ARTICLE IN PRESS

Teaching and Teacher Education 21 (2005) 967–983

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Educational change takes ages: Life, career and generational

factors in teachers’ emotional responses to educational change
Andy Hargreaves
Thomas More Brennan Chair in Education, Lynch School of Education, Boston College, 140 Commonwealth Avenue, Campion Hall,
Chestnut Hill, MA 02467-3813, USA

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship of the emotions of teaching to teachers’ age and career stages based on
experiences of educational change. Drawing on an analysis of interviews with 50 Canadian elementary, middle and high
school teachers it analyzes how teachers respond emotionally to educational change at different ages and stages of
career, and also how they attribute age and career-based responses to their colleagues.
r 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Educational change; Emotions of teaching; Teachers’ careers; Teachers’ lives

1. Introduction in stages and passages (Sheehy, 1996), each

When educational change occurs or is at-
tempted, teachers do not all respond in the same
way. Teachers’ gender (Datnow, 2000), subject
specialty (Goodson, 1988) and personal orienta-
tions to change (Hall & Hord, 1987), for instance,
can all affect how they respond to specific
educational changes and to change in general.
Among the most important of these influences is
teachers’ age, as well as their stage of career.
Ageing is not just a process of chronological
accumulation—a gradual accretion of weariness or
wisdom. Rather, people tend to move through life
Tel.: +1 617 552 0680.
E-mail address: hargrean@bc.edu.
carrying a distinct and distinctive orientation to
the world and the place of their self within it.
Drawing on Levinson’s classic attempt to docu-
ment these passages in his Seasons of a Man’s Life
(Levinson, 1986), a number of educational re-
searchers have set out to identify and interpret the
‘‘seasons’’ or stages of teachers’ lives and of their
careers in particular (Sikes, Measor, & Woods,
1985; Huberman, 1993). While much of this work
has tended to portray teachers as moving through
definable life and career stages in a predictable,
timeless and universal way, in practice teachers’
careers and lives vary among different kinds of
teachers and across different cultures and times
(Goodson, 1985). Acker (1995), for instance, has
shown that women’s careers in teaching are often

0742-051X/$ - see front matter r 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.tate.2005.06.007
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
968 A. Hargreaves / Teaching and Teacher Education 21 (2005) 967–983
experienced and constructed quite differently, and
less plan-fully than men’s.
The time of one’s life is also intricately
connected to the life of one’s times. Through their
careers, teachers and others carry with them
meanings and missions that define and are derived
from their particular generation—missions that
drive their sense of purpose and for which some of
them come to feel nostalgic in later career (Good-
son, Moore, & Hargreaves, 2005). Thus, younger
teachers today, for example, may not be comple-
tely like the younger teachers that their older
colleagues remember being (Johnson et al., 2004).
Teachers, that is, are defined not just by their age
or even career stage, but also by their generation.
So too are teachers’ experiences and understand-
ings of educational change.
One way of understanding difference of any
kind—race, gender or age, for example, is by
examining people’s emotional responses to change
in relation to their own identity. This whole article
draws on a larger project undertaking just such an
examination of the emotions of teaching and
educational change. The project itself draws on
and synthesizes a range of theoretical frameworks
for understanding emotions. Two concepts are
particularly pertinent for the section of the
analysis on which the present article is based:
emotional understanding and emotional geogra-
phies (Hargreaves, 2001). According to Denzin
(1984, p. 137), emotional understanding
is an intersubjective process requiring that one
person enter into the field of experience of
another and experience for herself the same or
similar experiences experienced by another. The
subjective interpretation of another’s emotional
experience from one’s own standpoint is central
to emotional understanding. Shared and share-
able emotionality lie at the core of what it
means to understand and meaningfully enter
into the emotional experiences of another.
Teaching, learning and leading all draw upon
emotional understanding as people reach into the
past store of their own emotional experience to
interpret and unravel, instantaneously, at-a-
glance, the emotional experiences and responses
of others. Denzin describes how emotional under-
standing can be established through a number of
means, including emotional ‘‘infection’ (spreading
optimistic or pessimistic moods to others); vicar-
ious emotional understanding (where we em-
pathize with people’s lives or predicaments
through theatre or literature, for example); sharing
emotional experience (as when families experience
a wedding or bereavement); and by developing
long-standing, close relationships to others. With-
out such relationships, teachers (indeed anyone)
are prone to experience emotional misunderstand-
ing where they ‘‘mistake their feelings for the
feelings of the other.’’ (Denzin, 1984, p. 134).
Where such close relationships do not exist in
schools, and teachers do not know students well
(Sizer, 1992), teachers can easily misconstrue
student exuberance for hostility, or parent respect
for agreement, for example. Here, teachers view
students’ emotions as extensions of their own, or
they treat students’ emotions stereotypically,
attributing typical emotional states to whole
groups such as grade levels, high or low tracks,
or entire cultural minorities, for example.
The same is true in teachers’ relations with
colleagues, where lack of closeness in relationship
or of similarity in identity threaten the bases for
effective emotional understanding. As Denzin
argues, emotional misunderstanding is a pervasive
and chronic feature of everyday interactions where
people’s identities differ and human engagements
are not based on the kind of shared experience that
fosters close and common understanding that
offers the chance to bridge the differences. Emo-
tional understanding and misunderstanding in
teaching result from what I term emotional
geographies. These consist of the spatial and
experiential patterns of closeness and/or distance
in human interactions and relationships that help
create, configure and color the feelings and
emotions we experience about ourselves, our world
and each other.
The concept of emotional geographies helps us
identify the supports for and threats to the basic
emotional bonds and understandings of schooling
that arise from forms of distance or closeness in
people’s interactions or relationships.
This paper focuses on one area of the data set—
teachers’ age-based and age-attributed responses
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A. Hargreaves / Teaching and Teacher Education 21 (2005) 967–983
to educational change—to demonstrate one aspect
of these emotional geographies at work, especially
in terms of the implications of the demographic
divide between different teacher ages and genera-
tions, the forms of empathy that are encountered
across the divide, and their implications for
educational policy. The paper does not focus on
the language or even vocabulary of emotions
among teachers in the project—though more of
that is available elsewhere (Hargreaves, Beatty,
Lasky, Schmidt, & Wilson, 2006). Instead, occur-
rences of critical incidents, occasions of positive
and negative emotions of educational change, plus
age-related experiences of change evoke articula-
tions of closeness and distance, empathy and its
lack, among teachers. This in turn highlights how
empathy is not just a matter of psychological
competence or disposition (Goleman, 1995), but
also arises out of particular conditions of human
difference as well as forms of relationship and
interaction that lead to these differences being
bridged through closeness or breeched through
distance.
2. Methodology
This article reports part of a study on the
emotions of teaching, among 50 elementary and
secondary teachers of varying ages, different
grades and a range of subjects across 15 schools
in Ontario, Canada. The portion drawn upon here
concentrated on how teachers’ emotional experi-
ences of educational change varied over the course
of their lives and careers.
The study in general was the first explicit and
deliberate attempt to investigate the emotional
aspects of teaching and of teachers’ responses to
educational change. For many reasons, emotional
experience is notoriously difficult to investigate.
Emotional experience is hard to articulate (Lup-
ton, 1998). The language used to describe emo-
tions varies cross-culturally and between different
occupations (Lutz & Abu-Lughod, 1990). Difficult
emotions may be repressed or denied (Saltzberger-
Wittenberg, Henry & Osborne, 1983). Expressions
of vulnerability may be regarded as personally or
professionally inappropriate (Lasky, 2004), exag-
969
gerating the common tendency in interviews to
present credible rather than authentic accounts of
one’s own actions (Hammersley & Atkinson,
1983).
In the end, only detailed ethnographic or
anthropological study that investigates people’s
experiences and expressions of emotions in action
offers the opportunity for highly verifiable and
richly valid accounts of people’s emotional lives
and experiences. But in the first instance, where a
new field is being opened up and some major
patterns and potential lines of inquiry need to be
established, interviews offer an approach that
gives access to personal experience, some flexibility
in responding to and probing of people’s accounts
of it and an initial opportunity to identify patterns
of similarity and difference in emotional experi-
ence.
To this end, the interview study conducted with
50 Ontario teachers was constructed on the basis
of productive lines of methodological approach
suggested by earlier research. This was after initial
and unsuccessful piloted efforts to encourage
teachers to talk directly about named emotions
in their professional life in terms of experiences of
anger, happiness, frustration, shame and so on.
Not only did this direct approach create difficulties
by decontextualizing named emotions from the
moment of their occurrence, but it failed to
grapple with the challenge that some named
emotions such as shame are regarded as culturally
inappropriate to discuss and disclose in Western
societies (Scheff, 1990).
Instead, therefore, our interview approach firstly
followed the foundational work of Hochschild
(1983) on emotional labor and reframed questions
she had posed to her participants about times
when they had felt the need to manufacture or
suppress emotions when circumstances seemed to
demand it. Second, following a tradition of work
on critical incident analysis (Sikes et al., 1985;
Tripp, 1993), we asked teachers to concentrate on
and recall in detail vivid moments and experiences
of positive and negative emotions in relation to
interactions with colleagues, students, parents and
administrators, (e.g. Hargreaves, 2001). Sikes et al.
(1985, p. 57) note that, ‘‘critical incidents are
useful areas to study because they reveal, like a
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970 A. Hargreaves / Teaching and Teacher Education 21 (2005) 967–983
flashbulb, the major choice and change times in
people’s lives.’’ They focus experience, provide a
context for it, embed it in a compelling narrative
that is emotionally evocative and make it real.
Critical incidents push people past vague euphe-
misms and bland generalities, embedding their
recollections in the gritty details of significant
experience. Because of their conceptual elusiveness
when confronted directly, emotions and emotional
experiences are particularly appropriate candi-
dates for critical incident methodology.
Third, experiences and expressions of emotion
vary culturally and demographically according to
ethno-cultural identity, gender, occupation and
age. We therefore decided to ask people directly
about how these aspects of identity affected their
own experiences and expressions of emotion, as
well as how these emotional phenomena mani-
fested themselves among people with whom they
interacted from different age-groups, cultures or
genders. We were surprised by how articulate and
effusive respondents were in reflecting on their
identities in these terms, and the emotional
components of them.
In short, direct interrogation of people’s emo-
tional experience through named emotions seemed
to prove unproductive because of the cultural and
professional taboos surrounding some emotions,
and because of variations in the language that
people use to describe their own emotions com-
pared to official vocabularies of emotion. How-
ever, approaching emotional experience through
investigation of identity, or of critical incidents
where people have felt particularly positive or
negative emotion or experienced the necessity to
manufacture or suppress emotions, seems to prove
much more methodologically productive and
evocative.
In relation to the analysis conducted here,
teachers were asked whether, and in what ways
they felt their own emotional response to teaching
had changed over the years, and whether they felt
their emotional reactions to change were similar to
or different from their older and/or younger
colleagues. Through these two questions, we were
therefore able to examine teacher’s espoused
recollections of their own emotional changes as
teachers over their careers, and also to elicit the
attributions they made to other teachers’ emo-
tional experiences of educational change at differ-
ent stages of life and career.
Forty-two teachers out of a sample of 50
answered these questions. The teachers were
divided into three ‘age and stage’ career groups
to compare responses. Seven teachers were in early
career, with 5 years experience or less. Five of
these teachers were in their 20s, with the other two
being late starters in their late 30s and early 40s.
Fourteen teachers were in late career with over 20
years of experience in the profession. The 21
remaining teachers had been in teaching between 6
and 19 years and were categorized as ‘mid-career’
teachers. Nine of these had been teaching for 6–10
years, seven had been in the profession for 11–15
years, and the remaining five had been teaching for
between 16 and 20 years.
The findings of the article are presented in terms
of comparisons between expressed recollections
and assigned attributions of age and career stage—
influenced responses to educational change among
the three career stage groups.
3. Early career
In the first few years of their career in teaching,
new teachers are typically finding their feet as
professionals and as people. The existing literature
on teachers’ careers suggests that at this point, the
new teachers who are also young adults are trying
to establish their basic confidence and competence
as professionals. Can they manage large groups of
students? Will the children like them? Do they
have the respect of their colleagues? And can
they, in Lortie’s (1975) terms, successfully cross to
‘‘the other side of the desk’’ and now establish
themselves as assertive adults in an institution
where they spent many years as tractable or
truculent children?
Teachers begin their careers with either easy or
painful beginnings (Huberman, 1993). Those with
painful beginnings often find themselves thrown
into demanding and overwhelming social contexts,
teaching children in conditions of violence and
poverty, with few material resources and little
adult support (Becker, 1952). New teachers who
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A. Hargreaves / Teaching and Teacher Education 21 (2005) 967–983
take up appointments in schools where the adult
culture is centered around the demographically
and politically dominant group of experienced
colleagues (Johnson et al., 2004), quickly find
themselves isolated and unsupported, prone to
concentrate on survival in and compliance with the
existing culture—especially where other job op-
portunities are scarce (Schempp, Sparkes, &
Templin, 1993). They are inclined to abandon
the ideals of their youth and their teacher
education (Hargreaves & Jacka, 1995), and are
the most likely to leave the profession within the
first 3 years.
Young teachers in hard-to-staff urban schools,
or newly established charter schools, may find
themselves in novice-oriented cultures (Johnson et
al., 2004), energized by being surrounded by
kindred spirits, but exhausted and prone to
burnout due to the demands of constant curricu-
lum writing and absence of mentoring support
(Nias, 1989).
Teachers who experience easier beginnings often
find themselves in mixed cultures of youth and
experience, where mentoring is part of a wider
culture of collegiality and commitment
(Hargreaves & Fullan, 2000). This moral and
technical support helps preserve their sense of
mission and develop resilience to obstacles and
difficulties.
As they wrestle with the challenges of a
demanding profession, young teachers also strug-
gle to define and delineate themselves as people
(Sikes et al., 1985). Their weaker sense of ego
boundary, it has been argued, makes it harder to
collaborate with others around them, lest their
sense of self is weakened or invaded (Fuller, 1969;
Leithwood, 1992). Who they are as people, what
they stand for, what wisdom and knowledge they
confidently possess to pass on to their students,
whether they themselves have sustaining and
enduring relationships—these are the challenges
of early adulthood that accompany the quest of
learning and teaching. Older entrants who move
into teaching from other lives and careers bring
more experience, knowledge and maturity to the
profession, from being parents or professionals
elsewhere, but they often also bring somewhat
solidified views about knowledge, learning and
971
children that can hinder their ability to adapt to
the teacher’s role of today (Bullough, Knowles, &
Crow, 1991).
The data from the early career teachers in the
Emotions of Teaching study largely support but
also raise questions about these existing and
longstanding interpretations about early career
teachers and their responses to educational
change. Three themes characterized early career
teachers’ responses to educational change, in their
own eyes as well as in the attributions made to
them by colleagues in later career. Young, early
career teachers were enthusiastic young selves,
who were part of an adaptable generation, work-
ing in an uncertain and insecure occupational
environment.
In early career, teachers seem to experience their
work with emotional directness and intensity—
though this quickly changes as teachers learn the
essential emotional labor of teaching (Hochschild,
1983)—to manage and moderate their emotions in
order to match what the job demands of them. A
teacher in her first 5 years reflected how
When I first started—Day 1—I was a keener—a
‘‘Go get ‘em, I can conquer Mount Everest’’—
teacher. I have become much more realistic and
more docile about my profession now. I am
much more accepting of the things that go on. I
am a little less optimistic at times.
Reflecting how the cultural role of many
professions requires emotional distance and sup-
pression as a symbol of cultivation or distinction,
she continued to observe how ‘‘I am definitely
more open minded and y more educated now’’
(T18). A colleague in her late 20s similarly
remarked on how she had become much better at
dealing with the emotions of teaching.
I still a have long way to go, though. I think I’ve
become better at knowing when it’s worth being
emotional about something and knowing when
it’s not. And I also don’t get as stressed as
easily, and I don’t get as upset as easily as I used
to. Everything was a big deal when I first
started teaching. Whereas I’ve learned that life
can be too much of a big deal; don’t let the
small stuff bother you (T9).
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972 A. Hargreaves / Teaching and Teacher Education 21 (2005) 967–983
When asked to reflect on their younger collea-
gues’ or their own earlier, younger selves, a
number of teachers pointed to the often admirable,
frequently infectious but sometimes questionable
enthusiasms of youth. Younger ones, a mid-career
teacher said, ‘‘are still full of enthusiasm’’ which is
‘‘catchy’’ (T15). They might lack the tools of
classroom management and experience ‘‘a lot
more frustration when you are younger, disci-
pline-wise’’ (T17); they might tend to take their
students’ problems home with them, as a male
teacher in his late 30s commented (T19); and they
might lack confidence and be ‘‘quite frightened’’
by what they originally see in their classes (T25).
But overall, it is energy and enthusiasm that are
the major recollections and attributions of youth.
Young people are ‘‘very enthusiastic and ener-
getic’’ (T28). A teacher in her early 40s observed
how ‘‘when you’re young and you’re just starting
out, you want to change the world. I think that’s
the enthusiasm we’re seeing’’ (T35). Sometimes,
the enthusiasm does not last long—‘‘you come in
with the ideas of ‘I want to change everything and
I’m going to be amazing’’’ remarked one teacher in
her late 30s, ‘‘and that lasts about two classes.’’
But the accusation often directed against the
supposedly calculative character of Generation
X-ers in teaching was not apparent among these
novice teachers’ older colleagues. Praising the
‘‘real eagerness’’ and ‘‘real enthusiasm’’ she saw
among today’s young teachers, a teacher in her
early 30s commented how
I’ve heard people say that they’ve heard that the
people coming out of education now, going to
become teachers, are more in the business sense
of ‘I work from 9 to 3 and that’s it!’ But I
haven’t seen that. I haven’t seen that business
side of teaching (T32).
Enthusiasm does not simply exude through the
pores of youth, like perspiration or adrenaline. It
is linked to habits and orientations of adaptability
and flexibility that today’s young people have
acquired through their personal lives and profes-
sional socialization. The younger ‘‘rising genera-
tion of teachers’’ in today’s schools, note Johnson
et al. (2004, pp. 251-2), ‘‘is not simply a younger
version of the retiring generation; it is a different
generation altogether.’’ ‘‘Teachers within this
generation,’’ Johnson and her colleagues continue,
are less accepting of top-down hierarchy and
fixed channels of communication, less respectful
of conventional organizations, and generally
more entrepreneurial than their predecessors
(p. 252).
This new generation of teachers is also more
flexible, adaptable, accepting and even enthusiastic
in its dealings with educational and other kinds of
change. Younger teachers as younger people ‘‘are
probably more receptive towards or tolerant of
change’’ (T6—late 40s). In the words of a teacher
in her early 50s, ‘‘younger teachers today are
experiencing change as part of life. We don’t. We
think everything has got to be status quo every-
dayyand change is a bit of upset to us’’ (T26).
‘‘As an older person you take everything so
seriously’’ said a colleague in her late 50s, but
‘‘when you’re younger, you just push it aside and
you just keep going’’ (T52).
One teacher in early career yet also in his mid-
30s as well as his third career, observed that his
younger peers were ‘‘more amenable to change’’,
because of their life and times, ‘‘growing up in an
age where change has been demanded of them,
where they’ve had to learn to change’’ (T23). A
colleague in his late 50s concurred when he noted
that ‘‘they have grown up being involved in and
accustomed to several changes in their school
lifeyconstant change,’’ as they have moved from
school to school then on to university and beyond
(T53). A relatively new teacher in her early 40s,
observed that her younger counterparts ‘‘deal with
change every single day and they thrive on it. It
makes the world very exciting for them’’ (T4). In
many ways, these young teachers were like the
generation of ‘‘new individualists’’ described by
Leinberger and Tucker (1991)—people who learn
to accept and even embrace personal and occupa-
tional change in a world that is increasingly
uncertain and insecure.
Younger teachers were represented by their
older colleagues as being caught in an immanent
present, untramelled by a past of which they had
no memory and which they could not change, and
facing a future they did not yet know. These
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A. Hargreaves / Teaching and Teacher Education 21 (2005) 967–983
teachers were ‘‘probably more apt to accept the
change a little quicker because they haven’t been in it
so long’’ (T8). They ‘‘have the advantage that they
just haven’t had time to be set in their ways yet’’
(T50). Unlike older colleagues, they had no previous
experience against which to compare changes in the
present. There was no time for which they could yet
be nostalgic (Goodson et al., 2005), no lost past that
they could mourn, and compared to which they now
felt deprived (Runciman, 1966; Evans, 2000). As a
teacher in his late 50s observed, young teachers
‘‘wouldn’t know that’’ previous changes ‘‘didn’t
work as well’’ or ‘‘were a complete washout’’
(T53). Young teachers were without adult history
or professional memory and while this might make
them adaptable, it also hampered their capacity to
understand what foundations their older colleagues
had laid for them.
My younger colleagues will not have known the
days when there were no labor laws governing
teachersyThey would not have known about
1973ywhen we marched on (the Government
buildings) and caused (a major Bill) to be
instituted—and I was an integral part of
thatyThey would not have remembered when
the Federation had to strive hard for a living
wageyand so they will have a different
emotion (T14-60s).
Yet adaptability to change was not seen merely
as resulting from ignorance of prior change efforts
and experiences, or of better work environments
that current change efforts had eclipsed. The rising
generation of younger teachers had also been
actively socialized into working with change—
through their teacher preparation and their
current conditions of employment. One young
teacher reflected how ‘‘through teacher’s college
you always had the perspective that change was
good. In teacher’s college I saw change as a very
positive thing’’ (T49).
Teacher education had prepared beginning
teachers not just to deal well with change in
general, but also to understand and be able to
implement the changes encompassed by the
current reform environment in particular. They
had no habits to abolish nor practices to abandon.
The new curriculum was the curriculum they had
973
been prepared to teach. It was the only one they
knew.
Colleagues who have just finished their teacher
education are probably more familiar with the
Common Curriculum. That has probably been
taught to them at their university compared to
someone who has been in the profession for a
number of years (T5).
While older teachers ‘‘tend to really resist new
change and what the learning outcomes are all
about’’, ‘‘ythe younger ones that are coming
straight out of college have learned ‘outcomes’ so
they don’t know anything different’’ (T3).
Armed with the enthusiasms of youth and the
adaptability of their generation, the young tea-
chers who participated in or were talked about by
other participants in our study, also entered a
profession at a time of job scarcity as the mass
retirements of the Boomer generation cohort were
still awaited, and as resource reductions led to
cutbacks in job opportunities. Young teachers
who were ‘‘so desperate for jobs’’ were ready to
‘‘get psyched up about any change going on,
because just to be part of any scene would be
better than not being part of a career’’ (T12). To
keep a job and a career, they had to be prepared
and ‘‘able to teach all kinds of things’’ (T15). In
one district that had shed 50 teaching positions
over the previous 5 years, one young colleague had
been teaching 7 years but was still without a secure
position (T13). These young teachers faced ‘‘in-
credible insecurity’’ and ‘‘turmoil’’ in their condi-
tions of employment (T19). They had ‘‘uncertainty
of their job and tenure’’ and were ‘‘concerned
about whether they are going to stay’’ (T20).
It was these insecurities surrounding job tenure
rather than insecurities concerning educational
reform that were most pressing for early career
teachers. As a teacher in his late 30s observed,
whereas ‘‘older people are really upset about
(educational) changes, the younger people get
really upset about job changes to actual career
and what’s going on’’ (T51).
And yet, out of anxiety and insecurity came at
least temporary adaptability. A mid-career French
teacher felt that
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974 A. Hargreaves / Teaching and Teacher Education 21 (2005) 967–983
A lot of the younger teachers have to change so
much because they can’t stay in the schools for
more than a year at a time. So change is just
part of their life. It’s not something that they
have to think about because they just have to
do it. Whereas, if somebody came up to me and
said, ‘‘Madame, there’s no job for you here next
year,’’ that would be a big change. But the
younger people have to say, ‘‘Well, I might be
here next year and I might not. And probably
I won’t because there won’t be a job’’ (T8).
An even older colleague reflected that
I guess I grew up at a time when you got a job
and then retired 30 years later. They are
growing up in a situation where you have
maybe a part-time job and a contract tomorrow
and another job for two or three years. They are
in constant flux or change. I think they take it
more in their stride. They are maybe more
willing to change (T16).
Like the parents of Leinberger and Tucker’s
(1991) young generation of new individualists,
older colleagues worried about the occupational
insecurities facing younger teachers at a time of
budget cuts, resource shortages and difficulties of
securing permanent jobs or contracts. Yet, as they
also acknowledged, younger teachers had learned
and been prepared to flex and adapt in this
changing career market—and had become prag-
matic, phlegmatic and sometimes even enthusiastic
about doing so in this new career context of
teaching. Current job and curriculum conditions
were the only ones they knew. Past benefits and
seemingly superior worklives were ones that only
older colleagues experienced with mourning or
loss. Yet there were no signs yet of the emergence
of the more cynical, calculative identities among
teachers observed among Troman’s (1996) genera-
tion of ‘‘new professionals’’. The new professionals
in this study were flexible and pragmatic, but they
all remained principled and passionate about their
work, rather than restraining their commitments
and patrolling their time. However, as younger
teachers enter a redefined profession in demogra-
phically larger numbers, it is an open question
whether this orientation will persist.
4. Later career
At the opposite end of the lifespan to beginning
teachers are teachers nearing the end of their
career, with two decades or more of experiences of
teaching and change behind them. The classic
research on teachers in later career shows several
paths rather than a singular track of career
development. Not counting those who leave the
classroom, Huberman’s (1993) study of teachers’
lives, identifies four dominant career trajectories in
the later years. The few teachers who experience
continuing renewal (more typical of mid rather
than late career) are able to keep finding and to be
offered the new opportunities that have challenged
them beyond as well as within their own class-
rooms throughout most of their career. The rest—
also the majority—take one of three other paths.
As they experience many changes throughout
their long career, and see the change focus shift
from one initiative to the next, many teachers in
later career whose energy is beginning to wane,
and who have built up other obligations and
interests in their lives, become positive focusers
who decide to spend their few remaining years in
the profession by concentrating their improvement
efforts in the small world of their own classrooms
and students, where they believe they can best
make a difference. These teachers are not embit-
tered, but have become wise and serene in deciding
how, in the autumn of their work life, to conserve
their energy and pass on lasting wisdom to young
and developing minds.
Negative focusers, by contrast, have always
pursued a more restricted version of professional-
ism—constructing their work largely to protect
self-interest rather than serve student needs. As
they age and gain increased formal or informal
influence, they are able to marshal increased
micropolitical resources to find the easiest sche-
dules and students, and to find ways to resist and
undermine the change and improvement efforts
that threaten them. Negative focusers are the arch-
typical archetypal examples of resistance to
change, the bane of administrators’ lives. They
are regularly demonized as expendable baggage in
popular leadership texts (e.g. Dufour & Eaker,
1998).
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A. Hargreaves / Teaching and Teacher Education 21 (2005) 967–983
Negative focusers are easily confused with their
close career counterparts (Maurer, 1996; Har-
greaves & Fullan, 1998), Huberman’s (1993)
disenchanted. Throughout their early and mid-
career, this tragic group have often committed
themselves wholeheartedly to two or three large-
scale reform or whole school change efforts, only
to be let down and see their efforts wasted, as the
change focus has shifted, resources have been
withdrawn and leaders and change champions
have moved on. For the disenchanted, the magic
of teaching has literally gone as their optimism and
idealism have been crashed on the rocks of
capricious reform processes, repetitive change
syndromes (Abrahamson, 2004), and successions
of leaders with serially contradictory visions. In
later career, the disenchanted are likely to number
among the most vociferous opponents of repeated
educational change efforts, especially where the
motives of reform designers and school-level
implementers are suspect (Bailey, 2000). Disen-
chanted teachers in later career are nostalgic for
the periods when they have experienced brief and
youthful innovative success in the past (Goodson
et al., 2005), yet are easily made to feel margin-
alized by incoming administrators and ‘‘gung-ho’’
reformers who have no memory, knowledge,
curiosity about or respect for these teachers’ past
experiences and achievements (Riseborough,
1980).
There were 14 teachers in our study with 21 or
more years of experience in the profession, who
discussed their views about ageing, emotion and
change. These older teachers find themselves losing
energy and transferring some of what remains to
their personal lives, they are generationally aware
of the influence of impending retirement and of the
need to have their contributions recognized before
they move on, and they use the deep vessel of their
experience and the unsinkable status that comes
with upcoming retirement to be resistant towards
and resilient in the face of unwanted change.
Older, late career teachers, portray themselves
as experiencing decreasing energy along with
increasing commitments elsewhere in their lives
that also drain that energy. Seasoned teachers had
to remind themselves that they were ‘‘tired and it’s
not the kids’ fault’’ (T45). Speaking toward the
975
end of the school year, a high school teacher in her
late 40s said,
Sometimes I don’t find that I have the same
amount of physical energy. I may find that my
patience may dissipate much quicker than when
I was younger. There are a lot more physical
demands outside of the job too. Sometimes that
doesn’t give you a nice balanceyI do find that
at this time of the year I am at an all-time
emotional low. There are so many things going
on in the school that take kids out of my
classroom in terms of sports, awards assem-
blies, proms, and so many other aspects. That
really wears me down because the kids come in
and ask if they missed anything and if I can help
them to get caught up. I am more than willing
to do it but that is what really wears me down—
when I have to repeat something three times or
more (T1).
When confronted with change, while one
teacher admitted to finding it difficult to control
his negative emotional reactions and to experien-
cing insomnia (T45), most took a more pragmatic
or assertively questioning stance. Teachers who
had seen the rate of change and reform accelerate,
and had been victims of repetitive change syn-
drome (Abrahamson, 2004) where successive
changes had passed through their school, felt there
were ‘‘too many changes too fast; not enough time
to deal with one particular change’’ which made
them feel ‘‘not as positive’’ about teaching, as they
once had (T5). Because they had ‘‘seen all of them
before’’, they saw no point in trying to anticipate
change, to ‘‘run around trying to change things
before you knew exactly what they (the Govern-
ment) have done.’’ Instead it was better to ‘‘adapt
and work with it’’ only when this change
eventually came through (T30).
Older teachers were more ‘‘likely to resist
change’’ (T16) and be ‘‘more questioning of it’’—
demanding they be shown ‘‘it is relevant and that it
will improve the situation’’ (T6). Teachers in late
career would question reform, question their
teaching arrangements, ‘‘question everything’’ in
their work environment, if necessary (T52). A
teacher just 2 years from retirement said that while
‘‘earlier on I would resist the change, like not
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976 A. Hargreaves / Teaching and Teacher Education 21 (2005) 967–983
doing it, be tardy, procrastinate,’’ now he was
‘‘more outspoken’’ and ‘‘would question it di-
rectly’’ (T53). With supportive leadership, though,
this outspokenness could be turned into an
assertiveness that could give flexibility and latitude
to the teacher while providing benefits for student
learning. Thus, one teacher in his 40s, noted how
I design my own program, and do what I do in
my program. But the principal is important
here. He or she has to allow me to do that. And
I’ll only teach for those type of people. If
they’re too heavy handed about Board pro-
gramming, I won’t be there long.
Yet, while teachers in late career were more
outspoken outside the classroom, they felt they
became more relaxed and accommodating in their
relationships with students within it. They were
more ‘‘even-tempered now’’ with ‘‘the toughest
kids’’ who needed teachers who would understand
and accept them (T16). They became ‘‘more
pragmatic’’ and accepting in the knowledge gained
over the years that
some things are not going to change dramati-
cally. There are problems that any school has
and every new administrator sets out to solve
the problem but the problems are time im-
memorial. They are not necessarily solvable
problems. They are ongoing issues that are
continually annoying—student attendance, stu-
dent behavior in class, dealing with adolescent
peopleyThese things don’t go away (T6).
As a colleague in her early 50s reflected, ‘‘when
you’re older, you know the past and there’s good
and bad days, so you take it more in your stride’’
(T29).
In the later career stages, as we have seen,
teachers sought out the schools, the principals, the
programs that suited their interests and enthu-
siasms. Their remaining years in the profession
were precious to them. They did not want to be
ground down by the impositions of unwanted
reform. They wanted their last years ‘‘to be the
best they can be’’ (T31). One teacher in her 50s had
chosen to recapture the meaning of her own past
by going back to a school where ‘‘there’s a teacher
I taught with years ago and he’s still there, and I
think it’ll be fun to go back and teach with
someone (that you knew)’’ (T29). Another teacher,
who was the oldest teacher on her staff and
disliked being ‘‘subjected to the horrendous
change’’ of the new reform, ‘‘felt good about older
teachers’’ but wished their knowledge, vision and
professional memory could be ‘‘listened to more’’.
It really bothers me that we’re little pawns now.
We just have to deal with it all. And (as older
experienced teachers) we’re seen more in a
position where we really know what we’re doing
in my class (T26).
‘‘We can help our kids’’, she pleaded, ‘‘just give
us a chance.’’
Mid-career teachers who were beginning to
glimpse the final years of the teaching career
ahead of them, had empathy for their older
colleagues. They recognized that their late-career
colleagues could not all be lumped together in one
category and that their reactions were complex
and varied. Some older colleagues were seen as
being generally reluctant to change, some as being
beaten down and defeated, while others seemed to
have become wiser, more phlegmatic and increas-
ingly accepting of the conditions of their worklife.
In almost all cases though, mid-career teachers
recognized that impending retirement had a
significant impact on their older colleagues.
For some mid-career teachers, their older
colleagues’ experiences with and perceptions of
change were a result of age, of a kind of physical
and psychological degeneration, of what Hunt
(1987) calls a ‘‘hardening of the categories’’. In the
view of one mid-career teacher, whereas younger
teachers ‘‘have to be able to teach all kinds of
things’’, if older teachers ‘‘lose their black binder
from the last 25 years, they’re in a panic’’ (T15).
To mid-career teachers, older colleagues ‘‘don’t
have those energy levels’’ to deal with change that
they find ‘‘just too much work and too draining’’
(T12). As a colleague remarked ‘‘they really do not
change for the most part. They are not interested
in learning new things. They are really stuck in
their old waysyjaded and cynical’’ (T3). Older
teachers were therefore sometimes uncomfortable
with new initiatives such as computer-based
instruction (T34). As a teacher in her late 30s
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A. Hargreaves / Teaching and Teacher Education 21 (2005) 967–983
reflected, ‘‘the longer you’ve been in the profes-
sion, the longer you have been doing something a
certain way, the more reluctant you are to change’’
(T40).
When the exhaustion that had accumulated over
a long career was combined with the exit
opportunities afforded by impending retirement,
the magnitude of teachers’ resistance to change
could be increased, as their mid-career colleagues
saw it.
I think people who are approaching the end of
their career are looking forward to things like
retirement and that sort of next phase in their
life. Their notion of educational change might
be cutting (their) wages, having to deal with
more kids when (they) are older and tired and
don’t care as much (T13).
Whereas ‘‘fear of change’’ might result from
many years of ‘‘always doing the same thing’’
(T35), most mid-career colleagues attributed older
colleagues’ change reactions to experiences and to
some extent weariness of many years of living with
repetitive change syndrome (Abrahamson, 2004).
‘‘Maybe as you get a little bit older, there is a little
more apathy—‘oh, another change!’’’ said a male
teacher in her early 30s (T17). A colleague in her
late 40s concurred.
I think people close to retirement must groan
every time they have to start again with a new
program. And I can understand that. And I do
experience that occasionally, you know—resis-
tance from some of the older teachers. And I
don’t know if it’s because they have the
confidence to speak out and say ‘no—we’ve
already got enough on our plates to handle.’ Or
whether it’s, ‘what I’ve been dong the last while
is fine. I don’t need to implement any changes.’
I’m not sure’’ (T7).
Another teacher in his late 30s felt that
older people are really upset about changes
y(and)yif the early retirement thing came
out, some of them would just say—‘I’m tired—
let me out—I don’t want to do this anymore.’
And I can quite understand that (T51).
977
When mid-career teachers watch their more
senior colleagues heading for retirement it seems to
make these colleagues feel ‘‘relieved’’ as they are
‘‘counting the days’’ (T20) and can ‘‘hardly wait’’
until they retire (T22). They understand that older
teachers’ ‘‘perspective changes the closer you get to
retirement’’ (T2)—especially after years of repeti-
tive change. This does not always seem to lead to
stereotypical reactions of resistance, though.
I think people who are older areythere’s this
woman who works here who’s just lovely. And
when the Common Curriculum came out and
everyone was getting stressed and wondering
how we were going to cross-reference and doing
everything, she was so calm. And I was
wondering how she could be so calm? And she
said she’d seen it all. It’s the pendulum swinging
and it will be gone in a couple of years. Don’t
sweat. And so she had a very calm, kind of like
omnipotent outlook on everything. It was just,
I’ve seen it. It happened. I’m nearing the end of
my career. I’ve seen all sorts of things. We
talked about all sorts of curriculum words that
come up. You know, ‘‘we’re doing this now,
and now we’re doing this. So it’s changing.’’
And I think that people who are nearing the end
of their careers, near retirement, have seen it,
have seen the change. And they’re accepting
that it’s going to happen (T32).
Well, sometimes the perception is that older
teachers are more reluctant to change, but I’m
not sure I agree with that label all the time
because I think that they have been through far
more changes than the young people that are
supposedly promoting these changes. So maybe
they’re just wiser and they’ve seen enough
changes to know what’s really going to make
a change and what’s not. There seems to be an
atmosphere of there has to be change every
single year or you’re not moving forward. And
that’s a very strong message that was given by
our principal when he first came here. He just
hammered that if you’re not moving forward
you’re falling backwards. And I don’t agree
(T47—early 30s).
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978 A. Hargreaves / Teaching and Teacher Education 21 (2005) 967–983
While one mid-career teacher felt that ‘‘older
teachers are a lot more ‘beaten down’ in the
particular change environment of mandated re-
form where they are blamed for not meeting the
reform’s vaguely defined goals’’ (T28), in most
cases, what mid-career teachers saw developing in
their older colleagues’ responses to change was
three things: an aging of the body that sapped
teachers’ energy, an accumulated experience of
repetitive change that curbed emotional outpour-
ings of either outrage or enthusiasm, and the
looming horizon of retirement that created sensa-
tions of relief and release as older teachers
approached the end of their careers.
While mid-career teachers were largely critical
of, but also charitable towards the responses to
change adopted by their professional elders, those
teachers furthest away from the end of the career
tended to see their senior colleagues in less
complex or empathetic terms. Unlike their mid-
career colleagues, they did not append the words ‘I
understand’ to their critical and sometimes caustic
evaluations. Instead, older colleagues were por-
trayed as tired, reluctant teachers who were
anticipating retirement and inured to efforts to
make them change.
One young teacher described how older teachers
‘‘just hate’’ change—‘‘the way they do it has
worked for them for twenty years, so why not keep
going in the same old way’’ (T44). Teachers ‘‘very
close to retiring’’ seemed to have ‘‘no interest in
the technical side at all’’ of changes such as
computer-based instruction, and preferred to stick
with their routines (T4). Young teachers recog-
nized that repetitive change syndrome could
exacerbate these inclinations towards inertia as
teachers neared retirement.
One early career teacher felt that repetitive
change syndrome raised questions from her own
generational perspective, about whether teaching
should be a lifelong career.
I think that the older teachers are much more
reluctant to change because it means more
work, first of all, and also, they’ve been through
so much already. And they think, ‘oh here we
go one more, yet another change that is going to
happen.’ And I think this profession tires you
out. And I think that it’s sad that it’s set up the
way it is, so that you really can’t leave early
without major penalty, which I understand
from a financial point of view. But it’s very
difficult because it’s not the kind of job that
everyone is meant to do until they hit retirement
(T9).
Another young teacher—again from her own
generational perspective—also realized how repe-
titive change syndrome exerted a range of effects
on an ageing demographic cohort of teachers
I have to perceive that reaction in older ones
that ‘Oh I’m eight years from retirement’, so
nothing they do nothing really matters and I see
it affecting me long term. So I think I do take it
much more not seriously. I do perceive that a
lot of people who are within a few years of
retirement are not as upset about it in some
ways. There are some people who just say, ‘‘I’m
going to retire. Who cares?’’ The other attitude
is ‘‘Oh I’ve seen this before. It’s just coming
back and it will swing back and it will go
away.’’ So that experience they have had, they
can see the changes gong back and forth so they
are not as worried about it (T49).
Seeing teachers ‘‘who are older and have been
through it’’ (T27), could help these young teachers
to realize that ‘‘it’s going to be ok’’, to give them a
sense of perspective about government interven-
tions that they themselves do not yet understand
(T10). This includes being critical about the
particularly questionable character or purpose of
the current reform movement.
There is also the aspect that it is different now
too; the way things will be done with the
government. There is more at stake than just
educational change, so I think in that respect
more people are worried about where politics
are going as a whole and not just the education
system (T49).
In their own eyes as well as those of their
colleagues, teachers in the closing years of their
career had developed a consistently critical re-
sponse to educational change and reform initia-
tives. The emotional expression of the critical and
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A. Hargreaves / Teaching and Teacher Education 21 (2005) 967–983
questioning stance could be calm or curmudgeonly
in character, but it always signaled older teachers’
reluctance to embrace educational change in a
wholehearted way. The tiring processes of ageing,
along with the tiresome effects of repetitive change
made teachers regard impending retirement with
feelings of relief and anticipation rather than
senses of loss and dread. The further away they
were from this final career point, the less under-
standing and empathic teachers were likely to be
about the complex effects of these life and career
trajectories on older teachers’ orientations to
change.
5. Mid-career
The major contrasts in experiences of and
responses to change among teachers in early and
later career respectively are summarized in Table
1. However, 21 teacher respondents in The
Emotions of Teaching project were not in the
early or later stages of their careers, but in between
these points. Ten had 6–10 years experience, six
had 11–15 years experience, and the remaining five
had accumulated 16–20 years.
Mid-career teachers were typically more relaxed,
experienced and comfortable about their job and
themselves than they had once been, but still
enthusiastic and flexible enough to respond to
change in a broadly positive way. There were rare
exceptions to this trend—Grade 7 and 8 teacher in
her early 40s who felt ‘‘disenchanted, disillusioned,
frustrated, overworked and unappreciated’’ and
was ‘‘not as positive about (her) job’’ as she used
to be (T12); and, at the other extreme, a teacher in
Table 1
Change and career stages
Early career
Drive and energy Energy
Emotional enthusiasm and intensity
Orientation to change Adaptability
Flexibility
Contextual sensitivity Employment insecurity
Occupational uncertainty
979
her early 40s, working in the sample’s most
innovative high school, who still had ‘‘a very
positive attitude to change’’ and ‘‘saw reform as
necessary’’ (T25).
In general, though, while teachers in the middle
years of their career might feel they ‘‘don’t have
those energy levels’’ they once had (T21), that they
were ‘‘less energetic, not as upbeat’’ (T21) in
investing the necessary effort in change, most felt
they were still open about and even better able to
cope with change because of their growing
competence, developing confidence, and equable
attitude to things. After the first 5 years of
teaching, there was ‘‘less frustration’’ about
student misbehavior and classroom discipline
(T17). Teachers became ‘‘more aware of where
(students) were coming fromy(and) more tolerant
of why they didn’t get the assignment done’’ (T15).
In mid-career, teacher development and perso-
nal development meant learning to insulate
themselves and create a little emotional distance
from students and their problems. Teachers
claimed to have ‘‘mellowed’’ and to be ‘‘wiser’’
and ‘‘thicker skinned’’ about not taking students’
problems home with them (T19); they were
‘‘calmeryable to laugh’’ and ‘‘did not get into
power struggles with kids anymore’’ (T22); they
were ‘‘more relaxed’’ and developed the ‘‘duck’s
back syndrome’’ where ‘‘a lot of things slide off’’
(T13), and they found that ‘‘the things that (they)
used to think were really, really important, weren’t
as important as they used to be’’ (T8).
Occasionally, if they were still lacking in
confidence, teachers might still ‘‘feel threatened
when things happen’’ and not have the strength yet
to ‘‘know when to call people’s bluff in terms of
Late career
Tiredness
Emotional distance, relaxation and relief
Resistance
Resilience
Impending retirement
Unsinkability
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980 A. Hargreaves / Teaching and Teacher Education 21 (2005) 967–983
the new changes coming down’’, because of ‘‘still
being worried about the consequences of not
following the rules’’ (T51). But most teachers felt
they were becoming more confident during this
period of their lives and careers, and more able to
cope with change. They were ‘‘more confident
aboutystudents, how you’re dealing with them,
how the changes impact upon them’’ (T25). One
teacher with still less than ten years in the
profession spoke of the desirability of creating
some emotional distance from change demands
I have learned to deal with some of the changes
better, to distance myself from them and not to
react and get too frustrated over them. There
has been an absolute overwhelming amount of
change since I have been here. At the end of the
day, it doesn’t greatly affect how we do our
jobyA lot of that stays the same. I have
identified that and now I don’t react to
‘‘change’’ as negatively as I did before (T20).
A colleague at an almost identical career point
echoed these sentiments, and described how
competence and confidence, becoming established
and experienced, gave her stronger capacity to
cope with change.
I think that I am getting a little better at being
able to cope with change. I think at the
beginning you have to have every single minute
planned otherwise you freak out. If anything
gets in your way or changes your plan, you are
not very flexible. You don’t have the ability to
kind of just change pace. Whereas now I know
what the goals are in my head even if I don’t
have them written down in my day book. I have
been here now for eight years. The parents
know me and I know them. It is a feeling of
establishment and that you have sort of made a
name for yourself. People believe in you, you
know, so you don’t have to keep proving
yourself (T3).
Experience and experiences had made mid-
career teachers more resilient to change demands.
‘‘Federation involvement’’ could give them
‘‘shoulders (that were) a lot bigger in terms of
they can keep throwing things at me and I can
handle it a little better’’ (T11). This teacher and
others spoke about how becoming a parent at this
stage of their lives also made them appreciate that
it is ‘‘not easy to raise a child’’ (T11), that raising a
family and having a stable income makes them feel
more secure (T19). By this time in their career, a
number of teachers had gone through different
systems, different jobs, or different roles. Beyond
the open-eyed enthusiasms of youth but before the
hardening categories of late career, many teachers
in mid-career drew on their range of life and career
experiences in ways that left them still open to and
interested in change as well as healthily skeptical
about it. Thus, a teacher in his late 30s who had
‘‘changed his role every few years’’ reflected how
I have been used to personal change and I think
that has kept me reasonably open to sort of
broader educational changes because I realize
that some, that changes can be good things.
And I think the more I analyze what I’m doing
and what’s been done in education in general,
the more I can see the need for some changes to
be made; and, therefore, I’m more willing to get
involved in that process. So I’myI’d like to
think that I’m not set in my ways and that I am
notyif I oppose changes not because I think
things should say stay, but it’s because I want to
see some evidence that this is going to be a good
thing (T40).
By mid-career, teachers realized that they were
in their school or profession for the long haul, that
they were ‘‘going to be here for a while’’ (T2), but
they were ‘‘still young enoughy(to be) not afraid
of change.’’ They may ‘‘go back to the old way’’
but were still ‘‘willing to try new things’’ (T15).
Indeed, with the early years of teaching behind
them, teachers might now be ready to ‘‘start to
take off again’’ (T51). One teacher in her early 40s
remarked how her increasing confidence had
spawned greater enthusiasm for her:
I think I’ve become more enthusiasticy it’s
confidence more than anything else because
when you’re starting out, you’re not confiden-
tyI find that my teaching has definitely
changed in the sense that I’m more relaxed.
I’m looking for different ways of doing things,
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A. Hargreaves / Teaching and Teacher Education 21 (2005) 967–983
like different problems (in math)yI’ll accept
really neat solutions to things (T35).
In the final analysis, teachers in mid-career find
themselves able to reflect back and also to
anticipate the years ahead. They are open but
not innocent, critical but not curmudgeonly,
relaxed but not withdrawn. They are and feel
themselves to be ‘‘in the middle,’’ in a job where
‘‘the people aboveyare relieved they’re leaving,
and the people at the bottom are concerned about
whether they are going to stay’’ (T20). These
teachers have a double empathy—both reflective
and anticipatory—with beginning teachers who
reminded them of their younger, gaucher selves,
and with older colleagues who pointed to the years
in teaching that might be waiting ahead. A teacher
with ten years in the profession summed it up this
way.
I think that the older ones tend to really rebuke
new change and what the outcomes are all
about. They really do not want to change for
the most part. They are not interested in
learning new things. They are really stuck in
their old ways. Other ones are very jaded and
very cynical. Whereas the younger ones that are
coming straight out of college have learned
outcomes so they don’t know anything differ-
ent. They don’t understand what everybody else
is finding so difficult. I find that I am kind of
middle of the road. I can identify with some of
the old ways of teaching because those are the
years that I came through school. I can see what
I have done in my time. I have taught now for
ten years but I can also see where the new ones
are coming from. I try to keep a balance of the
half-way point (T3).
6. Conclusion
In a world of unrelenting and even repetitive
change (Abrahamson, 2004), understanding how
teachers experience and respond to educational
change is essential if reform and improvement
efforts are to be more successful and sustainable.
Administrators and educational leaders who try to
manage the educational change process are often
981
drawn to psychological and developmental stage
models of how people respond to change because
they provide developmental continuums according
to which teachers can be measured and along
which they can be moved in the process of
adopting change. Thus identifying whether, as
personality types, teachers are early or late
adopters of change (Fullan & Stiegelbauer, 1991;
Hopkins, 1990), or pinpointing the series of
concerns that people raise as they move through
a change process (Hall & Hord, 1987), provides
leaders with tools to improve the improvement
process.
However, change and people’s experience of it
has organizational and sociological dimensions as
well as developmental and psychological ones. For
example, while early adopters and enthusiasts may
provide initial leverage and energy in a reform
effort, they will have little influence if they are
concentrated among the youngest generational
group in a school. In educational and organiza-
tional change, it is not just personality and
personal development that matter. Age, career
stage and generational identity and attachment
matter too.
This article has confirmed many of the findings
in the classic studies of how age and career stage
affect teachers’ responses to educational change.
In early career, we have seen, today’s young
teachers are enthusiastic and largely optimistic
individuals, who have learned the adaptability
necessary to their generational survival in an
occupational and social environment characterized
by increasing insecurity. Towards the end of their
careers, as their bodies begin to deteriorate, their
experiences of repetitive educational change wear
them down, and impending retirement weakens
the grip that others have over them, most teachers
become resistant to and resilient toward change
efforts outside the classroom, and concentrate
their remaining energies and rewards on a more
relaxed sense of accomplishment within it. In
between, in the middle years of teaching, teachers
retain but also rein back some of their enthusiasm,
and with growing confidence, competence and a
sense of being established, they feel able to remain
open to yet also selective about the change
initiatives they adopt.
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
982 A. Hargreaves / Teaching and Teacher Education 21 (2005) 967–983
After decades of repetitive change and persistent
failures in educational reform, the ultimate change
opportunity is now presenting itself to policy-
makers: a profound demographic shift in the
teaching force as the seemingly change-averse
Baby-boom generation retires and a young new
cohort of apparently change-inclined teachers
takes its place (OECD, 2005). The rare change
opportunity here is one always available in the
private sector (Collins, 2001), but seldom an
option in the public system—instead of changing
the policy, change the people! Just get the right
people on the bus, and the demographic divide
becomes a dividend (Fullan, 2002).
But will this demographic dividend yield auto-
matic improvement? The Emotions of Teaching
project data suggest that while young teachers might
be more enthusiastic about and open to change than
their older colleagues (partly because of having
nothing to compare it with in the past), they may be
less competent and confident in implementing and
even understanding it. The absence of memory that
creates openness to change is unavoidably accom-
panied by missing experiences that would otherwise
put such change into perspective.
Teachers, we have seen, make sense of how
effective they are and how they should deal with
change initiatives, by comparing themselves to
their peers who they see as positive or negative
exemplars for their own practice. With a more
restricted demographic mix and numerically less
available mentoring, the likelihood across systems
is that young teachers might soon find themselves
in the same position as Johnson et al.’s (2004)
teachers whose first appointments were in novice-
oriented cultures staffed by younger teachers.
Here, teachers and their schools run on enthu-
siasm, adrenaline and emotional intensity with
little access to the knowledge and memory that
increases efficiency, or to the experience and
degree of emotional distance that lends a sense of
proportion and avoids teacher burnout.
Third, across the generations, teachers’ actual
emotional responses to educational change do not
always correspond to the emotional responses that
are attributed to them by colleagues in other
generational groups. In general, teachers appear to
have considerable empathy for the experience of
educational change encountered by teachers in
different generational groups. Yet this empathy is
not exercised with consistency. Due to its founda-
tion in direct, earlier experience, downward em-
pathy of older teachers towards younger colleagues
is more accurate than the upward and necessarily
more speculative empathy of new teachers towards
their more seasoned colleagues. Upward attribu-
tions of responses to educational change are more
simple and less generous than attributions working
in the other direction. Younger teachers, in other
words, tend to underestimate the change wisdom of
their more senior colleagues. In an emerging system
where, demographically, youth will prevail over
experience, there is a risk that weak upward
empathy will lead to widespread misattributions
about experienced teachers’ orientations to change
that will marginalize the wisdom and expertise of
this group even further.
The demographic dividend of teacher recruit-
ment that is about to impact many public school
systems will not automatically lead to greater
improvement or more successful change. The
generational replacement of teachers may or may
not bring about a fundamental regeneration in
teaching and learning. Without the three m’s of
sustainable educational change—mixture (of tea-
cher age groups), mentoring (across the genera-
tions) and memory (conscious collective learning
from wisdom and experience);—the likelihood is
that after the short term ‘‘rush’’ of demographic
turnover, passionate but precarious change efforts
will prove unsustainable and become little more
than a set of future nostalgias waiting to happen.
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