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The transition from pre-service to beginning teaching has been well documented as complex and challenging, with novice teachers shown to experience a number of professional highs and lows as they progress through their first year of teaching. As they reflect on their early experiences, beginning teachers establish perceptions of causality that influence their sense of professional agency, self-efficacy and motivation. This type of attributional thinking can have a strong impact on their ongoing development as teachers. In this chapter, which reports on the first phase of a larger mixed methods study, we discuss the influence of attributional thinking on the development of beginning teachers' professional learning identities. The use of an online survey, which drew from a sample of 57 beginning teachers working in independent schools across Queensland, sought to identify the ways in which participants attributed causality (that is, why things happened the way they did) for their professional highs and lows during their first year of teaching. The study found that, when attributing causality for success, participants were most likely to identify their own practice as an enduring cause for this and similar future successes. They were also likely to attribute the cause of events perceived as unsuccessful to their own practice. Notably, this study found that beginning teachers apportioned high shared levels of control of causes for both successful and unsuccessful events with others in their working contexts, such as their colleagues and mentors. This study raises significant questions as to how attributional thinking, engaged during reflective practice, impacts the development of the professional learning identities of beginning teachers.

Across the world, many university-based early career researchers (ECRs) are experiencing an unprecedented intensification of research expectations on transition from doctoral research to academic life. Countries such as Australia have put into place national frameworks of research excellence to remain globally competitive. Pressure on universities to elevate global research rankings has soared, with many regional universities and disciplines such as education responding with a rapid escalation of research performance expectations for academics. Consequently, concerns have been raised for ECRs embroiled in intensified research agendas in these contexts. Framed by concepts of liminality and identity construction, we argue that intensified expectations do not take account of liminality experienced by ECRs during times of transition, compromising perceived academic progress. We report on the identity journeys of ECRs in a School of Education at one regional Australian university. Data was collected from nine ECRs using online focus groups and analysed using a hybrid thematic approach. Key findings indicate that ECRs transition into the Academy post-doctorate with varying experiences of identity liminality that impact their capacity to manage research expectations. ECRs experiencing shorter periods of liminality are best positioned to manage the intensified expectations of academic life while ECRs experiencing persistent liminality and identity ‘struggle’ are more likely to perceive a diminished sense of achievement and support. These findings have significant implications for university leadership and research supervisors, in Australia and globally, regarding the ways they support ECRs to productively navigate the hyper-invigilated audit cultures of what we have termed the neo-academy.

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