The important role of a high-quality teaching profession in raising standards, reducing achievement inequalities, and transforming educational outcomes cannot be better emphasised in research papers. This four-year longitudinal research – upon which this paper is based – investigates the effects of the Early Career Framework (ECF) programme, within the context of school-related and individual factors, upon teacher retention decisions.  The purpose is to fill an important evidence gap on the impact of related programme-level and school-level factors on the professional dispositions, perceived effectiveness, and retention decisions of early career teachers. In this paper we report results of the structural equation modelling (SEM) analysis of the Year 1 teacher survey which explored the impact of school leadership on the learning and retention decisions of early career teachers.  

Context

Investing in teachers’ career-long professional learning and development has been regarded by policy makers, researchers and thinktanks as a cost-effective approach to retaining committed and capable teachers for the profession (Department for Education (DfE), 2019; EPI, 2020, 2021a and 2021b; RAND, 2021; PBE, 2022; Perry et al., 2022). It remains the case, however, for diverse and complex socio-economic and political reasons, that retaining committed and effective teachers is a real challenge.

Conceptual framing

The framing of the conceptual framework is informed by the social ecological theory of human development and other research about employee turnover and persistence (e.g., March & Simon, 1958; Peterson & Seligman, 2004; Porter & Steers, 1973) and variation in teacher turnover (e.g., T. D. Nguyen & Springer, 2023). The socio-ecological interpretation of human development provides a useful lens for investigating how multilevel contexts of the environments in which teachers work impact on their learning, growth and development over the course of their professional lives. This theoretical underpinning emerged from Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ground-breaking work on human development which is, in essence, concerned with the interconnectedness and interactions between multilevel systems and the ways they shape the course of human development throughout the life span.

Within this socio-ecological interpretation of human development, we have encompassed ideas from Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT), especially the work of Lent and his colleagues (e.g., Lent et al., 2002). Exemplifying many of the features of positive psychology (Seligman, 2002), SCCT is rooted in constructivist assumptions encompassed in Bandura’s general social cognitive theory (1986) about the agency of individuals in shaping their own behaviour. According to such theory, a considerable proportion of human behaviour can be explained by an array of beliefs about oneself, influenced by the contexts in which one finds oneself.

Taken together, such conceptual framing places the focus of our investigation on the reciprocal interaction between the capability development of the individual teacher and the quality of multiple reciprocating systems in which their careers are located. Personal goals and outcomes are therefore seen as nurtured by the environments in which they work.

Research questions

RQ.1: What have been the impact of early career teachers’ learning on the Early Career Framework (ECF) (induction) programme on their learning and retention decisions? 

RQ.2: What are the main factors leading to teachers’ decision to stay?

RQ.3: How does school leadership impact – if at all – on early career teachers’ learning on the ECF programme and retention?

Participants and procedure Survey invitations were sent to all early career teachers (ECTs) in their first year of the ECF programme between June and October 2023. A total of 904 ECTs responded representing 15% response rate. Demographics of our sample appear to be broadly representative of national figures for ECTs regarding gender, ethnicity, and contract types (e.g. full time permanent), as well as school phase. Thus, we are confident about the external validity of the research findings in that they are highly relevant to the experiences of the ECT population nationally. Instruments The survey comprised 96 questions plus demographic data. School context data was added to include national school inspection judgement outcomes, percentage of pupils eligible for Free School Meals (a key indicator for school socioeconomic disadvantage), and region (Department for Education, 2022). Responses were rated on a Likert scale of 1-6, with 1 the least positive response and 6 the most positive response. The survey assessed programme satisfaction, mastery and implementation of learning, leadership practices, school culture, professional growth opportunities, teacher self-efficacy, resilience, job satisfaction, wellbeing. The outcome variable was teacher destinations (recoded into 1=staying, 2=moving, 3=leaving teaching). Data analysis Survey scales were tested for construct validity using confirmatory factor analysis. Scales were adjusted and factor scores were created from remaining items and tested for correlation with teacher destination. Missing categorical outcome data (n=6) were deleted list-wise, leaving a final sample of n=898 for analysis. Factors significantly associated with destination were analysed using a structural equation model (SEM) in R Studio (Rstudio Team, 2020) using the lavaan package (Rosseel, 2012). All variables significantly associated with the outcome were included in the initial structural model. Non-significant or confounding pathways were trimmed. The final SEM model was applied separately to each imputed data set in R Studio and parameter estimates pooled using Rubin’s rules (Rubin, 1976). Model fit indices were considered separately for each imputed dataset using established cut-off values, with the caveat that cut-off values are frequently based upon ML estimation and not well established for DWLS estimation (Xia & Yang, 2019), thus cut-offs are treated with some caution.

Results We used a structural equation model to test the effects of programme-related factors (programme satisfaction, mastery of learning, implementation of learning), school-related factors (successful leadership practices, professional growth opportunities, collaborative culture) and personal dispositions (self-efficacy, resilience, satisfaction and engagement in teaching, job satisfaction in school, wellbeing in teaching, and wellbeing in school), upon teacher destinations. Model fit was assessed as good across twenty imputed data sets, with the range of model fit indices: CFI (.97-.98), TLI (.97-.98), RMSEA (.044-.049) and SRMR (.068 -.072). Three key takeaway messages are as follows: Message 1: ECTs’ satisfaction with the ECF programme is closely associated with leadership practices in their school. The statistically significant iterative association between programme satisfaction and leadership practices indicates close connections between ECTs’ learning experiences on ECF and the influence of in-school leadership practices. Message 2: ECTs’ satisfaction with their learning experiences on the ECF programme impact directly on their mastery of the programme content and use of the learning in their teaching practice (i.e. ‘implementation’). It is the use of learning in context that improves ECTs’ ‘self-efficacy’ and subsequently enhances their ‘resilience’, ‘satisfaction and engagement’ and ‘wellbeing in teaching’. Message 3: Professional growth opportunities – created by leadership practices – are a necessary in-school condition that enables ECTs to use their learning from the ECF programme to improve their self-efficacy, resilience, engagement and wellbeing in teaching. As importantly, ECTs’ experience of professional growth opportunities provided by their schools also has a significant and direct impact on their decisions about retention. Scholarly significance Evidence suggests that by focussing narrowly on building individual teachers’ learning entitlements, knowledge and skills, many UK-wide teacher development initiatives have largely ignored the integral role of the school organisation in enabling (or constraining) teacher learning and thus failed to bring about the desired results.

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