Sustaining the Profession: Lighting the Path Forward
Early in my career, I was given an opportunity that I had not sought—and, if I’m honest, would never have applied for.
I was teaching in a small mining town. Like many early career teachers, my focus was on doing the job well, learning my craft, and getting through each term with some sense of success. Leadership was not on my radar. It felt distant—something for “later,” or perhaps for others.
And then I was asked to step into a Head of Department role.
It wasn’t part of a carefully mapped career plan. It was circumstance, context, and someone seeing something in me that I had not yet seen in myself. That experience shifted my trajectory. It opened up a future I had not previously imagined.
I often reflect on that moment. Not because it was unusual, but because it was formative. It raises an important question for us now: how do we more intentionally create those moments for others?
At a time when the sustainability of the profession is under increasing pressure, we know that retaining educators is not only about reducing workload or addressing structural challenges, important as those are. It is also about possibility. About whether educators can see a future for themselves in the profession.
Teaching is both a science and an art. It is complex, intellectually demanding, and deeply relational work. It requires continual adaptation. Just when you feel you have reached a level of confidence, another challenge presents itself—another learner, another context, another problem to solve. This ongoing nature of the work is what sustains many of us. It is also what can, at times, exhaust us.
If we are serious about sustainability, we must elevate this reality. We must position teaching not as something to “get through,” but as a profession of expertise, craft, and ongoing inquiry. A profession worth staying in—and growing within.
A key part of this is creating visible and meaningful pathways for early career educators.
ACEL’s NextGen initiative reflects a deliberate shift in this direction. Rather than a traditional leadership program, it is a national learning network—one that positions leadership as something developed through connection, contribution, and shared practice. It brings together aspiring educators from across contexts to learn with and from each other, supported by mentors and grounded in real problems of practice.
What matters here is not just the structure of the program, but the signal it sends.
It says: leadership is not reserved for a few. It is not something that begins only when a title is conferred. It can be grown, explored, and enacted from wherever you are.
For early career teachers, this matters deeply. Many do not yet see themselves as leaders. They are focused on their classrooms, their students, their immediate responsibilities. And yet, within that group are future leaders—individuals who, with the right opportunity, encouragement and connection, could shape schools and systems in powerful ways.
The challenge for us is to create the conditions where those possibilities can surface.
Programs like NextGen do this by offering more than professional learning. They offer community. Participants engage in inquiry, dialogue, and collaborative problem-solving, rather than passive consumption of content. They connect with peers across the country, building networks that extend beyond their own schools and sectors.
They contribute to national conversations about leadership and improvement.
This is not compliance-driven learning. It is contextual, dynamic, and grounded in the realities of practice.
And importantly, it fosters a sense of belonging.
Belonging is often overlooked in discussions of workforce sustainability, yet it is central. When educators feel connected—to each other, to the profession, to a shared purpose—they are more likely to remain, to contribute and to grow.
This is where professional associations such as ACEL have a critical role to play. Through our strategic pillars—Be Seen, Be Heard, Connect and Elevate—we are working to strengthen that sense of professional identity and connection. To ensure that educators’ work is recognised, their voices are amplified, and their opportunities to engage with others are expanded.
Multiple possibilities for sustaining our people are discussed in this issue of Australian Educational Leader. In the first lead article, New Voice Scholar, Michelle Health, turns our attention to workforce stability. In the second lead article, Antionette Cole emphasises the importance of relationships and transformative leadership. Hugh Gundlach invites use to consider the multiple impacts on the sustainability of our profession. Sally Kelly and Sophie Heath, and Ellie Chalmers offer Highly Accomplished and Lead Teacher Certification and widening criteria for promotion to leadership as two solutions to these impacts. In this issue’s first success story, Joanne Casey and Victoria Anstley examine collaborative planning for school improvement. Mathew Brown and Amy Smith turn our attention to sustainability through universities offering microcredentials in the second success story. Brad Gaynor challenges us to engage in a leadership reset. Our Spotlight interview features Terry Burke, longstanding Independent Education Union Queensland and Northern Territory Branch Secretary and Teachers Union Health board member.
Sustaining the profession requires us to think differently about how we support and develop our people. It requires us to move beyond one-off interventions and towards ongoing, relational approaches to learning and leadership.
It also requires us to notice—to see potential early, and to create opportunities that allow it to emerge.
I did not set out to become a leader. But someone created the conditions for that possibility to become visible to me.
If we can do that more deliberately—if we can create pathways, networks and experiences that enable early career educators to see a future in the profession—then we take an important step towards sustainability.
Because, ultimately, sustaining the profession is about sustaining its people. And that begins with possibility such as those explored not only in this Issue but also at our Disability and Inclusion and National conferences.