What promotes teachers’ turnover intention? Evidence from a meta-analysis

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2022.100477Get rights and content

Highlights

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    A meta-analysis was conducted on teachers' turnover intention and various antecedents; 94 quantitative studies were coded and analyzed.

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    Twelve antecedents have strong correlations with teachers' turnover intention, and five antecedents have moderate correlations.

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    Trust, professional identification, and commitment are the three most essential protectors; burnout is the most important simulation for teachers' turnover intention.

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    Relationships between most antecedents and teachers' turnover intention were stable regardless of teachers' age, gender, culture value, and grade level.

Abstract

Given the importance of teacher attrition, researchers have used various methods to investigate reasons that teachers want to leave their profession; but little attention has been paid to distinguishing and comparing the contributions of a range of factors to teachers' turnover intention and to investigating and clarifying the potential moderating roles of age, gender, grade level, and cultural context. The aim of the current meta-analysis was to fill the gaps left by omissions in the research. A total of 94 studies, 99 independent samples, and 269 effect sizes were included in this study (n = 39,508). The associations between twelve antecedents and turnover intention were negative, and nine of them were strong. Trust, professional identification, and organizational commitment were the three most important protectors; job satisfaction, climate, justice, support, work engagement, and intrinsic motivation were also important. Burnout, workload, and stress were positively related to turnover intention; and burnout was the most important predictor of teachers' turnover intention. The effect sizes of the demographic variables were small; furthermore, the relationships between most of the antecedents and teachers’ turnover intention were stable regardless of their age, gender, cultural context, and grade level. Burnout and intrinsic motivation showed a stronger relationship with turnover intention in younger teachers (vs. older teachers); specifically, younger teachers with higher burnout and lower intrinsic motivation tended to show higher intention to quit. Gender had a small moderating effect on the relationship between work engagement and intrinsic motivation. Age was negatively related to turnover intention only in the context of collectivist cultures as compared with that of individualist cultures. Limitations, implications, and suggestions for future research are included.

Section snippets

Antecedents of turnover intention

Various antecedents of teachers' turnover intention, including but not limited to job satisfaction (e.g., H. J. Li et al., 2019), commitment (e.g., Esop & Timms, 2019), work engagement (e.g., Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004; Tvedt et al., 2019), efficacy (e.g., Franziska, 2016), and burnout (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004), have been explored. Researchers have attempted to categorize these antecedents by applying theories (Iverson, 1999; Quarles, 1994; Zeffane, 1994) or building upon the results of

Potential moderators

Although the direct contributions of demographic variables (e.g., age, gender, and teaching experiences) have been investigated (Conley & You, 2009; H. J. Li et al., 2019 Conley & You, 2009), these variables may serve as moderators between other antecedents and turnover intention. Conley and You (2009) used the Schools and Staffing Survey dataset and found that the negative correlation between job satisfaction and turnover intention was statistically significant only among teachers who have

Current study

In summary, the current study focused on two main purposes: (a) identifying the direction and magnitude of the relationship between diverse antecedents and teachers' turnover intention, and (b) clarifying the mixed results of previous studies related to the antecedents and turnover intention by investigating the potential moderators (age, gender, cultural context, grade level, and publication language). The findings of this study were intended to integrate and clarify a basis for research on

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

We used eight standards to review the literature and select studies. First, the current study focused on studies published during the 30 years preceding this writing (from 1989 to 2020). nly empirical studies were involved. Reviews (e.g., Hughes, 2001) and qualitative studies (e.g., Farinde et al., 2016) were eliminated. Third, authors of the selected pieces had to have measured teachers' intention to leave (or turnover intention); thus, those authors who used indicators of teacher attrition

Results

A total of 94 studies (64 in English and 30 in Chinese), including 99 independent samples and 269 effect sizes, were analyzed. The sample sizes ranged from 71 to 2,352, and the accumulative sample size was 39,508.

Discussion

Numerous researchers have examined the contributions of individual-, interpersonal-, job-, and organization-level variables to employees' turnover intention. Some findings were applied to and supported in teacher groups, and some were not. To identify the importance of the various antecedents and to elicit further understanding of the origin of teachers’ turnover intention, conducting a meta-analysis that systematically and comprehensively combined previous findings was necessary. Moreover,

Conclusion

We thoroughly summarized previous studies on turnover intention, the most immediate cause of teacher attrition, via meta-analysis. The variables related to turnover intention were selected comprehensively based on the framework proposed in previous studies (e.g., the JOINT model), and important substantive and methodological moderators were examined. Publication bias and sensitivity analysis were also conducted to support the stability of these results. Some demographic variables moderated the

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Ruoxuan Li: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Investigation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. Meilin Yao: Conceptualization, Supervision, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Acknowledgements

This research was not supported by any foundation or organization. The authors are grateful to Dr. Hongrui Liu and Yunxiang Chen, Faculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, China.

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