2025/03/24 by Ciara O’Donnell · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Education Systems and Policy #Innovative Education and Learning Practices #Teacher Education and Leadership Studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/03323315.2025.2479444
openalex publication_date 2025/03/24 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/14
This article draws from a study investigating the professional learning and experience acquired by teachers seconded to an Irish continuing professional development support service. The study also aimed to discover how secondment influenced their professional identities and the extent to which what they had learned was transferred to, and harnessed in, the post-secondment workplace. Semi-structured interviews explored this with teachers who following their secondment had either returned ‘home’ to school or taken alternative education roles in ‘pastures new’. The theoretical framework (O’Donnell 2023) presented career stages navigated by these teachers from entering the service through to their post-secondment career destinations. This article focuses chiefly on the stage when the teachers depart the service and commence their post-secondment roles. For those returning to school the results show a distinct underutilisation of their learning and a destabilisation of their newly-formed identities while data indicate variance in this regard across other destination settings. In the first instance, recommendations support O’Donnell’s (2023) call for a review of current secondment tenure conditions. Moreover and with particular reference to the return to school, they signal a need for re-entry supports and post-secondment career pathways compatible with transformed identities while optimally harnessing knowledge and skills acquired during secondment.