Teachers' attrition is a social phenomenon that has increased over the past decades in the Western world. Many teachers, particularly those at the beginning of their careers, tend to leave teaching permanently, among them high proportion of good teachers. International surveys indicate on a high proportion of teachers' attrition: around 20% to 50% in the first five years (Darling-Hammond, 2003; Ingersoll & Smith, 2003).
Why do many teachers leave teaching? Two theoretical models may explain this phenomenon. The first model, the job demand-resources model (Bakker and Demerouti, 2007), is based on a psychological organization theory. It is lying on the assumption that employees are facing two parallel processes, which affect their career decisions: 1. The energetic circle, in which includes the job demands, may overload the employees and increase feelings of stress and burnout. 2. The motivation circle, in which includes the job resources, may strength their organizational identity and commitment. As stressed by the authors, the relation between these two processes will determine employees' decisions to stay or leave.
The teacher role embedded with several different professional demands. Teachers are expected to highly perform professional knowledge and pedagogical proficiency, while taking part in many organizational tasks and filling paper work. They also expected to lead class management, to promote students achievements, as well as to build an appropriate foundation for collaboration with their role participants. Dealing with these issues is not a simple task, especially for young teachers. In this manner, principal support and colleague collaboration as well as professional autonomy and involvement in the organizational decision making are essential resources for moderating feeling of burnout, and encouraging retention (Borman & Dawling, 2008; Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2010).
The second model, the reward-resource model (Sorensen and Tuma, 1981) is baseg on a sociological perspective. It assumes that employees make rational economic decisions by systematically assessing the benefits and costs of remaining in an occupation. They usually examine the relationship between the job rewards and their personal resources (like: human capital, experience etc.). Therefore, educated and experienced employees who receive high wages or hold prestigious or leadership positions are expected to have low rate of job shift as a result of the benefits they gain through having a "good" job.
Teaching is a female-dominated occupation, offers various job benefits and rewards that are considered suited to woman's social role, such as long vacations, the option of part time work and job security. These benefits compensate their relatively low salary. Obviously, they are not sufficient for many teachers, who decide to quit teaching; many of them are highly educated (Guarino, Saztibanez & Daley, 2006).
The current research aimed to explore teachers' attrition in 3 levels:
- Magnitude: the overall amount of attrition among beginning teachers.
- Causes: the reasons that motivate beginning teachers to leave the profession.
- Destination: the professions that ex-teachers decide to move in?
Israel provides a good setting to examine this issue. Teaching in Israel is highly female-dominated unattractive and less demanding occupation (Adi-Raccah, 2005). Most teachers are employed by the state and usually receive tenure after 3 years; afterward they are protected and cannot be easily dismissed. Attrition rates were published until 2002, showing high proportion of turnover, around 40% mainly in the first 5 years (Israeli Central Bureau of Statistic, 2002). No extensive research has been conducted on this issue for almost two decades.
