Navigating the Early Years: Job Satisfaction of STEM Teachers in Kazakhstan

• In Event: School education in Central Asia: Academic achievement, educational leadership, and curricular reform

Proposal

Teacher shortages, particularly of qualified science and mathematics teachers, remain a global concern (UNESCO & International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030, 2024). Retention is widely recognised as central to addressing these shortages, as attrition has implications for teaching quality and financial costs (Hanushek et al., 2016; Sutcher et al., 2019; Watlington et al., 2010). Research on turnover points to a complex interplay of personal, school, and external factors (Nguyen & Springer, 2023), with job satisfaction emerging as a key determinant of teachers’ intentions to stay or leave (Carver-Thomas & Darling-Hammond, 2017; Wartenberg et al., 2023). With many teachers leaving within five years (Perryman & Calvert, 2020), sustained support is essential to strengthen early career teachers’ (ECT) motivation and professionalism (UNESCO & International Task Force on Teachers for Education, 2024). However, despite rising global attention to ECT research, Asian contexts such as Kazakhstan remain underrepresented (Yii et al., 2025), a gap is noteworthy given documented attrition and ongoing teacher shortages in Central Asia countries, even though the region reports relatively low overall teacher demand (Taldau, 2023; UNESCO & International Task Force on Teachers for Education, 2024). This paper presents emerging findings of a qualitative study on the job satisfaction of early career STEM teachers in Kazakhstan, examining how they perceive their working conditions, the support they receive, and the challenges they face, as well as the strategies they employ to address them. Drawing on individual semi-structured interviews and focus groups conducted in the capital and five regions with the greatest teacher demand, the study explores the contextual factors shaping these experiences. Using a purposive maximal variation sampling strategy, the study participants include ECTs of chemistry, biology, physics, mathematics, and computer science in grades 5-11 from public schools located in two cities, rural areas, district and regional centers. This study draws on the Job Demands-Resources (JDR) framework (Bakker & Demerouti, 2017; Demerouti et al., 2001), which conceptualises working conditions as job demands and job resources. Job demands are understood as the physical, psychological, social, or organizational aspects of work that require sustained effort and are therefore linked to potential physiological and psychological costs. While not inherently negative, such demands may become stressors when recovery is insufficient. By contrast, job resources refer to the physical, psychological, social, or organizational factors that help reduce job demands and support the achievement of work goals, or foster professional growth, making them valuable in their own right. In line with the JDR framework, the paper will present emerging preliminary findings suggesting that ECTs face workload pressures from homeroom (class/form) responsibilities and paperwork, along with challenges in classroom management, student engagement, and working with parents, while support from colleagues and mentors helps them navigate these demands. This paper contributes to the limited research on the working conditions of early career STEM teachers in Kazakhstan by providing new empirical evidence, and it discusses implications for strengthening ECT support and retention policies.




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Authors

• Assel Sharimova, Nazarbayev University

• Naureen Durrani, Nazarbayev Univeity