‘I did not feel any passion for my teaching’: a narrative inquiry of beginning teacher attrition in China

This study conceptualises teacher attrition as a dynamic process of identity construction and interpretation in shifting professional knowledge landscapes, which attunes to both individual and contextual milieus. From this perspective, this narrative inquiry describes the attrition experiences of two Chinese beginning teachers after two years of employment in two middle schools after being prepared in the Free Teacher Education (FTE) Program. Specifically, the beginning teachers experienced tensions in their ‘stories to live by’, characterised by the motivations for joining the FTE Program and the unsupportive professional landscapes. The ‘stories to leave by’ came to dominate their identities when the teachers could no longer sustain their images of who they thought they could be as curriculum makers. Other contextual elements included the burden of school administration and rigid teacher evaluation policies. The implications for fostering teacher identity development are discussed, especially for beginning teachers coming from the FTE Program in China.