26. Educational Leadership
Paper
Fostering Pre-service Teachers’ Educational Leadership through Storytelling: A Pedagogical Approach
Ziyin Xiong, Jieyu Lin
Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China
Presenting Author: Xiong, Ziyin;
Lin, Jieyu
Introduction
Effective leadership is an important factor in teacher development. In recent years, teacher leadership has become the centre of educational research on improving educational practices (Beycioğlu & Aslan, 2010; Kilinç, 2014). Teacher leaders serve a variety of roles such as discovering their potential to influence student learning, improving teaching ability, influencing peer teachers and impacting policy decisions (Berg et al., 2014; Wenner & Campbell, 2017). In today’s information age, the advent of generative artificial intelligence has affected education profoundly (Hui, 2020). The challenges of the times call for teachers to cultivate teacher leadership, facilitating professional development and collaborative efforts to collectively confront digital challenges.
Storytelling is a novel educational method that facilitates knowledge obtaining (Scott et al., 2013). Storytelling has potential for enhancing teacher education, including as a means for exploring moral commitments and beliefs and for generating theories about teaching and learning (Bullough, 2010). Storytelling can encouraged novice teachers to think more like experts, to recognize an instructional event as an instance of a known category of problems. However, there are still relatively few studies that are set out from the pre-service teachers’ perspective and explore how storytelling can cultivate their teacher leadership.
Review of the teacher leadership literature shows that little is known about how teacher leadership manifests itself in action, especially in pre-service teachers (Muijs & Harris, 2006; Lai & Cheung, 2015). This gap leads to the focus of this study, which sets out to examine how to utilize storytelling to cultivate teacher leadership among pre-service teachers. To do this, this study built on the model of “the four Dempsey images” and uses grounded theory as an empowerment approach, to encourage teacher educators to design educational storytelling activities to foster pre-service teachers’ leadership. This study provides an instructional investigation into fostering pre-service teachers’ educational leadership through university-based teacher training. By using storytelling as the pedagogical method, this study demonstrates how to integrate the objective of building pre-service teacher leadership into the teacher education practices through pedagogical innovation. It is hoped that this case study can provoke theoretical discussions on how to harness the instructional pedagogy of educational storytelling as a meaningful practice in fostering pre-service teacher leadership.
Theoretical Framework
Dempsey (1992) offers a conceptual framework concerning teacher leadership, which consists of four images. In this study, Dempsey’s framework is also used to support the pre-service teachers’ leadership course design and as a data analysis tool for interpreting results. Image 1: Teacher as Fully Functioning Person suggests that teacher leaders must possess the ability to adapt, change, and grow. They must be fully committed to education while also continuing to strengthen their beliefs. Image 2: Teacher as Reflective Practitioner suggests that teacher leaders need to be reflective practitioners in order to foster substantial change when needed. Image 3: Teacher as Scholar notes that teacher leaders must be continual and flexible learners who apply knowledge both inside and outside of the classroom. Image 4: Teacher as Partner in Learning implies that teacher leaders take up the challenge of making collaborative communities of learning where not only students learn, but also where teachers, administrators, and parents learn.
Pre-service teachers need the ability to learn and adapt to new ways to teach their content. They need to enhance their skills to support the development of students’ learning needs. Meanwhile, they must collaborate with colleagues and parents to improve teaching practices. The four Dempsey images with adaptations to pre-service teachers served as the model of this research: pre-service teacher as fully functioning person, pre-service teacher as reflective practitioner, pre-service teacher as scholar, and pre-service teacher as learning partner.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThe research design stems from a university curriculum named “Ethics of Education and Social Responsibility”, which aims to develop pre-service teachers’ leadership. A teacher educator from Shanghai Jiao Tong University participated in the design of this course programme. The teacher educator and one master student also worked as researcher and participated in the data collection and data analysis in this study. The participating pre-service teachers in this study are master students in a national degree named “Educational Professional Master”, which is the mainstream track to prepare students to enter the teaching profession in China. In total, 50 pre-service teachers participated in this programme.
In this program, pre-service teachers engaged in a comprehensive project-based learning activity that spanned the entire course duration. They were tasked with conducting interviews with an educator whom they considered to have a model effect on their development, aiming to capture and share impactful educational stories from a uniquely personal perspective. This task not only provided them with practical teaching experience but also encouraged a profound exploration of the teaching philosophies employed by exceptional educators. The interviews and written materials presented by pre-service teachers during their reports were systematically collected. In addition, semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight students teachers to collect information concerning their reflections on enhancing teacher leadership through storytelling in the course.
To complement the data above, this study also collected the artefacts that the teacher educator and pre-service teachers have produced throughout this course programme. Artefacts can convey many messages in which the cultural and contextual dynamics are manifested (Schein, 1992). These artefacts include the training materials that teacher educator designed on her own; the personal reflective writings provided by pre-service teachers; the textual feedback and exchanges among the participating teachers.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThe results of this paper are summarized into three strands.
Firstly, the paper shows that by integrating the theoretical framework of teacher leadership, educational storytelling is an effective approach for pre-service teachers to support the cultivation of these multifaceted leadership qualities. The art of crafting educational stories serves as a dynamic tool in addressing the diverse roles expected of teacher leaders. Through storytelling, pre-service teachers absorb theoretical knowledge, engage in reflective practices, adapt to the changing educational situations as well as forging dynamic partnerships for collective learning. In this way, they are able to establish a relatable framework for effectively grappling with complex educational scenarios in the future, which is a significant aspect of effective teacher leadership.
Secondly, this paper reveals that the impact of educational storytelling extends beyond conventional instructional methods by creating a more immersive and engaging learning experience. The narrative format captivates the attention of pre-service teachers and allows them to connect emotionally with the interviewed teachers, making it more likely for them to internalize essential educational concepts, apply the acquired knowledge in practical teaching situations and strengthen their educational beliefs. With this emotional resonance, pre-service teachers are better equipped to foster a deeper understanding of their roles and responsibilities as future teacher leaders.
Thirdly, this paper observed that the collaborative learning in storytelling contributes to the professional development, which aligns with the multifaceted nature of teacher leadership. By analyzing and sharing stories from excellent teachers, pre-service teachers engage in a collective exploration of educational strategies and philosophies. This collaborative aspect enhances their capacity to lead by example, influence their peers positively, and contribute collectively to the improvement of teaching practices.
ReferencesBeycioglu, K., & Aslan, B. (2010). Öğretmen liderliği ölçeği: Geçerlik ve güvenirlik çalışması. İlköğretim Online, 9(2), 2-13.
Kilinç, A. Ç. (2014). Examining the Relationship between Teacher Leadership and School Climate. Educational Sciences: Theory and Practice, 14(5), 1729-1742.
Berg, J. H., Carver, C. L., & Mangin, M. M. (2014). Teacher leader model standards: implications for preparation, policy, and practice. Journal of Research on Leadership Education, 9(2), 195–217.
Wenner, J. A., & Campbell, T. (2017). The theoretical and empirical basis of teacher leadership: A review of the literature. Review of Educational Research, 87(1), 134–171.
Luan, H., Geczy, P., Lai, H., Gobert, J., Yang, S. J., Ogata, H., ... & Tsai, C. C. (2020). Challenges and future directions of big data and artificial intelligence in education. Frontiers in psychology, 11, 580820.
Scott, S.D., Brett-MacLean, P., Archibald, M., Hartling, L., 2013. Protocol for a systematic review of the use of narrative storytelling and visual-arts-based approaches as knowledge translation tools in healthcare. Syst. Rev. 2 (1), 1–7.
Bullough, R. V. (2010). Parables, Storytelling, and Teacher Education. Journal of Teacher Education, 61(1-2), 153-160.
Muijs D and Harris A (2006) Teacher led school improvement: Teacher leadership in the UK. Teaching and Teacher Education 22(8): 961–972.
Lai, E., & Cheung, D. (2015). Enacting teacher leadership: The role of teachers in bringing about change. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 43(5), 673-692.
Dempsey, R. (1992). Teachers as leaders: towards a conceptual framework. Teaching Education, 5(1), 113–120.
Schein, E. (1992). Organizational culture and leadership. San francisco: CA: Jossey-Bass.
26. Educational Leadership
Paper
Exploring the Leadership Demands on Early-Career Teachers: Securing Hope for the Future
Lawrence Drysdale, Helen Goode, David Gurr, Berni Moreno
University of Melbourne, Australia
Presenting Author: Drysdale, Lawrence;
Goode, Helen
Schools are increasingly complex organisations and research on leadership in schools is capturing this complexity (Harris & Jones, 2017, 2022). Whilst leadership from principals remains important and continues to be studied (Grissom, et al. 2021research on teacher and middle leadership has accelerated in recent years (Arar & Oplatka, 2022;De Nobile, 2021 ; Harris & Jones, 2017; Lipscombe et al. 2023; Schott et al., 2020). Whilst there is considerable research about the work of early career teachers (Watt & Richardson, 2023), and teacher preparation programs are beginning to include leadership training (Acquaro, 2019), there is almost no empirical research focussed on the leadership work of early career teachers. Given the current Australian, and now global, growing teacher and principal shortages, is timely to consider the leadership work and expectations, as well as the leadership demands on early career teachers.
This study sought to explore and answer the following research questions:
Main research question:
- How do teachers in their first to four years of teaching perceive and act upon the leadership work, expectations and demands placed on them?
Sub-questions:
- How have early career teachers enacted leadership in response to these demands?
- What other leadership work have early career teachers done?
- How were early career teachers prepared and supported to meet the leadership demands?
- How has their leadership work influenced their career aspirations?
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThis study sought to understand the leadership demands new teachers face through their first four years of their teaching career through exploring what these educators are asked to do, and actually do, in terms of leadership practices, and any influence this may have on their career aspirations. This study employed a qualitative methodology where data were collected through semi-structured individual interviews of 20 recent graduates of teacher education programs from one Australian university in Melbourne. Individual interviews lasting 45-60 minutes were conducted online, transcribed and later coded to build thematic understandings. Early-career teachers were chosen through purposeful selection, with the conditions being that they were in their first to fourth year of their teaching career and currently employed in a school. Participants represented a diverse range of attributes such as sex, age, years in the profession, school system, school type, employment status and whether they held a leadership role in the school.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsFindings from the study highlight three important external antecedents that play in early-career teachers’ interest towards leadership roles, namely: previous leadership experience, personal characteristics and any educational leadership studies as part of their initial teacher training. Once employed in schools, if and how they take on leadership roles appears to be directly affected by a number of demands associated to their roles, such as the type of leadership demands imposed by the school, the level of support they receive together with the culture and climate of the school. There also seem to be a strong relationship between the leadership demands and teachers’ employment status (e.g., permanent or fixed-term). Consequently, the way in which these demands converged with the external antecedents determined to an extent their job satisfaction and their personal outlook towards remaining in the profession and their likelihood to seek leadership roles in the future. Finally, findings also revealed that by the time early-career teachers (ECTs) were in their third or fourth year, they had already been asked to apply for a formal leadership role, or were already acting in one. As a result of fragile work security in the sector, those ECTs who had been or were on contracts described how they accepted leadership roles in the hope that this would lead to more secure and permanent work. The study has also captured the leadership work that ECTs self-initiated as part of their desire to support students and their schools. A new model has been designed to understand the leadership demands on early-career teachers.
ReferencesAcquaro, D. (2019). Preparing the next generation of educational leaders: Initiating a leadership discourse in initial teacher education. International Studies in Educational Administration, 47(2), 107-124.
Arar, K. & Oplatka, I. (2022). Advanced Theories of Educational Leadership, Springer.
De Nobile, J. (2021). Researching middle leadership in schools: The state of the art, International Studies in Educational Administration, 49(2), 3-27.
Grissom, J. A., Egalite, A. J. & Lindsay, C. A. (2021). How Principals Affect Students and Schools. A Systematic Synthesis of Two Decades of Research. The Wallace Foundation.
Harris, A., & Jones, M. (2017). Middle leaders matter: Reflections, recognition, and renaissance. School Leadership and Management, 37(3), 213-216.
Harris, A. & Jones, M. (2022). Leading during a pandemic - What the evidence tells us. School Leadership and Management, 42(2), 105-109.
Lipscombe, K., Tindall-Ford, S., & Lamanna, J. (2023). School middle leadership: A systematic review. Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, 51(2), 270–288.
Schott, C., van Roekel, H. & Tummers, L. G (2020). Teacher leadership: A systematic review, methodological quality assessment and conceptual framework, Educational Research Review, 31, 24.
Watt, H.M.G., & Richardson, P.W. (2023), Supportive school workplaces for beginning teachers' motivations and career satisfaction. In, T. Urdan &. E.N. Gonida (Eds) Remembering the Life, Work, and Influence of Stuart A. Karabenick (Advances in Motivation and Achievement, Vol. 22) (Leeds: Emerald), pp. 115-138.
Wenner, J. A., & Campbell, T. (2017). The theoretical and empirical basis of teacher leadership: A review of the literature. Review of Educational Research, 87(1), 134-171.
26. Educational Leadership
Paper
The Impact of School Leadership on Teacher Retention: Where Teachers Stay and How They Thrive
Qing Gu1, Lisa Baines1, Sofia Eleftheriadou1, Kenneth A. Leithwood2
1University College London, United Kingdom; 2University of Toronto, Canada
Presenting Author: Gu, Qing;
Eleftheriadou, Sofia
The important role of a high-quality teaching profession in raising standards, reducing achievement inequalities, and transforming educational outcomes cannot be better emphasised in research papers. This four-year longitudinal research – upon which this paper is based – investigates the effects of the Early Career Framework (ECF) programme, within the context of school-related and individual factors, upon teacher retention decisions. The purpose is to fill an important evidence gap on the impact of related programme-level and school-level factors on the professional dispositions, perceived effectiveness, and retention decisions of early career teachers. In this paper we report results of the structural equation modelling (SEM) analysis of the Year 1 teacher survey which explored the impact of school leadership on the learning and retention decisions of early career teachers.
Context
Investing in teachers’ career-long professional learning and development has been regarded by policy makers, researchers and thinktanks as a cost-effective approach to retaining committed and capable teachers for the profession (Department for Education (DfE), 2019; EPI, 2020, 2021a and 2021b; RAND, 2021; PBE, 2022; Perry et al., 2022). It remains the case, however, for diverse and complex socio-economic and political reasons, that retaining committed and effective teachers is a real challenge.
Conceptual framing
The framing of the conceptual framework is informed by the social ecological theory of human development and other research about employee turnover and persistence (e.g., March & Simon, 1958; Peterson & Seligman, 2004; Porter & Steers, 1973) and variation in teacher turnover (e.g., T. D. Nguyen & Springer, 2023). The socio-ecological interpretation of human development provides a useful lens for investigating how multilevel contexts of the environments in which teachers work impact on their learning, growth and development over the course of their professional lives. This theoretical underpinning emerged from Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ground-breaking work on human development which is, in essence, concerned with the interconnectedness and interactions between multilevel systems and the ways they shape the course of human development throughout the life span.
Within this socio-ecological interpretation of human development, we have encompassed ideas from Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT), especially the work of Lent and his colleagues (e.g., Lent et al., 2002). Exemplifying many of the features of positive psychology (Seligman, 2002), SCCT is rooted in constructivist assumptions encompassed in Bandura’s general social cognitive theory (1986) about the agency of individuals in shaping their own behaviour. According to such theory, a considerable proportion of human behaviour can be explained by an array of beliefs about oneself, influenced by the contexts in which one finds oneself.
Taken together, such conceptual framing places the focus of our investigation on the reciprocal interaction between the capability development of the individual teacher and the quality of multiple reciprocating systems in which their careers are located. Personal goals and outcomes are therefore seen as nurtured by the environments in which they work.
Research questions
RQ.1: What have been the impact of early career teachers’ learning on the Early Career Framework (ECF) (induction) programme on their learning and retention decisions?
RQ.2: What are the main factors leading to teachers’ decision to stay?
RQ.3: How does school leadership impact – if at all – on early career teachers’ learning on the ECF programme and retention?
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedParticipants and procedure
Survey invitations were sent to all early career teachers (ECTs) in their first year of the ECF programme between June and October 2023. A total of 904 ECTs responded representing 15% response rate. Demographics of our sample appear to be broadly representative of national figures for ECTs regarding gender, ethnicity, and contract types (e.g. full time permanent), as well as school phase. Thus, we are confident about the external validity of the research findings in that they are highly relevant to the experiences of the ECT population nationally.
Instruments
The survey comprised 96 questions plus demographic data. School context data was added to include national school inspection judgement outcomes, percentage of pupils eligible for Free School Meals (a key indicator for school socioeconomic disadvantage), and region (Department for Education, 2022). Responses were rated on a Likert scale of 1-6, with 1 the least positive response and 6 the most positive response. The survey assessed programme satisfaction, mastery and implementation of learning, leadership practices, school culture, professional growth opportunities, teacher self-efficacy, resilience, job satisfaction, wellbeing. The outcome variable was teacher destinations (recoded into 1=staying, 2=moving, 3=leaving teaching).
Data analysis
Survey scales were tested for construct validity using confirmatory factor analysis. Scales were adjusted and factor scores were created from remaining items and tested for correlation with teacher destination.
Missing categorical outcome data (n=6) were deleted list-wise, leaving a final sample of n=898 for analysis. Factors significantly associated with destination were analysed using a structural equation model (SEM) in R Studio (Rstudio Team, 2020) using the lavaan package (Rosseel, 2012). All variables significantly associated with the outcome were included in the initial structural model. Non-significant or confounding pathways were trimmed. The final SEM model was applied separately to each imputed data set in R Studio and parameter estimates pooled using Rubin’s rules (Rubin, 1976). Model fit indices were considered separately for each imputed dataset using established cut-off values, with the caveat that cut-off values are frequently based upon ML estimation and not well established for DWLS estimation (Xia & Yang, 2019), thus cut-offs are treated with some caution.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsResults
We used a structural equation model to test the effects of programme-related factors (programme satisfaction, mastery of learning, implementation of learning), school-related factors (successful leadership practices, professional growth opportunities, collaborative culture) and personal dispositions (self-efficacy, resilience, satisfaction and engagement in teaching, job satisfaction in school, wellbeing in teaching, and wellbeing in school), upon teacher destinations. Model fit was assessed as good across twenty imputed data sets, with the range of model fit indices: CFI (.97-.98), TLI (.97-.98), RMSEA (.044-.049) and SRMR (.068 -.072). Three key takeaway messages are as follows:
Message 1: ECTs’ satisfaction with the ECF programme is closely associated with leadership practices in their school. The statistically significant iterative association between programme satisfaction and leadership practices indicates close connections between ECTs’ learning experiences on ECF and the influence of in-school leadership practices.
Message 2: ECTs’ satisfaction with their learning experiences on the ECF programme impact directly on their mastery of the programme content and use of the learning in their teaching practice (i.e. ‘implementation’). It is the use of learning in context that improves ECTs’ ‘self-efficacy’ and subsequently enhances their ‘resilience’, ‘satisfaction and engagement’ and ‘wellbeing in teaching’.
Message 3: Professional growth opportunities – created by leadership practices – are a necessary in-school condition that enables ECTs to use their learning from the ECF programme to improve their self-efficacy, resilience, engagement and wellbeing in teaching. As importantly, ECTs’ experience of professional growth opportunities provided by their schools also has a significant and direct impact on their decisions about retention.
Scholarly significance
Evidence suggests that by focussing narrowly on building individual teachers’ learning entitlements, knowledge and skills, many UK-wide teacher development initiatives have largely ignored the integral role of the school organisation in enabling (or constraining) teacher learning and thus failed to bring about the desired results.
ReferencesBandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory. Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Department for Education. (2019). Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy. Department for Education. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/786856/DFE_Teacher_Retention_Strategy_Report.pdf
Department for Education. (2022). Get Information about Schools—GOV.UK. https://get-information-schools.service.gov.uk/Establishments/Search/PrepareDownload?SelectedTab=Establishments&SearchType=EstablishmentAll&SearchType=EstablishmentAll&OpenOnly=true&TextSearchModel.AutoSuggestValue=&f=true&b=1&b=4
Education Policy Institute. (2020). The effects of high-quality professional development on teachers and students: A rapid review and meta-analysis. London: Education Policy Institute.
Education Policy Institute. (2021a). Policy analysis: Teacher recruitment and retention in the eye of the pandemic. London: Education Policy Institute. https://epi.org.uk/publications-and-research/recruitment-and-retention-in-the-eye-of-the-pandemic/
Education Policy Institute. (2021b). The cost of high-quality professional development for teachers in England. London: Education Policy Institute.
Lent, R. W., & Brown, S. D. (2002). Social cognitive career theory and adult career development. In S.G. Niles (Ed.), Adult career development: Concepts, issues and practices (pp. 76–97). National Career Development Association.
March, J. G., & Simon, H. A. (1958). Organizations. Wiley.
Nguyen, T., & Springer, M. (2021). A conceptual framework of teacher turnover: a systematic review of the empirical international literature and insights from the employee turnover literature. Educational Review, 75(5), 993-1028.
Perry, E., Halliday, J., Higginson, J., & Patel, S. (2022). Meeting the Challenge of Providing High-quality Continuing Professional Development for Teachers. London: Wellcome.
Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2004). Character strengths and virtues: A handbook and classification. Oxford University Press; American Psychological Association.
Porter, L. W., & Steers, R.M. (1973). Organizational, Work, and Personal Factors in Employee Turnover and Absenteeism. Psychological Bulletin, 80, 151-176.
Pro Bono Economics (PBE) (2022). Learning to Save: Teacher CPD as a Cost-Effective Approach to Improving Retention. London: Pro Bono Economics.
RAND (2021). Understanding Teacher Retention: Using a Discrete Choice Experiment to measure Teacher Retention in England. Cambridge: Office for Manpower Economics.
RStudio Team. (2020). RStudio: Integrated Development Environment for R. RStudio, PBC. http://www.rstudio.com/
Rosseel, Y. (2012). lavaan: An R Package for Structural Equation Modeling. Journal of Statistical Software, 48(2), 1–36.
Rubin, D. B. (1976). Inference and Missing Data. Biometrika, 63(3), 581–592. JSTOR.
Seligman, M. E. P. (2002). Authentic happiness: Using the new positive psychology to realize your potential for lasting fulfilment. New York: Free Press.
Xia, Y., & Yang, Y. (2019). RMSEA, CFI, and TLI in structural equation modeling with ordered categorical data: The story they tell depends on the estimation methods. Behavior Research Methods, 51(1), 409–428.
26. Educational Leadership
Paper
What Keeps Teachers in Teaching? Evidence from a Systematic Review of Research Reviews
Sofia Eleftheriadou1, Qing Gu1, Kenneth A. Leithwood2
1University College London, United Kingdom; 2University of Toronto, Canada
Presenting Author: Eleftheriadou, Sofia;
Gu, Qing
Introduction
This paper presents a systematic review of research reviews on teacher retention. The purpose is to identify knowledge claims about why teachers stay in teaching and through this, establish a nuanced conceptual account of how school systems improve teacher retention. Although the literature associated with teacher retention has been investigated and mapped in various ways in existing research reviews, as our analysis in this paper shows, most previous attempts have focussed on exploring effects of discrete factors despite many factors exercise interconnected effects on teachers’ decision to stay or leave the profession.
Context
Improving teacher retention is a priority in many countries across the globe as it has direct and indirect effects on student learning. Investing in teachers’ development has been seen by researchers, thinktanks and policy makers as a cost-effective approach to improving retention (e.g., Burge et al., 2021; Fletcher-Wood & Zuccollo, 2020; Pro Bono Economics (PBE), 2022; Van den Brande & Zuccollo, 2021). However, despite extensive investment in teachers’ human capital, it remains the case, for diverse and complex personal, socio-economic and political reasons, that retaining and developing committed, resilient and effective teachers is a real challenge. In the world of high-income countries, such as the USA, the UK and many European countries, shortage of teacher supply tends to be a particularly pressing problem for core subject areas such as maths, modern foreign languages and science (European Commission, 2012; Katsarova, 2020) and for schools serving socio-economically deprived and marginalised communities (Allen & McInerney, 2019; Boyd et al., 2008; Guarino et al., 2006; Ingersoll, 2001).
New conceptual framing to understand teacher retention
The framing of the conceptual framework is informed by the social ecological theory of human development and other research about employee turnover and persistence (e.g., March & Simon, 1958; Peterson & Seligman, 2004; Porter & Steers, 1973) and variation in teacher turnover (e.g., T. D. Nguyen & Springer, 2023). The socio-ecological interpretation of human development provides a useful lens for investigating how multilevel contexts of the environments in which teachers work impact on their learning, growth and development over the course of their professional lives. This theoretical underpinning emerged from Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ground-breaking work on human development which is, in essence, concerned with the interconnectedness and interactions between multilevel systems and the ways they shape the course of human development throughout the life span.
Within this socio-ecological interpretation of human development, we have encompassed ideas from Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT), especially the work of Lent and his colleagues (e.g., Lent et al., 2002). Exemplifying many of the features of positive psychology (Seligman, 2002), SCCT is rooted in constructivist assumptions encompassed in Bandura’s general social cognitive theory (1986) about the agency of individuals in shaping their own behaviour. According to such theory, a considerable proportion of human behaviour can be explained by an array of beliefs about oneself, influenced by the contexts in which one finds oneself.
Taken together, such conceptual framing places the focus of our investigation on the reciprocal interaction between the capability development of the individual teacher and the quality of multiple reciprocating systems in which their careers are located. Personal goals and outcomes are therefore seen as nurtured by the environments in which they work.
Research questions
The following research questions were used to guide our review:
RQ.1: What are the most significant school-related factors positively influencing teacher retention?
RQ.2: How do those factors, individually and in combination, influence teacher retention?
RQ.3: How best can we conceptualise existing evidence about factors that influence teacher retention?
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedSearch strategy
We reviewed existing reviews conducted from 2013 to 2023, which cover the topic of teacher retention. To identify those reviews, we searched the databases Scopus, EBSCOhost, ProQuest and Web of Science using the following set of keywords: “teacher retention” or “teacher attrition” or “teacher turnover” or “teacher supply” or “teacher shortage” or “teacher leav*” or “teacher stay*” or “teacher mov*” or “teacher mobility” or “teacher quit*” or “teacher dropout” and literature review or research review or systematic review or meta-analysis. We searched within the document title, abstract and keywords in August 2023. We have also conducted a manual search in key journals publishing reviews as well as a manual search in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews.
For a study to be included in our analysis, it had to meet the following criteria:
• Review of empirical research (any type of research – quantitative, qualitative and/or mixed),
• Published in English language,
• Published between 2013 and 2023 to cover reviews published during the last 10 years,
• Peer-reviewed journal article,
• Teachers in schools as a population of interest,
• Focus on factors influencing teacher retention and attrition,
• Description of a search strategy (e.g., keywords) and inclusion criteria for the evidence reviewed.
Screening
A two-step screening was conducted to identify the relevant reviews to answer our research questions. After the removal of duplicates, we first screened papers based on their title and abstract and then based on full text. A total of 17 reviews were deemed relevant and therefore included in our review.
Quality assurance
We used the type of publication (i.e., peer-reviewed journal articles) for quality assurance purposes. In addition to that, the quality of the included papers was taken as face value and the different quality assurance/appraisal approaches adopted by the papers were reviewed.
Analytical approach
To map existing evidence, we first coded the 17 reviews based on the following descriptive characteristics: type of destinations, population of interest, review aim(s), review period, review sample size, sources of evidence, types of evidence, and quality assessment. To identify factors that influence teacher retention and attrition, we coded the evidence presented as part of the results of the reviews, often organised in conceptual frameworks/models. Coding of factors was guided by our conceptual framework. Based on the quality assurance/appraisal approaches adopted by the papers, we conducted coding of the influential factors using 9 reviews out of the 17.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsFindings
Taken together the reviews cover a considerable time frame from 1980 to 2022. Teachers in schools were the target population of the reviews, with some cases focusing on more specific groups of teachers, e.g., special educators, career-changers, and teachers in rural schools. Regarding the types of departures (i.e., leaving a school, leaving the profession) examined in the studies, it was found that eight reviews focussed on both types of “leavings” without making a distinction between them in the presentation of their results. Leaving the profession was the focus of eight reviews, while leaving a school was the focus of one review.
A total of 103 factors were identified across the 9 review papers analysed. Informed by the existing research on school leadership and educational improvement, the identified factors were grouped into categories, or conceptual building blocks, based on a more nuanced conceptualisation of the connection between these factors as presented in our conceptual framework.
The following six conceptual categories describe the identified factors – external policy context, school leadership, teacher working conditions, school characteristics, personal dispositions, and teacher personal characteristics; and using the ecological conceptual framing, the interconnections between the categories show how they influence each other in educational settings to impact teacher retention.
Scholarly significance
Many existing reviews present retention factors in a list-like manner, without making conceptual connections between those factors. Although some review papers have produced their own conceptual frameworks, they address only part of the conceptual framing that we have produced. An important contribution of our paper is the development of a research-informed, more nuanced approach to understanding how leadership and the school organisation improve teacher retention.
ReferencesAllen, B., & McInerney, L. (2019). The Recruitment Gap: Attracting Teachers to Schools Serving Disadvantaged Communities. In Sutton Trust. Sutton Trust. https://www.suttontrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/The-Recruitment-Gap.pdf
Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory. Prentice-Hall, Inc.
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