Conference Program

Across many national contexts, school systems are currently facing a persistent and structural teacher shortage (Dupriez et al., 2016; Ingersoll, 2003), increasingly framed in international debates as a consequence of demographic change (Grimmett & Echols, 2000; Wiggan et al., 2021), declining attractiveness of the profession (Ashiedu & Scott-Ladd, 2012; Thomas Dotta et al., 2025), intensified workloads, and the long-term effects of market-oriented reforms in education (Blanco et al., 2023). While much of the literature has focused on policy responses such as alternative certification routes or incentives for recruitment and retention (Ingersoll et al., 2018; Van Houten, 2009), less attention has been paid to the informal and semi-formal mechanisms through which schools manage staffing shortages. These mechanisms raise important questions about the transformation of teaching as a professional field and the conditions under which professional norms, identities, and careers are constructed.

This paper examines the Italian case (Bryson et al., 2022; Magni, 2025; Magni & Capriotti, 2025) through the lens of the growing use of “Messa a Disposizione” (MAD), an informal recruitment device allowing schools to hire teachers outside official channels such as competitive examinations and national or provincial ranking lists (Blancato & Argentin, 2025; Lagomarsino & Pandolfini, 2025). Originally conceived as an exceptional solution to cover temporary vacancies, MAD has progressively become a routine instrument for coping with chronic shortages, especially in specific geographical regions, subject areas, and in special needs teaching. As a result, increasing numbers of teachers enter classrooms without stable contracts, standardized training paths, or clear prospects for professional continuity.

The analysis situates the MAD phenomenon within broader debates on the transformation of professions and educational work. First, it engages with research on labour-market dualisation and precarious careers (McGrath-Champ et al., 2023; Seo, 2021), highlighting how MAD contributes to the fragmentation of the teaching workforce and differentiated professional statuses within schools. Second, it shows how informal recruitment mechanisms disrupt professional socialisation, weaken classroom authority, and destabilise teachers’ professional identities (Wilson et al., 2004). Finally, the paper connects the spread of MAD to wider discussions on the decline of institutional legitimacy and the growing heteronomy of educational work (Adams, 2018; Imig & Flores Fernandes, 2025), as schools reconcile professional norms with organisational urgency and managerial constraints.

Empirically, the paper draws on a qualitative study based on semi-structured interviews with formally trained teachers following standard recruitment paths and teachers employed through MAD. The interviews explore trajectories into teaching, classroom experiences, relations with colleagues and school leaders, perceptions of professional recognition, and career expectations, enabling a comparative analysis of structural inequalities and subjective experiences.

The findings show that MAD teachers often experience accelerated but fragile entry into the profession, marked by weak institutional support, limited recognition, and heightened exposure to uncertainty. At the same time, their presence reshapes organisational dynamics and challenges professional boundaries. The paper concludes that MAD should be understood not merely as an emergency response to teacher shortages, but as an indicator of deeper transformations affecting the governance, legitimacy, and professional foundations of teaching today.

Our presentation examines contemporary changes in the primary school teaching profession in France. From a socio-historical perspective and based on data from a national study conducted for the Ministry of Education in 2017-2018, we show how this group has undergone profound changes since the end of the 20th century, affecting its morphology, mandate, and professional license (Hughes, 1996). These changes are taking place in a regulatory environment marked by instability, regulatory inflation, and the growing influence of new public management reforms (Broccolichi & Garcia, 2021; Grimaud, 2024; Levasseur et al., 2020). At the same time, the expansion of the division of labour in schools and the increasing involvement of other educational professionals — in particular those mobilised in the context of inclusive education — (Charles et al., 2023) are reshaping the boundaries of teachers’ work.
Based on a mixed methodology combining a representative survey of 3,263 primary school teachers and 43 in-depth interviews, our contribution analyzes how teachers perceive their working conditions and how these perceptions intersect with the managerial injunctions circulating within the school institution (Connan et al., 2025). Our analysis of regulatory texts shows that the rhetoric of New Public Management is indeed present, albeit in a partial and diffuse form, contributing to the redefinition of institutional expectations regarding teachers’ practices, accountability, and pedagogical individualisation framed around “educational needs”.
In practice, these developments translate into intensified work, an accumulation of “new” tasks, and an increased administrative burden. Teachers describe an invisible and demanding workload, fueled by a rapid succession of reforms, which even the least experienced perceive as a source of tension. They identify the regulatory environment as a major factor in the growing complexity and intensification of their mandate, often without compensation or recognition. These findings echo broader analyses of teacher malaise, the decline of institutional legitimacy, and the tensions between professional autonomy and organizational, political, and media heteronomies that are reshaping educational work today.

As is well known, schools today are configured as increasingly complex environments, shaped by profound social, cultural and political transformations that have redefined their structures, functions and meanings over time. Against this backdrop of change, the role of the teacher is also evolving, with teachers facing an increasing array of demands, overlapping tasks and roles, and a growing diversity of educational needs. These factors have a significant impact on teachers’ personal and professional well-being.

The complexity of contemporary school institutions contributes to the intensification of stress and burnout experiences among teachers, particularly with regard to emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation. A longitudinal study conducted in 2021 and 2023 highlighted an increase in these dimensions among a sample of 196 upper secondary school teachers in Palermo.

Building on these findings, this paper aims to broaden the perspective on teacher burnout by exploring representations of stress related to care work in initial and in-service training programmes for adult educators. Specifically, the paper presents data from an open-ended questionnaire administered to students enrolled in the 10th cycle of the Specialisation Course for Educational Support Activities at the University of Palermo. The aim was to examine how professional stress is conceptualised, anticipated and narrated during the training phase.

The study is situated within the paradigm of fundamental pedagogy, adopting a phenomenological–hermeneutic approach. The aim is to identify potential meanings in education that could inform the design of educational and training practices aimed at preventing burnout in schools. From this perspective, teaching is recognised as a form of care work. Without adequate educational and community-based support, it can become an exhausting experience.

In recent years, the Italian school system has been subject to increasing media coverage that directly involves teachers. Alongside the traditional representation of the magister teacher (Hirschhorn, 1993), new hybrid figures are emerging, such as teacher-influencers or digital creator teachers on YouTube and other social platforms, who accumulate visibility and symbolic capital outside institutional circles. At the same time, we are witnessing a renewed reinvigoration of the figure of the teacher as a critical intellectual, capable of exercising reflexivity and intervening in the public debate.
This contribution focuses on these transformations, analyzing them through the perspective of Pierre Bourdieu (1984) as a process of redefining the poles of legitimacy in the contemporary school system. While historically, teaching authority was based on institutionalized cultural capital (educational qualifications, certifications) and relative autonomy from other social spheres, today we are witnessing growing interference from the logic of the media field, which introduces new forms of heteronomy. Digital visibility, content monetization, and the construction of a “personal brand” are becoming resources for symbolic competition within the educational field.

These dynamics add to and intertwine with transformations that have already been underway in recent decades, linked to the spread of New Public Management and neoliberal logics of accountability, evaluation, and performativity, which have progressively changed the modes of regulation and criteria for recognition of the teaching profession (Ball, 2003; Pitzalis 2006).
Through an exploratory analysis of the Italian case – which includes the observation of public figures active on social media – the paper shows how mediatization is not only a peripheral phenomenon, but a possible factor in the restructuring of the professional field of teaching. On the one hand, it can be interpreted as a response to the loss of recognition and institutional devaluation of teaching work; on the other, it contributes to redefining the criteria of professional legitimacy, rearticulating the tension between different principles of authority – in particular between pedagogical authority, critical knowledge production and public visibility.

Drawing on a qualitative study conducted in vocational upper secondary schools in Italy, this article examines teachers’ work as a form of moral and emotional practice in socially and symbolically marginal educational contexts. Situated within international debates on the transformation of educational work under New Public Management reforms, the study focuses on a largely underexplored dimension: how teachers morally sustain schools predominantly attended by students experiencing social vulnerability, low academic achievement, and limited prospects of upward mobility. Based on 29 in-depth interviews with teachers and school leaders, the analysis shows that teaching in vocational schools involves intensive moral and emotional labour, in which knowledge transmission is inseparable from practices of care, listening, and the management of suffering. Teachers face ethical dilemmas related to inclusion, discipline, and educational justice, balancing the need to adjust expectations against the refusal to “mislead” students already shaped by exclusionary trajectories. The findings further reveal that women and teachers from working-class backgrounds tend to assume a disproportionate share of emotional and relational work, often under conditions of institutional invisibility and moral overload. The article argues that, in marginal segments of the educational field, emotional labour is not a residual or vocational dimension of teaching, but a core moral infrastructure that makes educational relationships possible.