It is often argued that attrition among teachers is at the heart of the problem of teacher shortages rather than recruitment (Ingersoll, 2001). Relatedly, teacher retention emerges as an important but challenging part of the solution to a widespread global problem, i.e. teacher shortages (e.g. Gu, 2022). However, teacher retention seems to be shrouded in a taken-for-granted understanding that suggests that it is a self-explanatory phenomenon.

Drawing on posthuman theory, this paper sets out to unpack teacher retention (in primary and lower secondary school) as an entangled, material-discursive phenomenon (Barad, 2007; Reardon et al., 2015), thereby calling this tone of taken-for-granted understandings into question. It is an entangled phenomenon as teacher retention (as indicated above) is closely linked to teacher shortages and teacher dropouts, even to an extent that teacher retention and attrition is seen as “two sides of the same coin” (Kelchtermans, 2017, p. 962). However, teacher retention is also threaded through with political initiatives, educational reforms, labour market agreements, wages and working conditions, media coverage, expenditure on education, historical transformations within the profession, e.g. a decline in the social recognition of teachers in many societies, changes in teachers’ career paths, re-organisation of schools and pedagogy ad infinitum. In addition, teacher retention is a phenomenon marked by major geopolitical differences (UNESCO, 2024). Thus, teacher retention is constituted and reconstituted through a range of diverse apparatuses which the paper seeks to take into account in order to understand the material-discursive nature of those apparatuses and how they iteratively contribute to the production of teacher retention. Teacher retention is a material-discursive phenomenon (Barad, 2003) as materialities such as for example reports that contain figures of attrition and retention, estimate the need for a future number of teachers and point out that this is a burning issue. Such reports are not only material. They are also discursive, difference- and meaning-making practices as such documents express legitimacy, objectivity and truth.

The focus of the paper is to explore teacher retention as a phenomenon with the aim of expanding our understanding of teacher retention and challenge taken-for-granted understandings. It is likewise an aim of the paper to examine whether and, if so, how posthuman theory can contribute to creating these insights. Thus, the paper seeks to apply and further develop the conceptual analytical power of posthuman theory with the aim of making a conceptual as well as innovative methodological contribution to the research field of teacher retention. The research question addressed is: what constitutes and reconstitutes teacher retention as a phenomenon?

In this paper, we operationalise posthuman theory on teacher retention through the collection and reading of heterogenous, yet complementary, material-discursive sources which partake in crafting the phenomenon ‘teacher retention’: policy documents e.g. from the European Commission and OECD; reports prepared/initiated by various stakeholders such as the European Trade Union Committee for Education and consultancies as for example McKinsey and Price Waterhouse; and research literature. Posthuman theory and literature on teacher retention are read diffractively – a term from physics that denotes the new patterns that are created when waves meet an obstacle, for example in the form of a stone, but which also denotes an analytical strategy where texts are read through rather than against each other to create new patterns and thereby generate new understandings (Barad, 2007). In this paper, this diffractive reading strategy indicates a desire to pay tribute to the included literature and documents by bringing the insights they offer into a productive relationship with posthuman theory (the obstacle), thereby creating opportunities to read from elsewhere and explore what such readings can bring forth. Diffractive reading thus involves careful readings of texts through one another with the aim of creating new insights. We draw on cascade questioning (Juelskjær, 2023) to trace entanglements of teacher retention. These questions are not answered one to one. “Rather, questioning keeps the process going and open, as every question opens a space of sensing and being with the question and its many possible directions to take, to search for insights” (Juelskjær, 2023, p. 152). The research literature is engendered through comprehensive searches in research databases such as ERIC and supplemented with chain searches and citation searches in the period from 2000-2025. As for the policy documents and reports initiated or prepared by various stakeholders, we engage with materials focusing on teacher retention in or related to European countries.

In line with other scholars such as Shields and Mullen (2020) and Perrachione et al. (2008), we find that the existing research literature pays far more attention to attrition and teachers' reasons for leaving the profession, apparently on the assumption that knowledge of the causes of turnover can offer insights into retention by reversing the signs. Fewer studies are devoted to exploring retention. Thus, Kelchterman’s point of attrition and retention being “two sides of the same coin” seems to implicate that retention is primarily characterised by constituting attrition’s obverse. It is also common to the research literature as well as policy documents and reports that the concept of retention is not dwelled on. In fact, it is seldomly explained. However, this does not apply to Day & Gu (2009) as they introduce the term quality retention, arguing that problems recruiting qualified teachers have meant that quantity rather than (teacher) quality has been and continues to be the primary concern. Other scholars have also engaged in such discussions for example Kelchtermans who argue that teacher retention must refer “[…] to the need to prevent good teachers from leaving the job for the wrong reasons” (2017, p. 965). A commonality in the literature and documents is also that retention is associated with regarding teaching as a lifelong career whereas Brantlinger (2021) points to a tendency for current teacher generations to regard teaching as a phase. Finally, the materials point to rethinking the ontology of the teaching profession in order to make the profession more attractive. At present, however, there are only very loose and modest proposals for such a rethinking.

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