Commitment of teachers plays a crucial role for their daily work in school. Therefore, teacher commitment is considered as a motivational orientation of professional knowledge and as a feature of process quality on school level (Baumert & Kunter, 2006; Kyriakides et al., 2010).

According to approaches of organizational psychology commitment is defined in general as an individual attitude, which characterizes the relation between a person and an organization. Beyond this, commitment is considered as a multidimensional construct, which includes different foci (intraorganizational areas) divided into three components (affective, normative, calculative) (Meyer & Allen, 1997). While affective commitment reflects an emotional attachment to, identification with, and involvement in the organization; normative commitment represents an obligation to remain in the organization, whereas calculative commitment refers to perceived costs associated with leaving the organization (Felfe, 2008). These three components of commitment can concentrate on different foci like occupation, organization, supervisor and work group (Meyer & Herscovitch, 2001).

Empirical findings from an international context reveal different commitment profiles with specific relationships to other work-related features on individual and organizational level, which can be positive, but also negative (Meyer et al., 2012). In general, affective and normative commitment are associated positively with work-related characteristics, e.g. self-efficacy and transformational leadership (as antecedents), work satisfaction (as a correlate), work performance and citizenship behavior (as consequences), whereas calculative commitment correlates mostly negatively with these variables (Meyer et al., 2002).

Results of research on teachers and teaching also show that teacher commitment promotes both: well-being and engagement of teachers as well as teaching quality and academic achievement of students (Henkin & Holliman, 2009; Park, 2007; Somech & Bogler, 2002). However, past analyses conceptualize and operationalize teacher commitment mainly as a unidimensional construct focusing predominantly on affective commitment of teachers towards school (Razak et al., 2009). Therefore, investigations do not fulfill the differentiated comprehension of commitment, yet.

Referring to the described desideratum of research the multidimensional construct of commitment is adapted to teacher commitment in the own investigation. With regard to approaches of school development, which emphasize the relevance of teaching staff for improvement of school quality (Holtappels, 2013), the own analyses draw attention to teacher commitment towards the school and the teaching staff. The main objectives of the paper are to examine, whether commitment of teachers can be distinguished into the mentioned foci and components of teacher commitment (affective, normative and calculative commitment towards school and teaching staff), and whether, on that basis, types of teacher commitment with unique commitment profiles and specific relationships to other characteristics of teachers and schools can be identified. The paper addresses the following research questions:

1. Does the expected six-factor structure of the commitment scales (two foci with three components) fit the teacher data?
2. Can different types of teacher commitment with characteristic patterns of commitment, based on six forms of teacher commitment, be classified?
3. What other teacher and school characteristics in terms of features of teachers’ health, social climate in schools, principal’s leadership and activities of school quality development differ significantly between the identified types of teacher commitment?

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