Regional and temporal changes in demand for geography teachers in Poland. Results of job advert tracking in the years 2019–2020

Abstract

Abstract In the literature, analysing job adverts is considered to be a credible method for collecting data about the real demand for employees with higher education. Studies on the demand for teachers based on this data source have been conducted in many countries, but never in Poland. On this basis, the research objective was to identify regional and temporal changes in the demand for geography teachers. As part of the study we tracked all job adverts addressed to geography teachers which were published online over a period of nearly two years. It turned out there were 3,438 such job vacancies in Poland, which included part-time and full-time positions. The study results indicated vast temporal and regional differences in the demand for teachers, and also a clear imbalance in the demand for geographers between Warsaw – the capital city – and the rest of the country. It should be highlighted that both the methodology and the results presented in the paper are pioneering.