Young teachers are entering the profession, but many leave quickly due to professional stress, unfavorable working conditions, a lack of support, or an unclear professional identity. This trend disrupts the continuity of the educational process and reduces the quality of education, and reveals systemic gaps in the recruitment, training, and retention of teachers. Still, there is insufficient research on how these factors shape the career trajectory of young teachers from their perspective. Therefore, this paper addresses the research problem of which personal and environmental factors determine the professional stability, development, or departure of young teachers from the teaching profession. The study used a qualitative research strategy. The research data were collected from purposive sampling using semi-structured interviews with 14 young teachers. The interview data were analyzed using qualitative thematic analysis. The results of the study revealed two main dimensions of factors influencing the career start of young teachers. Personal factors include fluctuations of emotional well-being, development of a professional self-concept and identity, motivation to teach, professional development, and a sense of career meaning. Only when environmental circumstances are favorable—school microclimate, support from managers and colleagues, infrastructure and working conditions, perception of education policy—can these internal resources be effectively realized.

This paper promotes a theoretical discussion that focuses on the motives and barriers that make impact on adults learning as well as on their dynamics related to the change of social roles. The adult learning motives and barriers change and vary according to the prevailing social roles at different periods of one’s life. This dynamics of adult learning motives and barriers is mostly influenced by the importance and compatibility of acquired social roles, responsibility areas and spaces of a person and other factors. The qualitative data was gathered in March – April 2016 in Kaunas, Lithuania. The sample consisted of 30 narratives, written by informants, aged 35 to 65 years that were participating in professional training courses. There has been prepared 30 self-reflections that were analysed using content analysis. The analysis of empirical data shows that external learning motives and barriers prevail in the period when an individual is active in the labour market while the personal motives remain overshadowed. However, personal barriers prevail in the expression of learning barriers. This is influenced by the society’s attitude towards the performance of pupil and student roles and the value attitudes of surrounding people that partially control it.