AbstraktJedním z faktorů ovlivňujících kvalitu vzdělávání je nedostatek učitelů, způsobený mj.  vzrůstající mírou odchodů učitelů z profese, tzv. drop-outem. Nejohroženější profesní skupinou jsou přitom učitelé - novicové.  Text nabízí literární přehled studií drop-outu začínajících učitelů v různých kulturních rámcích.  Analýza studií byla zaměřena (1) na míru drop-outu začínajících učitelů a (2) na faktory, které drop-out způsobují, a to zejména na kontextuální proměnné – tzv. objektivní determinanty profesní dráhy v učitelství. Výsledky mohou být informativní pro českou odbornou veřejnost, pedagogický výzkum i vzdělávací politiku, které zatím drop-outu příliš pozornosti nevěnují.  Cílem článku je proto iniciovat odbornou diskusi a výzkum k problematice drop-outu začínajících učitelů u nás. Klíčová slova: literární přehled, učitelé a drop-out, začínající učitel, míra drop-outu, exogenní příčiny  drop-outu / objektivní determinanty

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One of the factors that influences the quality of formal education is teacher shortage, caused, among other factors, by the drop-out of qualified teachers. Novice teachers seem to be the most vulnerable professional group in this respect (Ingersoll, 2003). Concern for teacher retention and attrition rates has gradually become a global issue. A high drop-out rate among beginning teachers is reported in English-speaking countries, namely the US,

Problems with staffing play a crucial role among factors influencing the quality of English language teaching at Czech primary and lower secondary schools. Since 1990 the shortage of teachers of English as a foreign language has been repeatedly reported by the Czech School Inspectorate. The shortage is largely caused by the reluctance of English language teacher education study programme graduates to accept teaching positions at primary and lower secondary schools. A drop-out syndrome in the early stages of the teachers’ career is another factor that may contribute to the lack of teachers of English. Unfortunately, it has not been researched in the Czech Republic and it has not been systematically monitored by the state. In the research study focusing on novice teacher drop-out, conducted in 2015–2017, we deal with the process of socialisation of novice teachers in schools and with external factors that influence the socialisation and that can be seen as predictors of novice teachers’ decision to stay in their current school or leave either the school or the teaching profession. The current paper presents partial findings related to drop-out intentions of novice teachers of English as a foreign language in comparison with teachers of other subjects. Our findings indicate that drop-out intentions are more frequent in teachers of English as a foreign language than for other teachers and that teachers of English evaluate their cooperation with colleagues and leadership at their schools more critically than other teachers.

The paper presents the research study of academic writing of Czech university students in an English Language Teacher Education study program. The authors apply an interdisciplinary approach integrating the perspectives of linguistics and language pedagogy in the evaluation of the design of the Academic Writing course and its impact on the development of students’ academic writing skills. Adopting a process genre approach (Badger, White, 2000) to writing instruction as a key design principle, our study combines the genre analysis framework (Swales, 1990) and the intercultural rhetoric perspective (Connor, 2004) to design an innovated academic writing course for graduate students focusing on developing critical thinking skills and context-aware writing. The course, informed by an analysis of the academic writing needs of the students, aimed at familiarizing them with the rhetorical structure of academic texts with a focus on the genre of the Master’s thesis and at introducing them to the academic writing conventions in the area of soft sciences. Piloted in 2019, the course was implemented as a blended course, where the contact sessions were complemented by online support in VLE Moodle. Apart from analyses of written texts, classroom writing, and homework tasks, it also included discourse editing tasks and peerreviewing with peer-reviewer feedback and teacher feedback. We believe that our research findings will shed light on the potential of academic writing courses based on the process-genre approach to contribute to the enhancement of the quality of English academic texts by non-native academic writers, and specifically Czech graduate students.