Retaining teachers is a challenge facing education systems worldwide (European Commission, 2021). The importance of teacher retention is underscored by staffing difficulties at the school-level due to teachers’ turnover rate. High levels of teacher turnover poses social, financial, and educational problems to schools (Sorensen & Ladd, 2020). Moreover, studies have shown that schools with a large proportion of students from a lower socioeconomic background are disproportionately affected by teacher turnover (Allen et al., 2017). Schools that face continuous retention difficulties are commonly referred to as “hard-to-staff schools” in the literature (Opfer, 2011), and teacher turnover at these schools is mainly driven by challenging work environments, which makes it difficult for teachers to teach and prevents effective student learning (Glazer, 2021; Simon & Johnson, 2015). Studies examining how teacher retention can be facilitated in these hard-to-staff schools have identified resilience as a key resource that can counteract the challenges that teachers in these school face (Whipp & Geronime, 2017). Although this area of the literature continues to receive attention, most of the studies are conducted in an American context. In Sweden, the focus of the current study, schools situated in socioeconomically disadvantages areas face turnover rates as high as 40% (Helmersson, 2018).Therefore, stopping the revolving door of teachers coming and going from these schools is a key part of pursuing educational equity and school effectiveness.

This study is part of a doctoral research project and aims to contribute to this research area by presenting a positive deviant case: a Swedish hard-to-staff school that has had a low teacher turnover rate over time. The term positive deviance is used to illustrate how teacher retention at this school deviates from what one would expect to see in a school of a similar profile (Mertens et al., 2016). As such, this positive deviant case can be viewed as an exception to the rule – a champion of stability – which is of great interest as it can provide insights into potential mechanisms that can facilitate teacher retention in hard-to-staff schools. We explore this positive deviant case by examining the factors contributing to teacher retention at the school. In line with research showing that teacher shortages are particularly problematic in specific subjects and for specific types of schools (Cowan et al., 2016), we add further nuance to our inquiry by focusing on “at-risk” teachers i.e., teachers certified to teach in subjects known to have high staffing difficulties in Sweden. By doing so, we aim to provide unique insights that can advance the understanding of teacher retention in hard-to-staff schools in Sweden. Additionally, exploring this positive deviant case within the highly decentralised market-based education system found in Sweden provides us with the opportunity to make a unique contribution to the teacher retention literature.

This study used a case study research design as it is useful for exploratory investigations (Gerring, 2004), and suitable for studying positive deviance in organizations (Mertens et al., 2016). This urban public school was fairly small (students <500). The school had a high proportion of students with an immigrant background; low proportion of students with parents possessing post-secondary schooling education; and a high proportion of students with a low grade point average. Data was collected using chain-referral sampling in which initial participants refer the research team to additional subjects who have experienced the phenomenon of interest (Penrod et al., 2003). Interviews were conducted using a semi-structured interview guide. Our inquiry began with the school leadership who we viewed as key informants due to their ability to provide information about the stability of the teaching staff at the school. The school leadership provided the research team with a list of the teaching staff and as the study focused on “at-risk” teachers, we used purposive sampling criteria to ensure that participant referrals aligned with the selection-criteria (Morse & Field, 1995). Participant referrals met the selection-criteria if teachers had been at the school for 5 or more years and if they were teaching in a subject with known staffing difficulties. To inform our inclusion-criteria we examined municipal and national certification data to identify subjects with documented staffing difficulties since 2015. Teachers who fit our inclusion-criteria were interviewed and the chain-referral sampling procedure was repeated after each interview. The final study sample consisted of three members of the school leadership and eight teachers certified to teach in subjects such as textiles, art, science, and home economics. Our inquiry was geared towards describing and understanding the reasons facilitating teacher retention at this particular school. Due to this, we chose to conduct our data analysis using a modified Grounded Theory technique and the constant-comparison method based on the approach advocated by Glaser et al. (1967). This enabled the exploration of the possible determinants and allowed us to make descriptive inferences of the observed positive deviance focusing on theorizing rather than generating a theory. Constant comparisons were made throughout the data analysis and was used to develop and define the core category, categories and sub-categories.

The generated core category was described as the “Enculturation of a Protective Professional Community”. This core category was supported by three categories: supportive collegiality, visible collegiality, and constrained collegiality which captured social and relational processes which appeared to embed teachers in the school and subsequently facilitated their retention. The observed social and relational processes seemed to convey and consolidate the norms, practices and organizational culture that permeated this protective professional community and enhanced its protective element by providing teachers with access to the relational resilience garnered within the teacher community that enhanced their social capital. The teachers’ narratives described how belonging to this protective teacher community provided them with several beneficial affective and professional resources that helped them in their everyday teaching lives. However, the primary outcome was the facilitation of teacher retention at the school. In line with our mode of inquiry we also contrasted our results with the research literature to help us theorize about the potential mechanisms underlying the observed positive deviance. We used the Job Embeddedness Theory (Mitchell et al., 2001) and the theory of Social Capital to explain our findings. Interpreting our results from these theoretical viewpoints suggested that teacher retention at the school was facilitated by collegial embeddedness and the access to teacher social capital. Our findings align with other findings in the literature suggesting the protective properties that collegial support has for teacher retention. However, our findings go beyond these by suggesting the importance of exploring the nuances in collegial relations and their subsequent influence on teacher retention.

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