Self-efficacy of Immigrant Teachers in Australia: A Literature Review

Australia has been facing an acute teacher shortage in the past decade. Many immigrant teachers were attracted to and landed in Australia as skilled labours. These highly-skilled talents have been facing hurdles both inside and outside the classroom. Some hurdles include difficulties in getting their qualifications accredited and recognised, discrepancies in classroom management and practices, as well as racism and discrimination. These factors, coupled with anxiety and depression, hampered them to continue their teaching career at their new home. Currently, there are a few research gaps in understanding immigrant teachers’ career choices: unhelpful experience in portraying immigrant teachers as outsiders, incapability in examining factors influencing immigrant teachers’ career choices diachronically and neglecting the change of immigrant teachers’ self-perception from a ‘brain gain’ to ‘brain drain’. This literature review aims at pointing out why self-efficacy in the Social Cognitive Career Theory is an essential guide to examine immigrant teachers’ career choices and hence provide insight on solving the teacher shortage problem. Self-efficacy determines whether immigrant teachers are ready to enter or persist in a teaching career before taking action by examining how they postulate their professional development and career trajectories. It can investigate how different contextual and personal factors postulate their self-belief in restarting their teaching career successfully or failingly. Therefore, by examining the interplay between these contextual factors and how these contextual factors influence immigrant teachers’ self-belief, it can provide insight on how to curb the teacher retainment problem effectively.


Introduction
Australia has started importing teachers six decades ago. Teachers from countries like the U.K., the U.S.A., India and Pacific nations, including but not limited to Hong Kong and China are imported to solve the shortage problem created by the retirement of baby boomers [1,2]. Immigrant teachers, sometimes called internationally-educated teachers or overseas-trained teachers, are often categorised into the teachers with native English speaking background ('NEST') and teachers from culturally and linguistically diverse as non-English speaking backgrounds ('CALD/ NESB') [3]. Some immigrant teachers arrived because of the attraction of permanent residency in Australia [2]. While the Australian student population is getting more culturally and ethnically diverse, there is a relatively small percentage of overseas-born or overseas-trained teachers in public schools and only about one-third of them planned to teach again [4,5]. It is noteworthy to examine teacher retainment problem so that the imported skilled human resources are used in the right place to solve the skill shortage problem.
The current research trends on immigrant teachers' professional development in Australia mainly focussed on examining the problems and difficulties they are facing and proposing some solutions. Some scholars [5] pointed out there was no comprehension contemporary national study of the experiences of immigrant teachers in Australia. Their claim was supported by the evidence that most of the researches done were state-wide. For example, Bense [6] examined a group of German immigrant teachers in Western Australia and concluded that those teachers faced difficulties like the difference in expectations and values of education, a lack of professional support, and feelings of isolation. Seah [7] also pointed out that immigrant teachers in Victoria felt the difference in values while socialising in their host culture. Datta Roy and Larvey [3] pointed out misinformation, inconsistencies and delay in the registration process were the general problems immigrant teachers were facing in both Western Australia and South Australia.
These current data on immigrant teachers' professional development indicated that their findings were based on examing teachers' personal experiences [3,5,6,[8][9][10][11][12]. A number of scholars and researchers in education [3,5,6,8] have been looking into teachers' contextual experiences, but they used different themes to categorise factors influencing teachers' career choices. For example, some studies [3,6,9] categorised immigrant teachers' experiences into pre and post immigration stages while another previous study [5] looked into their experience in classroom, community, and Education Departments. There are some difficulties and problems identified based on their examination of teachers' contextual experiences. There are:  Immigrant teachers needed to spend time on registration, accreditation and English Language test [10]. They felt not respected and confused. For example, they felt they are disadvantageous to get a job even there was an Equal Employment Opportunity policy [10].  Immigrant teachers felt there was a lack of professional support and loneliness [6]. For example, although some immigrant teachers completed training, they still felt unsupported in both the community and at school [6].  Immigrant teachers felt their multilingual or bilingual background was not hard to be accepted in Australia's monolingual community [13]. They felt pressured. For example, some of them chose to stay away from their first-language community to avoid first-language inference [13].
Some researchers [8,10,12,14] then later have put in effort in examining the relationship between immigrant teachers' understanding of their personal experiences and these problems. Firstly, a previous study [14] suggested that immigrant teachers' personal experiences, feelings and impacts of other people are related to their negative attitude towards gate-keeping tests. This finding was supported by other researches which identified some hurdles immigrant teachers were facing, including bureaucratic red tape, racism and discrimination, inadequate classroom support and a discrepancy between classroom practice and management [3,[5][6][7]. Secondly, some other scholars [8,17] suggested motivation is key for teachers choosing to work in the teaching profession, particularly in regional areas. This finding was supported by some researches which also mentioned motivation and emotions influence teachers' optimistic and pessimistic anticipation of continuing their teaching career at a new home [2,4,[8][9][10][11].
Based on the research studies, some researchers proposed some ways to solve this problem [4,16,18,20]. Firstly, Cruickshank [4] suggested there could be teacher education programmes or upgrading programs for teachers with overseas training. Secondly, Ellis and Santoro [18,20] pointed out that immigrant teachers' own learning experience and their experience as 'other' is a powerful resource of teaching. Thirdly, Peeler and Jane [16] suggested the necessity of mentoring programme and pointed out that immigrant teachers did not satisfy their professional perception of self if they lack culturally specific educational knowledge. As a result, based on the finding of these research studies, these scholars and researchers advocated that training and professional development programmes were essential to transform immigrant teachers to become successful ones in their new home.
Indications from the literature [4,[8][9][10]12,16,18,20] suggest that there is a dilemma in understanding the influence of their perception of personal experiences with their professional development. Teachers' perceptions of their experience could be both a self-hindering and self-prohibiting factor. Santos [21] suggested using the Social Cognitive Career Theory in examining the connections among individuals' behaviours, and environmental factors. It can be useful to look into the situation of recruitment, turnover, and retainment of teachers. Using the Social Cognitive Career Theory, retainment issues of overseas teachers have been examined in Taiwan and Fuji [21,22]. However, only a few research studies were investigating how those contextual factors influence teachers' self-aiding or self-hindering belief in postulating their restart of a teaching career in Australia.
Hence, this literature review targets at pointing out how self-efficacy displays its value in interpreting immigrant teachers' career choices as a complex web of relationship between cultural, social and economic elements together with individual's prior experiences [23,24]. It first begins with the importance of self-efficacy in career choices in an attempt to understand how contextual factors can influence an individual's self-belief in postulating his/her success or failure in his/her career. Then, factors influencing immigrant teachers' career choices in previous researches are categorised, followed by an identification of research gaps in the current researches. Finally, a summary of a highlight on the significance of self-efficacy in relation to contextual experiences follows.
With this literature review, researchers can conduct further researches by using the Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) as a theoretical framework to scaffold how 4442 Self-efficacy of Immigrant Teachers in Australia: A Literature Review such dynamic interplay of variables form optimistic or pessimistic anticipation of the immigrant teachers' career. It is hoped that these studies can cast a light on a better way to utilise and retain those imported human resources.

Importance of Self-efficacy in Career Choices
Self-efficacy was first introduced by Bandura in 1986 and has remained the heart of social cognitive theory [25,26]. Bandura suggested that one's behaviours are influenced by three reciprocally linked variables: self-efficacy, outcome expectations and personal goals. Based on Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory, some researchers [13,16] proposed the SCCT to understand an individual's career behaviours. It was an expansion yet particular version of the earlier work on self-efficacy penetrating the career domain [28]. One characteristic of the SCCT is that individual factors are involved in a network of variables influencing one's career decision-making process and gradually, one's career choices [12,18].
According to Bandura [26,30], there are four types of self-efficacy: (a) self-regulatory self-efficacy; (b) social self-efficacy; (c) academic self-efficacy, and (d) career self-efficacy. Career self-efficacy, in particular, refers to an individual's belief of himself towards a career choice [23]. Such belief relates to an individual's confidence, trustability, and capability to consider a choice, making a decision, planning, taking action, accomplishing tasks and involving specific careers or jobs [31]. An individual needs to have confidence and trust efficacy to postulate an expected outcome in his/her mind based on his/her prior knowledge and past experience. Such outcome expectation is a projection on whether his/her upcoming action would lead to a successful outcome or not. Bear in mind that career self-efficacy is neither a trait nor an entity. It is about how self-efficacy postulating possible career-related behaviours [25,28].
Career self-efficacy serves a guiding role for a person to determine whether he/she is ready for entering or persisting in a particular career before doing the action [23]. In return, such kind of self-efficacy induces a self-prophecy on whether one can succeed or fail. If achievement results, additional self-efficacy which serves a driving force for one to persist in his/her career can be developed in an individual [26]. A strong sense of efficacy can enhance human accomplishment and personal well-being. If an individual has a higher assurance in their capability, they are more likely to perceive difficult tasks as challenges to be approached rather than threats to be avoided [30]. One's self-efficacy can lead to an 'approach' or 'avoidance' behaviour in their career-decision making, for example, persisting or terminating a particular career. Development of such sense of efficacy takes time and perseverant and sustained effort [30].
Self-efficacy can be achieved in ways how it derives from. There are four primary sources that self-efficacy derived from (a) self-experience; (b) vicarious learning; (c) verbal encouragement, and (d) physiology and psychological states [23,31]. These information sources are patterned within a particular learning context and possessed cognitively. It is a process involving cognition, motivation, affection and selection [30].
Self-beliefs of efficacy play a key role in the self-regulation of motivation [30]. The higher an individual's self-efficacy is, the greater interest he/she has in the career, and hence, he/she is more likely to succeed due to better preparation [30]. In a career pursuit, self-efficacy directs an individual on how he/she develops his/her cognitive, self-management, problem-solving and interpersonal skills which orient to the success of that particular career [30]. Compared with the importance of occupational and technical skills, psychosocial skills contribute more to the success of an individual [30]. For instance, personal accomplishments exert the most significant influence on self-efficacy, and successful experiences tend to raise self-efficacy beliefs within a given performance domain [12,21].
Self-efficacy, precisely, is how one perceives his/her ability, trust and confidence to oneself. Self-efficacy is behaviourally specific and must be measured against some type of behaviour [25,28]. Therefore, responding to the same environment, individuals may make different career choices. The SCCT cast a light on the importance of self-efficacy in the development of a career internally and externally [29]. It explains how academic or career choices mature in relation to one's background and experience [29]. While considering personal factors, it can give a more holistic picture of understanding such discrepancy.

Factors Influencing Teachers' Career Choices
There were some researches done on immigrant teachers' career choices in both different states and nationwide [3,5,6,9,10,19]. Researches were done on experiences of internationally-educated teachers in New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia [3,6,14,33]. Some of them focused on particular ethnic groups [6] while some focused on the trend nationwide and in regional areas [5,8].
Major factors influencing these immigrant teachers' career choices, particularly those influence immigrant teachers to avoid getting back to their teaching career, were summarised and categorised.

Bureaucratic Red Tape and Misinformation
Most immigrant teachers reckoned that employment, registration and accreditation processes were rigid [6].
Misinformation was a problem as they did not have access to all procedures, processes and bureaucratic red tape they had to walk through [5]. Immigrant teachers could not get the right information about what to do and where they can get that information as all these teacher registration processes were different by states and often obscure [5,25]. Some immigrant teachers' qualifications were not recognised and had limited access to the pathways to restart their careers as some upgrading information was only advertised through community language radio stations and newspapers [2,4].
In many research studies, immigrant teachers expressed their difficulties in finding a permanent teaching position, particularly in public schools [6]. Some immigrant teachers were unable to figure out the recruitment procedures in public school systems and eventually switched to a private or Catholic school system [2]. However, their previous teaching experiences were not recognised, and they had to start their career again as a beginning teacher [2]. A delay in registration and accreditation, coupled with some personal factors, might lead to an adverse effect on their well-being, like depression and frustration. Immigrant teachers might choose to leave the teaching profession if they had found another stable job.

Classroom Practice, Practice and Expectation
Some immigrant teachers expressed that there was a discrepancy between their expectations and local practices [6]. As for teaching paedology, some immigrant teachers mentioned they were reminded to teach 'in an Australian way' [19]. Although some immigrant teachers were adopting student-centred learning in both their home country and Australia, they felt the way they could ask questions or handle procedural knowledge might be different due to the diversity and difference of the knowledge base, ability, cultural and language backgrounds among students [4,19]. There was also a difference between learning and teaching styles and student management [6]. Some researchers [4,9] reported that there was a lack of respect for immigrant teachers in Australian classroom, and management issues were more prominent in local classrooms. These factors hampered immigrant teachers' sense of accomplishment in classroom teaching.

Racism and Discrimination
Australia is always proud of its multiculturalism. However, according to some research studies, racism and discrimination were problems for some teachers. Some NESTs had also reported encountering racism and discrimination issues about their accent [2,9]. Although the language barrier seemed to be a minor problem in some researches, first-generation immigrants suffered some pressure from outside to adopt the English accent of the majority [11,26]. Some immigrant teachers pointed out that sometimes their colleagues made some intimidating comments on their accent in front of their students [9]. Moreover, professional experience and capability of Asian teachers from a CALD background were often devalued by Education Departments, compared with their counterparts who are NESTs [2]. These factors influenced how immigrant teachers perceived their professional identity cognitively and created a sense of reluctance towards their teaching career choices.

Inadequate School Support
Since teaching opportunities in metropolis areas were scarce, some teachers had to start their teaching in Australia in some regional areas [5,9,27]. Unfortunately, due to a lack of understanding of the new neighbourhood and school community, coupled with the fact that local people did not accept immigrant teachers readily, immigrant teachers usually did not have a pleasant living experience in regional areas [5,9,10].
Some immigrant teachers expressed that they were only accepted as teachers teaching a language other than English (LOTE) [9]. They felt they had a lower teacher status and a lack of respect from both their colleagues and students [6]. Some school principals had also been reported to have negative views towards teachers from a CALD background [7]. Such finding was supported by a lack of support from their peers at schools [26]. Some immigrant teachers expressed that apart from a lack of support from their colleagues, there was a lack of teaching resources, particularly materials focusing on Australia's linguistic and cultural diversity [6]. These hurdles created barriers for immigrant teachers to accomplish their teaching duties and hence influenced their decisions of staying or leaving their teaching career.

Identification of Some Existing Research Gaps
In the previous section, it is evident that the current researches mainly focussed on the hurdles immigrant teachers were facing. Some of the problems have been identified in the past decade [4,10,33]. Hence, there is a need to re-examine how those factors impact the immigrant teachers nowadays [3,8]. Besides, some solutions and pathways were proposed and implemented in order to make those teachers getting through the bureaucratic red tape more easily [4,7]. By evaluating whether those pathways can reinforce immigrant teachers' confidence to cast optimistic anticipation towards re-entering teaching career at their new home, the effectiveness and impact of the new policies on immigrant teachers' perception of personal and professional identities can be better understood [10,30,35].

Unhelpful Experience as the Outsider
Many researchers [4,7] proposed that immigrant teachers needed to bridge and upgrade their qualifications. These bridging programmes came with a good intention of bringing an alternative to teachers to minimise the gaps in teachers' professional knowledge and provide alternative pathways for immigrant teachers to get back to their teaching profession [4], [16]. In some cases, if there were some supports from school, parents and students, teachers felt happier and more confident in their teaching [7]. Some researchers [16] suggested mentoring can be a way to help immigrant teachers to attain knowledge and understanding of unfamiliar workplace philosophy and practices. However, there is also a need to examine whether these measures are creating positive self-efficacy to make them feel confident and optimistic about their teaching career as newcomers. Immigrant teachers participating in teacher induction programmes like The Professional Experience Programme (PEP) or those who were working in public schools often got constantly reminded of their 'non-Australian' identity. While courses were offered to enrich their knowledge of syllabuses assessment and programming, together with knowledge of local classroom, and the language and cultures of Australian children, they are often being reminded to 'teach in an Australian way' and 'talk like an Aussie' and 'how to relate to people as an Australian' [2,4]. Disappointment and depression towards some bridging programmes like Initial Teacher Programme or a Technical and Future Education (TAFE) certification were reported when immigrant teachers had to do the 'whole Australian thing' again [2]. When the Australian style was not clearly defined, teachers with great passion and commitment to students felt intimidated and degraded [19].
On the other hand, some researchers [18,36] concluded that teachers from a CALD background were highly encouraged to go back to their teaching career. They highlighted that ethnic minority immigrant teachers could be a positive role model in an ethnic-diverse class, and their cultural knowledge and experiences as 'other' had to be utilised in order to develop a better understanding of some particular knowledge among students [18,36]. Some research studies suggested that immigrant teachers' ethnic minority identity can let them empathise with their students [18]. While immigrant teachers or teachers with ethnic minority background are encouraged to utilise their 'strength' as an 'outsider', they may also be 'marginalised' or 'alienated' [18]. It is worthwhile to examine how immigrant teachers possess such information cognitively and psychologically by investigating whether stressing immigrant teachers' ethnic or cultural background can induce a stronger sense of self-efficacy. By researching on their lived stories and looking into whether their multicultural background or hybrid identities, researchers can identify factors which make them a successful or unsuccessful change agent both in the classroom and society [31][32][33]. Such investigation has been done in countries like New Zealand and Israel by offering teachers a platform for their lived stories and looking into their role to create reciprocal influences on new immigrant students [31][32][33]. Similar researches can also be done in different states of Australia in order to compare and contrast how adaptions of different new policies influence immigrant teachers' self-efficacy.
Some bridging and upgrading programmes highlighted a fact that many teachers from a CALD background were not able to obtain teacher accreditation because of their standard of English, and mentioned that language barrier seemed to be a problem among immigrant teachers [4,5,10]. There was an attempt in offering help like giving training in preparing them as a teacher of LOTE, like some programmes run by the Sydney Institute of Community Languages Education (SICLE) [4]. Teachers from CALD background whose expertise in other disciplines like Informational Technology, Science or even History were generally highly-experienced ones and had teaching experiences overseas for many years. Transforming them into LOTE teachers or teachers in community language schools may seem to offer a helping hand, but in fact, it might be creating a negative psychological impact on them. Some immigrant teachers thought it was a form of devaluing their teaching experiences and constituted a form of institutional racial discrimination [2]. One problem with such transformation is that it may not help ease the problem of teacher shortage in some particular fields like science and mathematics or even in regional areas where LOTE teachers may not be a need. Hence, more studies can also be done on whether it would lead to immigrant teachers' self or professional identity crisis by providing such pathways or ways of transformation.

Incapability in Examining Factors Influencing Career Choices Diachronically
Career choices are a dynamic process over time [23]. With a change in policies in registration organisations and English proficiency assessments, together with introducing some bridging courses, it aims at utilising and bringing in these human resources. In previous studies, some researchers [9,34] mentioned that when immigrant teachers wished to restart their career as teachers, they had to get registered in the Department of Education of their state. However, most of them were not well informed of that before they had landed [9,34]. Some researchers [40] also mentioned there were some significant changes in policies over the past ten years. For example, the qualification and accreditation processes were no longer conducted by National Office of Overseas Skills Recognition (NOOSR) Teaching Panel, but by the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership Limited (AISTL). Another significant change was the English gate-keeping assessment for teachers from a CALD background. Professional English Assessment for Teachers (PEAT) was formerly the only approved English proficiency test. In earlier years, there was a divergent opinion on whether all overseas-trained teachers should have to do PEAT, but the majority thought the test was not reflecting that teachers have to do in their work and made them depressed as even some Australian-born teachers could not pass the PEAT [14]. Now International Second Language Proficiency Rating (ISLPR) or the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) were also accepted [9]. It is also crucial to investigate whether those bureaucratic red tape, paperwork or accreditation processes, and a change in policies still brings negative affection to the immigrant teachers. Some researches on immigrant teachers' adaption in relation to where they obtained their qualifications have been done in America and European countries' tertiary education [41]. Researches related to the preference of the employers on the immigrant teachers' qualifications can be extended from immigrant teachers in higher education sector to primary and secondary educations so as to gain a better understanding of how these contextual factors influence immigrant teachers' self-efficacy.
Furthermore, some previous researches were conducted and urged the need to acknowledge those teachers and suggest their potential contributions to the education of students, particularly to the minority [18]. While there is an increasing number of overseas-born teachers [5], there is little or no human resources statistics about immigrant teachers continuing their teaching career in public schools each year and their waiting period. Immigrant teachers have arrived and existed in the current system in Australia for over ten years. It is important to investigate whether those alternative pathways can bring a stronger motivation, an enhanced sense of accomplishment or more positive affection to the immigrant teachers to persist their career choices. Some countries like Sweden have been evaluating the effectiveness of fast-track courses for newly-arrived immigrant teachers in relation to their individual needs and education background. Similar researches can also be done in Australia [42].

Neglecting the Change of Immigrant Teachers' Self-perception from a 'Brain Gain' to 'Brain Drain'
Many immigrant teachers came to Australia on either temporary or permanent skilled migration visa [2]. They were treasured as highly-skilled talents by the government before their landing. They were supposed to be considered as 'brain gain' to the country [43]. They were told there was a skill shortage and had an expectation that they could fill in that shortage and make themselves useful as skilled immigrants in their new home.
However, some researchers [2] pointed out that Departments of Education did not really see foreign teachers as a valuable attribute and only saw them as a detriment. They were neither treated as 'human capital' nor 'cultural capital' [2,6]. Some researches stated that immigrant teachers were perceived as not articulate or 'quick-witted' and they were unhappy about the comments as they did not like to be perceived as 'dumb' [6,9]. With those disappointing experiences, immigrant teachers might be sceptical towards their ability and felt disrespected and had an inferior status [3,6]. They switched to think if they were a 'brain drain' to the country, using the country's resources to get them retrained but eventually they were perceived as 'redundant'.
Some researchers [19] recognised teachers' values and beliefs were the factors influencing their decision on selecting a particular career. However, they quickly identified beliefs as subjective and jumped to investigating further on teachers' values. They believed values could be objectively differentiated good from bad, and their behavioural component was an intervening variable leading to initiating an action [19]. However, personal or subjective beliefs have equal importance as they are in relation to an individual's sense of accomplishment and his/her well-being [27,44]. It is necessary to examine how immigrant teachers perceive their personal and professional identity cognitively and psychologically. By evaluating how global mobility and immigrant teachers' new workplace influences their perception of opportunities and challenges, it can understand better personal and contextual factors facilitating and inhibiting their active participation at their new workplace. Research studies have been done to other professions like nurses in European countries [39,40]. Similar researches on immigrant teachers on their self-perception can be conducted in Australia as it reflects how they perceive tasks ahead as approachable or threats and hence facilitating or deterring them from starting their teaching career at their new home.

Significance of Self-efficacy in Relation to Contextual Experiences
Some researches [8,12] mentioned the importance of motivation in teachers' career choices, and such choices are affected by contextual factors. As mentioned in the previous section, while outlining factors influencing teachers' career choices, these factors have to be investigated diachronically together with their impact on teachers' professional and personal identity in order to understand how contextual factors dynamically influence teachers' career choices [29,47].
Career readiness is a combination of trust, confidence and ability to create a behaviour like decision making, planning and taking action [48]. Forming such sense of career readiness, it has to go back to the interplay between self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and personal goals. One's career choices are influenced by how an individual postulates an outcome. Such postulation is based on how an individual perceives his/her personal and contextual experiences cognitively and psychologically. Immigrant teachers always have to develop coping strategies to acquire an understanding of self-identity and professional identity [16]. While it was mentioned earlier that English proficiency tests were gate-keeping ones, depression and anxiety of going through bureaucratic red tape and not getting the prior teaching experience and qualifications recognised make immigrant teachers re-evaluate their outcome expectations from previously successful teaching experiences to a possible failing ones [13].
Meanwhile, some researchers [16] also described that immigrant teachers' professional identity was at risk while they were putting their hopes and aspirations of continuing their teaching careers in a different culture of schooling. How this sense of threat, anxiety or depression can constitute a pessimistic self-efficacy in perceiving one's capabilities can also be further investigated. Some research studies have been done on examining how the relationship between immigrant teachers' self-efficacy and their career trajectory in Fuji and Taiwan [21,22]. Similar research studies can also be done in Australia on both in-service immigrant teachers and teachers who have left their teaching career. These studies can cast a better insight on the relationship between outcome expectation, self-efficacy and career choices.
It is also noteworthy that immigrant teachers who were successful in classroom teaching and who could help students gain knowledge competence with good students' attitudes and learning outcomes tended to continue their teaching, like moving from regional areas to metropolis [7,10]. On the other hand, some researchers [16] mentioned such mere knowledge transfer might not satisfy their professional perception of self. Examining teachers' self-efficacy can shed light on how beliefs induce self-aiding or self-hindering effects in teachers' career choices, in particular, immigrant teachers may be facing similar huddles but come out with different career choices [8].
Apart from classroom experiences, some personal and financial factors like a family burden were also identified in previous researches [4]. Some researchers [2,24] had considered immigrant teachers' living experiences while looking into their career choices and pointed out that a feeling of belonging and connectedness was formed apart from professional growth. Some teachers rated their expectations of being a teacher in Australia had been met, and they were receiving equal or higher average salary or chances of promotion compared with their non-immigrant counterparts [2,40]. Some immigrant teachers also reported they had a satisfactory immigration experience and would recommend to other immigrant teachers to teach in Australia [2,5]. Hence, it is worthwhile to examine how these successful experiences can constitute a positive self-efficacy. Examining how immigrant teachers interpret and master their successful performance and experiences nationwide and by states can help to gain a thorough insight on how socio-economic setting, culture and policies in each state influence the mastery of experiences by immigrant teachers [15,19].

Summary
This literature review first began with the importance of self-efficacy and its reciprocal relationship with outcome expectations and personal goals in making or persisting career choices. The interplay between these three elements was briefly outlined. Then, contextual factors like bureaucratic red tape, inadequate school support, discrepancies of classroom management and expectation together with racism and discrimination were categorised. Later, some current research gaps like an absence of diachronic investigations on contextual factors, how contextual experiences shaped immigrant teachers as an outsider could affect teachers' self-efficacy and how immigrant teachers postulate their possible success or failure of restarting teaching career in Australia were pointed out. Finally, by highlighting the significance of self-efficacy in relation to contextual experiences, it is hoped that researches on factors influencing immigrant teachers' career choices can be conducted in a more holistic point of view by taking self-efficacy into consideration in order to bring these 'brain gain' as valuable human resources to solve the country's teacher shortage problem.