Supportive Relationships in Primary Schools for Teachers Working in Early, Mid and Late Career Phases

Teachers’ identities and career phases influence their commitment and resilience. Most previous studies have focused on developing a professional identity in early years while relatively fewer studies have focused on how teachers maintain their professional identity throughout their careers. This study reports on the initial data collection for a PhD project exploring teacher identity across the chosen career path.
Using a constructivist grounded theory design as outlined by Charmaz (2014), teachers working in their early, mid, and late career phases were interviewed three times with the purpose of developing an identity based theory to a teaching career.
Early analysis of the initial data collected from six primary school teachers (2 in the early, 2 in mid, and 2 in the late career phases) working in different school contexts, indicates that teachers benefit from relationships with school leaders, mentors and peers in different ways depending on their career and life phase.