrea Gallant is a senior lecturer at Deakin University School of Education. She lectures in
Leading and Managing in Learning Organisations and Researching Teacher Leadership. She
also works with school leadership teams to develop professional capital using differentiated
mentoring for whole school improvement. The Participatory Inquiry Programme (PIP), developed by Andrea, is aimed at increasing professional agency through mentoring. Andreas
research focuses on early career teacher attrition, workplace culture/relationships and midcareer women and leadership.
Philip Riley is an associate professor of Educational Leadership in the Faculty of Arts and
Education at the Australian Catholic University. He researches the psychological aspects of
education and leadership, with a particular focus on adultadult relationships and the lives of
school leaders and teachers.

References
Beauchamp, C., and L. Thomas. 2009. Understanding Teacher Identity: An Overview of
Issues in the Literature and Implications for Teacher Education. Cambridge Journal of
Education 39 (2): 175189.
Borman, G. D., and N. M. Dowling. 2008. Teacher Attrition and Retention: A MetaAnalytic and Narrative Review of the Research. Review of Educational Research 78 (3):
367409.
Bottery, M. 2003. The Leadership of Learning Communities in a Culture of Unhappiness.
School Leadership & Management: Formerly School Organisation 23 (2): 187207.
Buchanan, J. 2009. Where Are They Now? Ex-Teachers Tell Their Life-Work Stories.
Issues in Educational Research 19 (1): 113.
Centre for Innovative Thought. 2006. Teachers and the Uncertain American Future.
Accessed June 8, 2012. http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/press/teachersand-uncertain-american-future.pdf
Clandinin, D. J. 2006. Composing Diverse Identities: Narrative Inquiries into the Interwoven
Lives of Children and Teachers. London: Routledge.
Clandinin, D. J., C. A. Downey, and J. Huber. 2009. Attending to Changing Landscapes:
Shaping the Interwoven Identities of Teachers and Teacher Educators. Asia-Pacic Journal of Teacher Education 37 (2): 141154.
Cochran-Smith, M., and K. M. Zeichner. 2005. Studying Teacher Education: The Report of
the AERA Panel on Research and Teacher Education. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates.
Darling-Hammond, L. 2003. Keeping Good Teachers: Why it Matters, What Leaders Can
Do. Educational Leadership 60 (8): 613.

Downloaded by [RMIT University Library] at 22:58 06 July 2016

578

A. Gallant and P. Riley

Day, C., and Q. Gu. 2009. Veteran Teachers: Commitment, Resilience and Quality Retention. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice 15 (4): 441457.
Devos, A. 2010. New Teachers, Mentoring and the Discursive Formation of Professional
Identity. Teaching and Teacher Education 26 (5): 12191223. doi:10.1016/
j.tate.2010.03.001
Dufeld, S. 2006. Safety Net or Free Fall: The Impact of Cooperating Teachers. Teacher
Development 10 (2): 167178.
Ewing, R., and J. Manuel. 2005. Retaining Quality Early Career Teachers in the Profession:
New Teacher Narratives. Change: Transformations in Education 8 (1): 116.
Gallant, A. 2013. Self-conscious Emotion: How Two Teachers Explore the Emotional Work
of Teaching. In Emotion in Schools: Understanding How the Hidden Curriculum Inuences Teaching, Learning and Social Relationships, edited by M. Newberry, A. Gallant,
and P. Riley, 163181. Bingley: Emerald Group.
Gallant, A., and P. Riley. 2013. The Emotional Labour of the Aspirant Leader: Traversing
School Politics. In Emotion in Schools: Understanding How the Hidden Curriculum
Inuences Teaching, Learning and Social Relationships, Vol. 18, edited by M. Newberry,
A. Gallant, and P. Riley, 8197. Bingley: Emerald Group.
Gimbert, B. 2001. Learning to Teach: The Lived Experience of Being an Intern in a Professional Development School. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American
Educational Research Association, Seattle, WA, April.
Goddard, R., and M. Goddard. 2006. Beginning Teacher Burnout in Queensland Schools:
Associations with Serious Intentions to Leave. Australian Educational Researcher 33
(2): 6176.
Goodman, L. A. 1961. Snowball Sampling. The Annals of Mathematical Statistics 32 (1):
148170.
Gu, Q., and C. Day. 2007. Teachers Resilience: A Necessary Condition for Effectiveness.
Teaching and Teacher Education 23 (8): 13021316. doi:10.1016/j.tate.2006.06.006
Hamman, D., K. Gosselin, J. Romano, and R. Bunuan. 2010. Using Possible-Selves Theory
to Understand the Identity Development of New Teachers. Teaching and Teacher Education 26 (7): 13491361. doi:10.1016/j.tate.2010.03.005
Hardy, C. A. 1999. Perceptions of Physical Education Beginning Teachers First Year of
Teaching: Are We Doing Enough to Prevent Early Attrition? Teacher Development 3
(1): 109127. doi:10.1080/13664539900200068
Hobson, A. J. 2009. On Being Bottom of the Pecking Order: Beginner Teachers Perceptions and Experiences of Support. Teacher Development 13 (4): 299320. doi:10.1080/
13664530903578256
Hobson, A. J., M.-S. Giannakaki, and G. Chambers. 2009. Who Withdraws from Initial Teacher Preparation Programmes and Why? Educational Research 51: 321340.
Hochstetler, S. 2011. Focus on Identity Development: A Proposal for Addressing English
Teacher Attrition. Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues and
Ideas 84 (6): 256259.
Hong, J. Y. 2010. Pre-service and Beginning Teachers Professional Identity and its Relation
to Dropping out of the Profession. Teaching and Teacher Education 26 (8): 15301543.
doi:10.1016/j.tate.2010.06.003
Huberman, A. M., M. M. Grounauer, and J. Marti. 1993. The Lives of Teachers. New York:
Teachers College Press.
Huisman, S., N. R. Singer, and S. Catapano. 2010. Resiliency to Success: Supporting Novice Urban Teachers. Teacher Development 14 (4): 483499. doi:10.1080/
13664530.2010.533490
Husserl, E. 1980. Phenomenology and the Foundations of the Sciences. Boston: M. Nijhoff
Publishers.
Johnson, S., C. Cooper, S. Cartwright, I. Donald, P. Taylor, and C. Millet. 2005. The Experience of Work-related Stress Across Occupations. Journal of Managerial Psychology
20 (2): 178187.
Korthagen, F. A. J. 2004. In Search of the Essence of a Good Teacher: Towards a More
Holistic Approach in Teacher Education. Teaching and Teacher Education 20 (1):
7797. doi:10.1016/j.tate.2003.10.002

Downloaded by [RMIT University Library] at 22:58 06 July 2016

Teacher Development

579

Kyriacou, C. 2001. Teacher Stress: Directions for Future Research. Educational Review 53
(1): 2735.
Manuel, J., and J. Hughes. 2006. It Has Always Been My Dream: Exploring Pre-service
Teachers Motivations for Choosing to Teach. Teacher Development 10 (1): 524.
doi:10.1080/13664530600587311
Maslach, C. 2003. Job Burnout: New Directions in Research and Intervention. Current
Directions in Psychological Science 12 (5): 189192. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/14678721.01258
Maslach, C., and M. P. Leiter. 2008. Early Predictors of Job Burnout and Engagement.
Journal of Applied Psychology 93 (3): 498512. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/00219010.93.3.498
McCaslin, M. L., and K. W. Scott. 2003. The Five-question Method for Framing a Qualitative Research Study. The Qualitative Report 8 (3): 447461. Accessed June 8, 2012.
http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/QR8-3/mccaslin.pdf
Moustakas, C. E. 1994. Phenomenological Research Methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education. 20102012. What Makes a Teacher Effective? A Summary of Key Research Findings on Teacher Preparation. Accessed
June 8, 2012. http://www.ncate.org/Public/ResearchReports/TeacherPreparationResearch/
WhatMakesaTeacherEffective/tabid/361/Default.aspx
OConnor, K. E. 2008. You Choose to Care: Teachers, Emotions and Professional Identity. Teaching and Teacher Education 24 (1): 117126.
Petras, H., S. G. Kellam, C. Brown, B. O. Muthen, N. S. Ialongo, and J. M. Poduska. 2008.
Developmental Epidemiological Courses Leading to Antisocial Personality Disorder and
Violent and Criminal Behavior: Effects by Young Adulthood of a Universal Preventive
Intervention in First- and Second-grade Classrooms. Drug and Alcohol Dependence 95
(Suppl.1): S45S59. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2007.10.015
Ravitch, D. 2011. Who Kidnapped Superman? Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association annual meeting Inciting the Social Imagination: Education
Research for the Public Good, New Orleans, April 812.
Riley, P. 2011. Attachment Theory and the Teacher-Student Relationship: A Practical Guide
for Teachers, Teacher Educators and School Leaders. London: Routledge.
Rudow, B. 1999. Stress and Burnout in the Teaching Profession: European Studies, Issues,
and Research Perspectives. In Understanding and Preventing Teacher Burnout, edited
by R. Vandenberghe and A. M. Huberman, 3858. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Santavirta, N., S. Solovieva, and T. Theorell. 2007. The Association Between Job Strain and
Emotional Exhaustion in a Cohort of 1,028 Finnish Teachers. British Journal of Educational Psychology 77 (1): 213228.
Skilbeck, M., and H. Connell. 2003. Attracting, Developing and Retaining Effective Teachers: Australian Country Background Report. Canberra: Department of Education, Science
and Training.
Steffy, B. E. 2000. Life Cycles of the Career Teacher. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Zapf, D., C. Vogt, C. Seifert, H. Mertini, and A. Isic. 1999. Emotion Work as a Source of
Stress: The Concept and Development of an Instrument. European Journal of Work &
Organizational Psychology 8 (3): 371400.

580

A. Gallant and P. Riley

Downloaded by [RMIT University Library] at 22:58 06 July 2016

Appendix 1. The leaving process: participants language analysis

Entry
Optimism
(hopefulness, condence,
positivity, assurance)

Early Experiences
Arrested
(blocked, prevented)
Development
(growth, progress, advance)

Pre-Exit
Disillusionment
(lack of expectation,
let down)

Exit

Acceptance
Becoming your own teacher
Better future
Build
Change
Condence
Create
Creativity
Desire
Difference
Enjoy a Challenge
Experiment
Explain
Fine
Freedom to step out
Genuine
Get in (to educate)
Good (work)
Guidance
Helped
Ignite (social change)
Lovely
Meaningful
Own mind
Personal
Questioning
Rapport
Reason
Relate
Respected
See, do education
Steer

Fit (I didnt)
Attack
Obstacles
Battled
Siege
Demoralising
Difcult
Apathy
Stood down
Deal(s)
Critical
Thinking (lack of)
(principal) Went off
Resolved (un)
Conformity
Innuendo
Embroiled
Stack with workload
By myself (isolation)
Care (lack of)
Dysfunctional
Rumours
Problem
Politics
Spite
Ripped into
Falling out
Manipulation
Clashes
Condescending
Separate
Time (wasted) (no time
to)
Tight (closed community)
Rude
Unknown
Accused
Complaining
Chucked, threw
(possessions)
Emotion (lack of, Robot)
Workload gigantic
Enjoyment (lack of)

Inspired (not)
Angry
Tears
Anxious
Bad
Hurricane
Storm
At sea
Aoat
Sank
Bogged down
Down
Lost
Misery
Losing energy
Feeling down
Low self-esteem
Exhausting
Slog
Tough
Fade away
Coping (not)
Ill
Burnt out
Wrought

Final
Finished

Supportive
Tactful
Trotting (Petras et al. 2008)
Trust
Understand
Wanted
Worthwhile
Excitement
Fun