Careers in education: Developing inside and outside the classroom

Education is a multidimensional, dynamic profession about developing and providing learning opportunities in a variety of contexts. However, sometimes the general perception is that careers in education are limited to the classroom and that there are not clear stages for career progression (Newman, 1980). Moreover, when stages are more explicit, the ability to commit to these becomes challenged by the interplay between personal and structural choices (Healy, 1999) This paper stems from the Pathways to Expertise research project undertaken at Charles Darwin University, Australia that aimed to gather insights into the careers of fourteen educators in the Northern Territory, Australia. Although each person’s story was unique in terms of time, place and person, they were all connected by common themes. These themes, which came from a wide range of sources both internal and external to the teller of the story, provided an insight into some of the characteristics that influenced these educators during their careers. This paper explores these themes further