The occupational commitment and intention to quit of practicing and pre-service teachers: Influence of self-efficacy, job stress, and teaching context

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Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to explore the occupational commitment and quitting intention of practicing and pre-service teachers. We used a cross-sectional survey design to examine the impact of teachers’ self-efficacy, job stress, and contextual factors on occupational commitment and quitting intention of 434 practicing teachers and 379 pre-service teachers. Results revealed that similar factors—self-efficacy, job stress, and teaching context—influence the occupational commitment and quitting intention of practicing and pre-service teachers. Pre-service teachers displayed higher levels of commitment and less overall stress than practicing teachers. We conclude the article with implications for theory and practice, and suggest avenues to extend this line of career stage research.

Research highlights

► Similar factors influence commitment of practicing and pre-service teachers. ► Pre-service teachers display higher commitment and lower stress. ► Practicing teachers were more confident than pre-service teachers in managing classroom behavior. ► Occupational commitment influences decisions to leave the profession.

Introduction

Today’s teachers enjoy greater social mobility and more occupational opportunities than did their predecessors in earlier generations (Roberts, Clifton, & Ferguson, 2005). The most recent generation of workers is likely to perceive career paths as multi-directional, dynamic, and fluid, resulting in decreased commitment to organizations and occupations (Wise & Millward, 2005). Whereas organizational commitment refers to attachment to a particular group or organization, occupational commitment1 refers to the level of attachment to, or desire to work in, a particular career role (Hackett, Lapierre, & Hausdorf, 2001). Many teachers leave their teaching careers for other opportunities (Richardson & Watt, 2005), and the attrition rate for beginning teachers has been rising for over a decade, with up to a third of new teachers in the United States leaving the profession in their first 3 years (National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, 2009). Experienced teachers, too, are leaving the profession (Liu & Ramsey, 2008), with Richardson and Watt describing a crisis of teacher retention. Past research has shown that teacher attrition varies according to experience, with attrition rates following a U-shaped pattern: high attrition rates for new teachers, lower rates for more experienced teachers, and increasing rates again when teachers reach the latter stages of their careers (Guarino, Santibañez, & Daley, 2006). A number of factors have been shown to influence teachers’ decisions about staying on or leaving the profession, including job stress, job satisfaction, resilience, and self-efficacy (e.g., Chan et al., 2008, Day et al., 2009). Although researchers have begun to build a foundation of understanding organizational and systemic factors related to teacher attrition in a variety of settings (e.g., Ingersoll, 2001), much less is known about the psychological factors that influence teachers’ occupational commitment and intentions to leave the profession at various career stages (Guarino et al., 2006). Identifying the factors related to occupational commitment and quitting intentions helps researchers understand the processes that influence teachers’ decisions about staying in the profession, and helps policy-makers and administrators understand how to keep effective teachers in the classroom.

The current article examines factors contributing to practicing (i.e. experienced) and pre-service (i.e., novice) teachers’ occupational commitment and intention to leave the profession. Although occupational commitment is the subject of rigorous attention in vocational (i.e., industrial–organizational or I/O) psychological research, relatively little attention has been paid to the topic in educational settings (Chan et al., 2008). Teachers’ occupational commitment is positively associated with confidence about teaching (i.e., self-efficacy beliefs; Chan et al., 2008, Ware and Kitsantas, 2007), and also with decisions about career paths for graduates from teacher-training programs (Rots, Aelterman, Vlerick, & Vermeulen, 2007). Pre-service teachers’ decisions about entering the profession are also influenced by levels of stress and psychological distress (Chaplain, 2008). However, previous studies have not examined occupational commitment across samples of practicing and pre-service teachers, even though results from such an examination could provide insight into how occupational commitment operates at key career stages. In this study we extend understanding of teachers’ occupational commitment by examining the relationships between occupational commitment and self-efficacy, job stress, intention to quit, and contextual variables (school level and other factors) for practicing and pre-service teachers. The novel contribution of this study is a career stage perspective on teacher commitment with insight gleaned from data collected at two distinct career stages. Our inclusion of pre-service teachers on the cusp of entering the profession and practicing teachers with a wide range of experience results in a broader view of teacher commitment than is possible through examining data only from practicing teachers.

Three theoretical frameworks guide this research. First, we reference the workplace commitment framework built through the considerable body of research conducted in vocational psychology. Commitment takes many facets with various work-related targets, including commitment to the organization, occupation, union, or work group (Hackett et al., 2001). Occupational commitment is considered a psychological state defined as a worker’s attachment to a career, separate but related to commitment to a particular employer or organization (Meyer, Allen, & Smith, 1993). Other definitions define commitment as a force binding a worker to a course of action relevant to an important target or as an affective attachment with a profession or organization (Meyer & Herscovitch, 2001). In vocational psychology, occupational commitment has also been referred to as professional commitment, career commitment, and professionalism (Hackett et al.). Occupational commitment is related to organizational commitment, but is empirically (e.g., Reilly & Orsak, 1991) and theoretically (Carmeli, Elizur, & Yaniv, 2007) separable.

Occupational commitment is theorized as a component of work-related motivation, where motivation is defined as a set of energetic forces that initiate and sustain work-related behaviors and decision-making (Meyer, Becker, & Vandenberghe, 2004). In integrative models of work commitment (Meyer et al., 2004), work-related motivation is a broader construct than occupational commitment, with commitment, self-efficacy, and job stress (along with goals and expectancies) playing key roles in influencing the strength and target of work-related motivation. Occupational commitment is linked with various positive outcomes, including lower absenteeism and higher work engagement (Freund, 2005), and inversely linked with intentions to leave a profession (Hackett et al., 2001). Expressing the intention to quit is not the same as actual behavior (i.e., quitting), but measures of intentions can account for high levels of actual behaviors, with recent studies reaffirming the relationship between intentions and implementation of behavior (e.g., Ajzen, Czasch, & Flood, 2009). Hackett et al. showed that intention to leave the occupation is empirically distinguishable from level of occupational commitment; theoretically, the two share a causal relationship, with commitment preceding quitting intention. The trajectory of occupational commitment is influenced by work experience, personality, successful experiences, self-efficacy, and job satisfaction (e.g., Meyer et al., 2004, Ware and Kitsantas, 2007). Occupational commitment leads to action, including motivated behaviors such as effort and perseverance, and negative outcomes, like work avoidance, protest, defiance, and quitting (Meyer et al., 2004). Thus occupational commitment is closely related to action states like intention to quit, but is theoretically and empirically distinct.

Although occupational commitment is closely linked to decisions to leave or to stay in a profession, educational psychology researchers have not devoted much attention to examining the role of occupational commitment in teachers’ decisions to remain in teaching or to the antecedents and consequences of teachers’ commitment. A notable exception is Rots et al.’s (2007) retrospective study showing that early-career teachers with higher levels of self-efficacy reported stronger commitment to the profession than their peers with lower self-efficacy beliefs. Day and colleagues (Day et al., 2009) found that teachers with high levels of commitment were more effective (i.e., had students’ with higher levels of academic progress); the authors viewed the lower levels of occupational commitment in later-career stage teachers as a retention issue. Similarly, Ware and Kitsantas (2007) viewed teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs as a protective shield against low commitment and teacher attrition, and suggested that educational interventions focus on building teachers’ efficacy beliefs in order to enhance commitment and retention rates.

Second, we refer to the theoretical framework provided by Bandura’s self-efficacy theory (1997), which has been at the center of our program of research investigating teachers’ motivation (e.g., Klassen, 2010, Klassen and Chiu, 2010). In Bandura’s social cognitive theory, self-efficacy beliefs refer to individuals’ beliefs about their capabilities to successfully carry out a particular course of action. Workplace self-efficacy influences occupational decision-making, career choice, career development, and career trajectory (Bandura). For example, perceived efficacy regulates how workers manage occupational stress and maintain interest in career paths, i.e. occupational commitment. In educational settings, research has shown that the teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs influence job satisfaction and mediate job stress (Klassen & Chiu, 2010). Teachers with low self-efficacy for classroom management may struggle to regulate classroom stress and might be more likely to leave the profession (Jepson & Forrest, 2006), thereby suggesting that self-efficacy is related to commitment and quitting intention. When teachers have higher levels of self-efficacy, they use effective teaching behaviors more often, resulting in their students’ stronger motivation and higher levels of academic achievement (Caprara et al., 2006, Tschannen-Moran and Woolfolk Hoy, 2001). However, as posited in Bandura’s model of reciprocal causation, the relationship between self-efficacy and behavior is likely reciprocal, meaning that teachers’ effective teaching behaviors act on raising teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs.

Although self-efficacy is boosted through successful experiences, observation of successful others, positive verbal persuasion, and interpretation of physiological states, the trajectory of self-efficacy through adulthood may not be uniform. Bandura (1997) suggests that workers may reappraise self-efficacy beliefs in mid-life, with a retrenchment of aspirations and work-based self-efficacy beliefs. Occupational transitions, such as from pre-service to practicing teacher, present new competency demands, and the confidence people hold about their capabilities to produce desired results may vary throughout the career cycle. In addition, the target of teachers’ self-efficacy may vary. Tschannen-Moran and Woolfolk Hoy (2001) created the Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES) consisting of self-efficacy for instructional strategies, student engagement, and classroom management. Using the TSES, Wolters and Daugherty (2007) found a positive relationship with years of experience for self-efficacies for instructional strategies and classroom management, but not for student engagement. Comparisons of novice and experienced teachers have shown that experienced teachers have higher levels of self-efficacy for instructional strategies and classroom management, but their self-efficacies for student engagement do not differ (Tschannen-Moran & Woolfolk Hoy, 2007). For mid-career teachers, self-efficacy may wax and wane as work demands change, and as capabilities, ambition, and energy grow and decline.

We tie our theoretical frameworks together through reference to a career stage approach, reflecting the life-stage development perspectives of Baltes (e.g., 1987), subsequently seen in the career stage work of Huberman, 1989, Huberman, 1993, and more recently discussed in the educational context by Hargreaves (2005), Day and colleagues (e.g., Day and Gu, 2009, Day et al., 2009), and reflected in a number of longitudinal and cross-sectional studies of occupational commitment, self-efficacy, and job stress (e.g., Antoniou et al., 2006, Brouwers and Tomic, 2000, Maurer, 2001, Tschannen-Moran and Woolfolk Hoy, 2007, Woolfolk Hoy and Burke Spero, 2005). A life-stage approach to human development emphasizes change in behavior and beliefs across the life course, with an emphasis on the dynamic processes of gains and losses, and on individual plasticity (i.e., modifiability) over time (Baltes, 1987).

The work of Huberman, 1989, Huberman, 1993 builds on a life-stage approach to human development, but with a focus on career development, and especially on teachers’ motivational and affective development over the career span. Huberman (1989) contends that career development proceeds according to sequences or cycles that in many cases apply across professions. For example, workers in the earliest stage of career development—exploration—make a preliminary choice, investigate the career through initial practice (e.g., apprenticeship, internship, or practicum) and begin to explore daily roles and routines within the career. Huberman contends that teachers at the career exploration stage experience survival and discovery, whereby novice teachers focus on survival (“Can I actually do this job?”) mediated by discovery (“I really love/hate this job”). Hargreaves (2005) echoes Huberman’s theorizing about teachers’ career trajectories, and notes that novice teachers were more receptive to change but perceived their careers as more uncertain and insecure than did practicing teachers.

Researchers have examined work-related self-efficacy and commitment with either explicit or implicit acknowledgement of a career stage approach. Research shows that teachers’ self-efficacy may vary according to career stage (e.g., Tschannen-Moran and Woolfolk Hoy, 2007, Wolters and Daugherty, 2007, Woolfolk Hoy and Burke Spero, 2005). A recent study by Klassen and Chiu (2010) showed a curvilinear relationship between teachers’ self-efficacy and experience, with self-efficacy increasing in early- and mid-career, and declining in later-career stages. Studies of occupational commitment also show the influence of career stages. Meyer et al. (1993) found that years of experience were positively correlated with occupational commitment in registered nurses. In Chan and colleagues’ (2008) model of teaching commitment, years of experience was positively and directly linked with self-efficacy, and indirectly linked with teacher commitment. Day et al. (2009) observed that practicing teachers’ commitment declined from early- to late-career stages, a finding also seen in the field of nursing, in a study by Reilly & Orsak, 1991. In a related study, Day and Gu (2009) found that late-career teachers (>24 years of experience) begin to face more intensive challenges to sustained motivation and commitment in comparison to early and mid-career teachers, due to stress from deteriorating student behavior, resentment stemming from reform and new initiatives, and stock-taking about career and life accomplishments. In sum, a strong theoretical and empirical base exists to show that work beliefs and attitudes, and specifically, self-efficacy and commitment, may show differences for novice and experienced teachers.

Job stress and contextual factors such as teaching level have been shown to influence commitment and intention to quit. Teaching is considered a high stress occupation (Chaplain, 2008, McCarthy et al., 2009), and high levels of work-related stress have been associated with undesirable work and health outcomes. Teacher stress—defined as negative emotions resulting from teaching (Kyriacou, 2001)—is related to poor teacher–pupil rapport, low self-efficacy, less teacher effectiveness, and more burnout (Abel and Sewell, 1999, Kokkinos, 2007, Schwarzer and Hallum, 2008). Jepson and Forrest (2006) showed that teachers with greater work-related stress had lower job satisfaction, less commitment to teaching, and a stronger desire to quit teaching. Stress from student behavior (classroom stress) is a major contributor to teachers’ overall stress (Boyle et al., 1995, Geving, 2007), but self-efficacy has been found to mediate the relationship between teachers’ stress and negative outcomes (Shen, 2008).

School level (i.e., age of students) may also be related to teachers’ job-related beliefs. Elementary teachers reported higher self-efficacy for student engagement than did teachers in middle schools or high schools. Geving (2007) suggests that the severe misbehaviors of high school students increase their teachers’ stress and burnout more so than did those of primary school students’ misbehaviors. Antoniou et al. (2006) also found student misbehavior to be a key stress-causing factor, but the levels of stress did not differ across their primary and secondary teachers. However, the authors found that novice teachers reported higher stress than experienced teachers. Models explaining teacher commitment must account for both individual factors (e.g., beliefs, attitudes, and experience) and contextual factors (e.g., teaching level).

Section snippets

Research objectives and hypotheses

In this study, we examine levels and relationships of our study variables across practicing and pre-service teachers, and then develop and test models of occupational commitment and intention to quit; these models include self-efficacy, job stress, and teaching context. Based on previous research and our three theoretical frameworks, we proposed two hypotheses, and a third hypothesis is presented as a guiding model.

H1

We expected differences in levels of key study variables for practicing and

Participants and procedures

The 434 practicing teachers were attendees at a large, contractually compulsory, multi-district teacher convention and were approached in an exhibition hall and asked to complete a brief questionnaire entitled “Teacher Motivation.” The research team was trained by the first author, and was led by a research team leader who insured fidelity of data collection procedures. Approximately 80% of teachers who were asked to participate volunteered to complete the questionnaires. The sample of

Test and summary statistics

The factor analyses yielded three teacher self-efficacy indices (classroom management, student engagement, and instructional strategies), and two sources of stress indices (classroom stress and overall stress [plus practicum placement stress for pre-service teachers]). Table 1 presents reliability indices, means, and standard deviations, and Table 2 presents bivariate correlations for the study variables for practicing and pre-service teachers. Internal consistency of the variables was

Discussion

The purpose of this study was to examine teachers’ commitment and intention to leave the profession using a career stage perspective, whereby we examined data from practicing teachers with a range of years of experience, and pre-service teachers on the cusp of entering the profession. The results illustrate how teachers’ self-efficacy, stress, and teaching context influence teachers’ career intentions not only for practicing teachers, but also for teachers who are preparing to enter the

Conclusion

This study has extended our understanding of teacher motivation in three ways. First, we replicate the curvilinear relationship between teachers’ experience and self-efficacy found previously by (Klassen & Chiu, 2010) whereby self-efficacy is lower at early career stages and rises until mid-career, after which it falls into late career. This pattern is an inversion of the U-shaped pattern found in teacher attrition research (e.g., Guarino et al., 2006). Second, we found that practicing teachers

Acknowledgment

The authors gratefully acknowledge support from the Spencer Foundation and from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

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