Educator Recruitment In International Schools: The Administrator’s View

In this study, the researcher examined the strategies and tactics that international school leaders use when engaging in the recruitment of international school educators. The study included 89 international school leaders who took part in an online survey regarding various aspects of the recruiting process and 20 international school leaders who took part in a Skype interview to discuss further the process of recruitment. Qualitative inductive content analysis was used to code and theme the data that resulted from the anonymous online surveys and Skype interviews. Five main themes emerged from the data, and these themes described crucial components of recruiting international educators. The first theme, adaptation, describes the way in which school leaders have had to adjust their recruiting in the short and long terms. The second theme, fit versus match, describes the way in which school leaders approach people and positions that are available in their respective schools. The third theme, success, describes the ways in which school leaders define their success, and the measures they use to gauge it. The fourth theme, location and capabilities, shows how strategies and approaches change because of their respective school location and the limitations that might be attached to it. The fifth theme, timelines, describes how recruiting international educators changes depending on when a school leader begins conducting his or her recruitment process. This researcher found that participants perceived as important in the recruiting process many of the recruiting strategies mentioned in the survey. However, their ability to use some of the specific strategies was limited by the country in which they were located and their respective recruiting season. The factors identified in this study build on previous research on international educator recruitment and provides an additional dimension for school leaders to analyze their recruiting efforts and strategies. Further research on how school leaders interpret these factors and on other components of the international teacher recruiting process are important to augment the research in this field