Understanding Australian Teachers' Success Strategies

Narratives of Motivation and Resilience

By: Karen L. Peel, Deborah L. Mulligan, R. E. (Bobby) Harreveld

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Paperback | 17 February 2026 | Edition Number 1

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222 Pages

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23.39 x 15.6 x 1.19

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This book presents new insights into the success strategies of Australian teachers. It analyses interviews with 42 experienced teachers across a range of school contexts to examine 'what works' in those contexts. The authors organise teachers' work and identities around 10 distinct roles: designers for learning, emotional labourers, narrative constructors and deconstructors, pandemic navigators, policy refractors, relationship brokers, self-regulated learners, situated ethicists, teaching idealists and technology reframers.

The chapters explore two separate but interrelated arcs of analysis simultaneously. Teachers' work is examined around four nodes: complexities, challenges, contradictions and comforts. Five dimensions of that work are considered as well: psychosocial; profession and professionalism; changes and continuities; naming, framing and shaming; and teaching by design. The Australian study is part of a five-nation international research project focused on teacher motivation and resilience, with the other countries including Brazil, Chile, Ecuador and Spain. The authors are affiliated with the University of Southern Queensland, Central Queensland University and the Queensland University of Technology.

What emerges is the understanding that Australian teachers acknowledge the challenging complexity of their work, while they mobilise their constrained agency in innovative ways in diverse contexts. Their success strategies cluster around four distinct types - value-driven, agentic, adaptable and relational - with important implications for current and future teachers alike. It is an essential read for both in-service and pre-service teachers, as well as a viable resource for education researchers and research students, and general lay readers with an interest in the future of education.

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