Second Career Teachers: Reasons for Career Change and Adaptation

This study aims to conduct an in-depth study on the teachers who began their first careers in jobs outside teaching and then started teaching as a second career. In the study, the phenomenological design, one of the qualitative research designs, was used. Criteria sampling method was chosen as the sampling type. The study group consists of 16 teachers with different majors working in public schools. The interview method was used as the data collection tool. Content analysis was used for the analysis of the data. As a result of the study, difficult working conditions, difficulties experienced by individuals in fulfilling family responsibilities, failure to cope with the stress of work, problems women face and seeking spiritual satisfaction have been found to be effective in people's decisions to change their careers. Although they have working experience, second career teachers may experience adaptation problems experienced by beginner teachers since teaching career requires a different specialty. The areas where second career teachers experience the most difficulties in the course of adaptation to teaching career are classroom management, healthy communication with students, teaching lessons in a manner appropriate to students' levels, healthy communication with parents and methods and techniques