How Stressors Drive Teacher Turnover and What Principals Can Do to Retain Talent
Teacher turnover is a critical issue impacting student achievement, school stability, and the quality of education worldwide. One major factor influencing teachers' decisions to stay or leave is what experts call "shocks." Lee et al. (1999) describe a shock as “a specific and sudden event that triggers the psychological processes that underlie job resignation” (p. 55). These shocks, along with ongoing stressors, can be significant enough to cause teachers to rethink their commitment to the profession and, ultimately, leave. By recognizing these pivotal moments and the stressors that drive teachers out, school leaders can take proactive steps to strengthen teacher retention, creating a more stable and supportive environment for both educators and students.
What are the Types of Shocks in the Education Sector?
In the educational context, these shocks may include unexpected organizational changes, such as a new school leader, shifting policies, or sudden changes in teaching assignments, like having to teach subjects outside one’s expertise or transitioning to online instruction. Such events can disrupt a teacher's sense of stability and lead them to question the value and sustainability of their role.
Holtom and Inderrieden (2006) highlighted that 55% of turnover cases among their participants were due to a single “exit shock” rather than ongoing job dissatisfaction (p. 436). This finding emphasizes the need for school leaders to better understand these shocks and their impact on teacher retention. By identifying and addressing these triggers, principals can play a critical role in supporting their staff through change, building resilience within the school, and fostering an environment where teachers feel valued, supported, and committed to their work.
Why Do People Leave?
Over the past decade, models like the “Unfolding Model” by Lee et al. have shed light on why teachers leave their positions, especially in academic settings. Research by Lee & Mitchell (1999) and others reveals that shocks often trigger voluntary turnover more directly than a slow buildup of dissatisfaction, a finding that is both surprising and critical for addressing turnover in schools.
These tips can empower principals to create a supportive environment that mitigates the risk of shocks and enhances teacher retention.
As driving factors in turnover, shocks require a distinct approach. However, strategies for systematically understanding and addressing these shocks remain limited in educational leadership. The "Unfolding Model" provides a valuable framework for principals, detailing four common psychological and behavioral pathways that individuals typically follow when considering resignation. Shocks play a central role in initiating these pathways, making them powerful indicators of potential turnover.
By adopting models like these, principals can gain insights into the early signs of turnover risk, enabling them to address shocks proactively. This approach could allow school leaders to build a more stable and supportive work environment, better equipped to retain teachers and maintain continuity for students.
What are the Major Components and Paths that are Taken?
The Model provides a structured way to understand teacher turnover, integrating several key elements that affect an employee's decision to leave:
Shocks: These are critical moments that cause employees to reassess their position. Shocks can be positive, negative, or neutral and may be predictable (such as a planned policy change) or completely unexpected (such as a sudden leadership change).
Scripts: Pre-existing plans or "scripts" often guide employees when they experience a shock. For example, a teacher who has previously considered leaving due to a lack of professional development may immediately follow through on this plan when faced with a new obstacle, such as a reassignment.
Image Violations: When a teacher's personal values or career goals no longer align with the school's, or a shock disrupts these goals, they experience an "image violation." This misalignment can be particularly strong in education, where teachers may feel a deep connection to their professional identity and values.
Job Satisfaction: This is a dynamic factor that can be influenced by both positive and negative shocks. Even highly satisfied teachers may experience a sudden shift due to specific incidents, impacting their sense of security and belonging.
Job Search: Some teachers may start exploring new positions in response to a shock, while others may do so independently of it. Recognizing when a shock has initiated this search can provide principals with a timely opportunity to address underlying concerns.
For principals, understanding these elements and recognizing early signs of shocks, aligning values, and maintaining open communication, school leaders can better support their staff and create an environment where teachers feel committed and motivated to stay.
What are the Paths to Quitting?
The model identifies four distinct paths:
The Unfolding Model identifies four distinct paths that describe how shocks and other factors lead to voluntary turnover, offering valuable insights for school leaders aiming to retain their teachers:
Path 1: An event triggers an immediate, pre-planned response. In this case, the teacher may already have a plan to leave when faced with a particular situation and departs without considering their current attachment to the school. For instance, a teacher might have previously decided to leave if assigned to a subject outside their expertise.
Path 2: A negative shock results in an "image violation," causing the teacher to re-evaluate their fit within the school. This path often leads to departure without a job search. A teacher might leave, for example, if a school policy conflicts with their personal educational philosophy or values, making them feel incompatible with the school's direction.
Path 3: A shock prompts the teacher to compare their current job with other opportunities, initiating a job search. This path is common when a teacher experiences a shock that causes them to question their professional growth or work environment, leading them to explore other schools or positions.
Path 4: In this scenario, job satisfaction, rather than a shock, drives the departure. Teachers who are unhappy due to ongoing issues, such as inadequate support or lack of growth opportunities, may choose to leave simply because they are dissatisfied with the job itself.
Types of Shocks: Personal vs. Job-Related
Shocks can be categorized into two primary types:
Personal Events: Events unrelated to the job, such as fostering a child, winning a bet, or having a new baby.
Job-Related Events: Closely related to the work situation, for instance, skipping a promotion, getting an unwelcome job offer, or undergoing organizational change such as layoffs.
All can contain positive, neutral, and adverse shocks that affect teachers' decisions to stay in place or look for other jobs.
Study Findings and Implications for Management
Unlike conventional theories that primarily attribute teacher turnover to job dissatisfaction, new research reveals that shocks—sudden, often unexpected events—are actually a significant driver of turnover. As improving teacher retention is always a top priority in schools, it’s critical to understand the role shocks play and address them directly. Job satisfaction alone may not be enough to retain high-performing teachers, especially when these shocks occur.
Principals must actively recognize and address these shocks when they happen. For instance, consider a teacher who is overlooked for a promotion they anticipated. This experience could act as a negative shock, causing them to question their place in the school. Instead of assuming the issue is simply dissatisfaction, principals can take targeted steps to retain this teacher’s commitment. This might involve offering them additional responsibilities aligned with their career goals or incentivizing them with professional development opportunities to keep them engaged.
By recognizing the impact of shocks and proactively supporting teachers through these moments, principals can build a more resilient and dedicated team. This approach ensures that teachers feel valued and supported even when the unexpected occurs, fostering a stable environment that benefits both educators and students.
Limitations and Future Research
Nevertheless, it is relevant to recognize some weaknesses of this study regarding using shocks in analyzing teacher turnover. The kind of data that have been collected also differed; not all the datasets were initially developed to measure shocks. Further, recall bias could arise from the time that elapses between when an individual quits a job and when the employee is asked to fill out questionnaires.
Conclusion
The prior decade's academic literature has focused on emphasizing the significance of shocks in the context of turnover. Though job satisfaction remains important in predicting voluntary turnover, the aspects related to shocks cannot be left unrevised. With increased changes in workplace relationships, especially in schools, leaders need to relook at their training approaches to retention. Eventually, educators and students will benefit when schools acknowledge the variability of shocks resulting in teacher attrition.
References
Holtom, B. C., & Inderrieden, E. J. (2006). Integrating the unfolding model and job embeddedness model to better understand voluntary turnover. Journal of managerial issues, XVLLL(4), 435-452.
Larkin, D. (2021). Toward a theory of job embeddedness in teacher retention: Implications for the COVID-19 Pandemic Era. Proceedings of the 2021 AERA Annual Meeting. https://doi.org/10.3102/1687594
Lee, T. W., Mitchell, T. R., Holtom, B. C., McDaneil, L. S., & Hill, J. W. (1999). The unfolding model of voluntary turnover: A replication and extension. Academy of Management Journal, 42(4), 450–462. https://doi.org/10.5465/257015