Introduction

This paper presents a systematic review of research reviews on teacher retention. The purpose is to identify knowledge claims about why teachers stay in teaching and through this, establish a nuanced conceptual account of how school systems improve teacher retention. Although the literature associated with teacher retention has been investigated and mapped in various ways in existing research reviews, as our analysis in this paper shows, most previous attempts have focussed on exploring effects of discrete factors despite many factors exercise interconnected effects on teachers’ decision to stay or leave the profession.

Context

Improving teacher retention is a priority in many countries across the globe as it has direct and indirect effects on student learning. Investing in teachers’ development has been seen by researchers, thinktanks and policy makers as a cost-effective approach to improving retention (e.g., Burge et al., 2021; Fletcher-Wood & Zuccollo, 2020; Pro Bono Economics (PBE), 2022; Van den Brande & Zuccollo, 2021). However, despite extensive investment in teachers’ human capital, it remains the case, for diverse and complex personal, socio-economic and political reasons, that retaining and developing committed, resilient and effective teachers is a real challenge. In the world of high-income countries, such as the USA, the UK and many European countries, shortage of teacher supply tends to be a particularly pressing problem for core subject areas such as maths, modern foreign languages and science (European Commission, 2012; Katsarova, 2020) and for schools serving socio-economically deprived and marginalised communities (Allen & McInerney, 2019; Boyd et al., 2008; Guarino et al., 2006; Ingersoll, 2001).

New conceptual framing to understand teacher retention

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

The following research questions were used to guide our review:

RQ.1: What are the most significant school-related factors positively influencing teacher retention?

RQ.2: How do those factors, individually and in combination, influence teacher retention?

RQ.3: How best can we conceptualise existing evidence about factors that influence teacher retention?

Search strategy We reviewed existing reviews conducted from 2013 to 2023, which cover the topic of teacher retention. To identify those reviews, we searched the databases Scopus, EBSCOhost, ProQuest and Web of Science using the following set of keywords: “teacher retention” or “teacher attrition” or “teacher turnover” or “teacher supply” or “teacher shortage” or “teacher leav*” or “teacher stay*” or “teacher mov*” or “teacher mobility” or “teacher quit*” or “teacher dropout” and literature review or research review or systematic review or meta-analysis. We searched within the document title, abstract and keywords in August 2023. We have also conducted a manual search in key journals publishing reviews as well as a manual search in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. For a study to be included in our analysis, it had to meet the following criteria: • Review of empirical research (any type of research – quantitative, qualitative and/or mixed), • Published in English language, • Published between 2013 and 2023 to cover reviews published during the last 10 years, • Peer-reviewed journal article, • Teachers in schools as a population of interest, • Focus on factors influencing teacher retention and attrition, • Description of a search strategy (e.g., keywords) and inclusion criteria for the evidence reviewed. Screening A two-step screening was conducted to identify the relevant reviews to answer our research questions. After the removal of duplicates, we first screened papers based on their title and abstract and then based on full text. A total of 17 reviews were deemed relevant and therefore included in our review. Quality assurance We used the type of publication (i.e., peer-reviewed journal articles) for quality assurance purposes. In addition to that, the quality of the included papers was taken as face value and the different quality assurance/appraisal approaches adopted by the papers were reviewed. Analytical approach To map existing evidence, we first coded the 17 reviews based on the following descriptive characteristics: type of destinations, population of interest, review aim(s), review period, review sample size, sources of evidence, types of evidence, and quality assessment. To identify factors that influence teacher retention and attrition, we coded the evidence presented as part of the results of the reviews, often organised in conceptual frameworks/models. Coding of factors was guided by our conceptual framework. Based on the quality assurance/appraisal approaches adopted by the papers, we conducted coding of the influential factors using 9 reviews out of the 17.

Findings Taken together the reviews cover a considerable time frame from 1980 to 2022. Teachers in schools were the target population of the reviews, with some cases focusing on more specific groups of teachers, e.g., special educators, career-changers, and teachers in rural schools. Regarding the types of departures (i.e., leaving a school, leaving the profession) examined in the studies, it was found that eight reviews focussed on both types of “leavings” without making a distinction between them in the presentation of their results. Leaving the profession was the focus of eight reviews, while leaving a school was the focus of one review. A total of 103 factors were identified across the 9 review papers analysed. Informed by the existing research on school leadership and educational improvement, the identified factors were grouped into categories, or conceptual building blocks, based on a more nuanced conceptualisation of the connection between these factors as presented in our conceptual framework. The following six conceptual categories describe the identified factors – external policy context, school leadership, teacher working conditions, school characteristics, personal dispositions, and teacher personal characteristics; and using the ecological conceptual framing, the interconnections between the categories show how they influence each other in educational settings to impact teacher retention. Scholarly significance Many existing reviews present retention factors in a list-like manner, without making conceptual connections between those factors. Although some review papers have produced their own conceptual frameworks, they address only part of the conceptual framing that we have produced. An important contribution of our paper is the development of a research-informed, more nuanced approach to understanding how leadership and the school organisation improve teacher retention.

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