Brianna Gray

All articles published by MDPI are made immediately available worldwide under an open access license. No special permission is required to reuse all or part of the article published by MDPI, including figures and tables. For articles published under an open access Creative Common CC BY license, any part of the article may be reused without permission provided that the original article is clearly cited. For more information, please refer to https://www.mdpi.com/openaccess.

When educators have talked about student learning over the past few years, there has been a consistent emphasis on student “voice and choice” to promote engagement, ownership and personalisation - but why should this not apply to adult learners, too? Educators know that students need multiple opportunities to explore, refine, reflect and extend their learning - we would never teach something once and then walk away feeling confident that the student had embedded that knowledge or skill for life.

Being a teacher is amazing: stimulating, heartwarming and often very funny. It’s also incredibly tough. This is perhaps why, sadly, data on newly qualified teachers and their early career retention can make for such disheartening reading - not least that 12 per cent leave the profession after just a year and 19.9 per cent after two.