Status of the teaching profession – attracting and retaining teachers

Retaining teachers in their work stations is influenced by many factors which are contextually explained. Teachers’ retention practices in Tanzania and most Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries have been ineffective partly because of being monetary based. While ‘voicing’ is regarded as a more feasible strategy for retaining teachers in these countries, conditions which favour voicing over exiting a remote school particularly in the Tanzanian context have been not systematically mapped out. This article presents and discusses seven conditions, to include: empowering, listening and cooperative leadership; habitability; friendliness outside school environment; investment potentialities; a supportive and peaceful school working environment; life as a “challenge” mindset; as well as patriotism and profession commitment, which were found to favour voicing over exiting a remote school. The findings imply that there is a need to empower teachers to influence change and reforms that matter to them, increasing teachers sense of investment in schools they are posted and in the profession (social and financial capital), checking ‘who goes into the teaching profession and with what level of struggle’; improving school-level relationships including justice practices from leaders and management, positive co-workers exchanges; training teachers to become patriotic to the nation and be committed to the teaching profession; and the need to improve cooperation and understanding between schools and their surrounding communities.

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Teacher Mobility, School Segregation, and Pay-Based Policies to Level the Playing Field

Education Finance and Policy ◽

10.1162/edfp_a_00040 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 6 (3) ◽

pp. 399-438 ◽

Cited By ~ 47

Author(s):

Charles T. Clotfelter ◽

Helen F. Ladd ◽

Jacob L. Vigdor

Keyword(s):

North Carolina ◽

Minority Students ◽

Teacher Quality ◽

Low Income ◽

Teaching Profession ◽

Teacher Mobility ◽

School Segregation ◽

Playing Field ◽

Retaining Teachers ◽

Low Income Families

Research has consistently shown that teacher quality is distributed very unevenly among schools, to the clear disadvantage of minority students and those from low-income families. Using North Carolina data on the length of time individual teachers remain in their schools, we examine the potential for using salary differentials to overcome this pattern. We conclude that salary differentials are a far less effective tool for retaining teachers with strong preservice qualifications than for retaining other teachers in schools with high proportions of minority students. Consequently large salary differences would be needed to level the playing field when schools are segregated. This conclusion reflects our finding that teachers with stronger qualifications are both more responsive to the racial and socioeconomic mix of a school's students and less responsive to salary than are their less-qualified counterparts when making decisions about remaining in their current school, moving to another school or district, or leaving the teaching profession.

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Teacher Recruitment and Retention: A Review of the Recent Empirical Literature

Review of Educational Research ◽

10.3102/00346543076002173 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 76 (2) ◽

pp. 173-208 ◽

Cited By ~ 437

Author(s):

Cassandra M. Guarino ◽

Lucrecia Santibañez ◽

Glenn A. Daley

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Empirical Studies ◽

Teacher Recruitment ◽

The United States ◽

Teaching Profession ◽

Empirical Literature ◽

Recruitment And Retention ◽

Show Evidence ◽

Retaining Teachers

This article critically reviews the recent empirical literature on teacher recruitment and retention published in the United States. It examines the characteristics of individuals who enter and remain in the teaching profession, the characteristics of schools and districts that successfully recruit and retain teachers, and the types of policies that show evidence of efficacy in recruiting and retaining teachers. The goal of the article is to provide researchers and policymakers with a review that is comprehensive, evaluative, and up to date. The review of the empirical studies selected for discussion is intended to serve not only as a compendium of available recent research on teacher recruitment and retention but also as a guide to the merit and importance of these studies.

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How a principal's action as an invitational leader with a social justice orientation can serve as a factor in recruiting and reciprocally retaining teachers at high-poverty, high-minority, high needs urban high schools

10.32469/10355/81548 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

◽

William E. McDowell

Keyword(s):

Social Justice ◽

High Schools ◽

Collective Efficacy ◽

The United States ◽

Teaching Profession ◽

Urban High Schools ◽

High Poverty ◽

Social Justice Orientation ◽

Retaining Teachers ◽

Leading Schools

The number of individuals going into the teaching profession was dwindling at a time when the rate of retirement and people leaving the profession was increasing. Sutcher et al. (2016) noted that in 2015-16, the United States was short 64,000 qualified teachers. They predicted this to grow to as much as 300,000 teachers needed per year by 2020 and up to 316,000 by 2025. The COVID-19 pandemic may exacerbate this challenge even more (Page, 2020). Teachers need to be recruited, supported, and retained in high-poverty, high-minority, high-needs, urban high schools (Freedman and Appleman, 2008; Greenlee and Brown, 2009; Hughes, 2012; Petty, et. al, 2012; Podolsky, et. al., 2016; Simon and Johnson, 2015; Stotko, et. al., 2006; Waddell, 2010). In a time when inequities are being exacerbated in the field of education, the principals and the teachers will be called upon to do more with less (Page, 2020). Empowerment of school principals who are willing to take on the schools that are the most challenging (Bartanen, 2019; Levin and Bradley, 2019) is needed. They must to be trained to demonstrate leadership dimensions and supporting actions (Martin and Miller, 2017) that can guide them to build a team of team of irreplaceable teachers (The Irreplaceables, 2012), which will build collective efficacy (Hattie, 2016) to help students furthest from opportunity reach their high potential in academic and personal achievement. In the contention of Martin and Miller, (2017) aligning the dimensions of invitational leadership (Purkey and Novak, 2016; Purkey and Siegel, 2003) with action and self-reflection of social justice leadership for principal leadership will better prepare principals leading schools with diverse populations. This study further contends that if the principal's action as an invitational leader with a social justice orientation it will serve as a factor in recruiting and retaining teachers in the schools where they are needed most.

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