A new approach to understanding the global teacher supply crisis

Recurrent teacher shortages have been a long-standing problem for many countries. Governments have invested billions in policy responses, but none have been shown to be very effective in addressing teacher supply issues. Part of the problem may be that interventions have tended to overemphasise the importance of teachers’ pay and working conditions, and neglected the wider range of factors that can influence whether someone decides to become or remain a teacher. Past research may have also failed to distinguish between inconsistent conceptions of teacher shortage, masking important findings. In this chapter, we discuss our ongoing research to advance understanding of teacher shortages by comparing countries that have and have not experienced different forms of teacher supply issue, using a Qualitative Comparative Approach. The findings will then be synthesised with the results of more traditional comparative analyses, a systematic review of the most promising interventions, and ten in-depth case studies of countries. The analysis is the first to model different types of shortage separately (e.g. long-term, short-term, general, subject-specific, and geographically specific shortages). It also considers political, sociological, economic, and occupational factors, and the interaction between them. The results will be of interest to a wide range of stakeholders, including policymakers, wanting to develop more effective and targeted interventions.