Preservice Teacher Retention and Commitment: Why Some Continue and Some Leave

• In Event: Reimagining the Educator Pipeline: Strengths-Based Approaches to Studying Teacher Preparation, Recruitment, Diversity, and Retention

Abstract

While there is a plethora of research that addressed early career teachers’ attrition and associated problems (Darling-Hammond & Carver-Thomas, 2017), little research has focused on pre-service teacher retention. Pre-service teachers’ decreasing enrollment and high attrition rate prior to graduation from their teacher education program are tied to fundamental causes of declining teacher workforce. According to the U.S. Department of Education’s Title II Report on National Teacher Preparation Data (2019), enrollment in teacher education programs decreased 37% between the academic year (AY) 2017-18, and AY 2009-2010, which suggested that fewer individuals were choosing to pursue a career in teaching. Additionally, pre-service teachers’ attrition rate has been over 60% for the last few years.

Given this emerging problem, this study aims at understanding pre-service teachers’ commitment to the teaching career. Teacher commitment has been identified as a critical contributor in determining teaching effectiveness, resilience capacity, emotional well-being, and career decision-making processes (e.g., Author, 2010; Chapman, 1984; Day & Gu, 2010; Jo, 2014). Although in-service teachers’ commitment has been well referenced, not much is known about pre-service teachers’ commitment to the teaching career (Pop & Turner, 2009). For pre-service teachers, their commitment is “commitment to the career goal”, which inevitably includes the negotiation process of the career goal itself, evaluative reactions to tentative choices, and the ongoing crystallization of developing certainty and confidence to their choice (Author et al., 2018).

In order to uncover how and why pre-service teachers’ commitment to teaching varies, this study compared three groups: (i) those with high commitment to teaching career (N=17), (ii) those with low commitment to teaching career (N=15), and (iii) those who already switched the major and moved away from teacher education (N=8). Semi-structured interviews were conducted to gain in-depth understanding about their career commitment and various factors influencing their commitment and were analyzed inductively.

Findings of this study showed that key influential sources that impact pre-service teachers’ commitment to teaching varied for each group. While the high commitment group recognized hindrances in pursuing a teaching career, they had strong psychological orientation (e.g., high efficacy, high value) and social support (e.g., family) to counter the negative narratives. The low commitment group had competing career goals (e.g., dentist), and was strongly influenced by negative societal perceptions, thus they developed a stronger sense of uncertainty to pursue a teaching career. Those who completely dropped out of their teacher education program and switched majors shared fear-driven reasoning, and no buffer to counter the narratives that go against a teaching career such as accountability demands, low salary, and lack of respect to the teaching career. This study highlights what drives pre-service teachers to commit their goal to become a teacher, as well as what influences their commitment to be eroded. Implications to develop pre-service teachers’ sense of preparedness and to assess the goodness-of-fit between the teaching career and themselves are discussed.

Authors

• Ji Y. Hong, University of Oklahoma

• Qian Wang, The University of Oklahoma

• Laura A. Lewis, University of Oklahoma