Understand an emerging “failure” of an equality-oriented teacher policy in China: A job search perspective

•A job search model for teachers is proposed.•Teachers decide whether, where, and which school to teach throughout job search.•Preference, constraint, and labor market influence teachers career decisions.•Equality-oriented policies should strategically shape teachers career decisions.

Free Teacher Education (FTE) is a Chinese case of equality-oriented teacher policies which aim to equalize teacher quality for high-need contexts. Recent studies consistently find that FTE's goal is failing. The present study is aimed to understand this emerging “failure” from a job search perspective. Drawing on interview data with fourteen teachers, we find that teacher's preferences, policy interventions and contextual factors jointly shaped the teachers' decision making on whether, where, and which school to teach. This study concludes that equality-oriented teacher policies are more likely to succeed if they offer generous benefits to participating teachers, tightly tie teachers' obligation to working in high-need schools, and provide necessary administrative arrangements so as to secure faithful implementation on the ground.