Teacher shortages remain one of the biggest challenges facing education across many countries around the world. The debate quickly turns to salaries or workload. Here in Flanders, it often centres on issues such as tenure and job security. These are certainly important topics. But a new review by Kenneth Leithwood and colleagues suggests that we may be focusing on the wrong things if we want to understand why teachers ultimately decide to stay or leave.

The authors did not conduct a conventional literature review, but a systematic review of reviews. They brought together 17 previous review studies and examined which factors consistently relate to teacher retention. They then developed a new theoretical model that attempts to explain how these different factors interact.

Not another list, but an explanatory model

Research on teacher retention over the past two decades has identified an impressive range of factors, including workload, salary, student behaviour, mentoring, teacher autonomy, school culture, burnout, self-efficacy, and job satisfaction, among many others.

According to the authors, however, much of the research stops there. It produces lists of factors but pays far less attention to how these factors influence one another. In their view, the field has become rich in data but poor in theory.

The school itself takes centre stage

Perhaps the most important conclusion is that most of the factors schools can actually influence are found within the school itself.

Their model, greatly simplified, looks like this:

School leadership
-> shapes working conditions
-> which influence self-efficacy, motivation, and well-being
-> which determine job satisfaction
-> which ultimately predicts whether teachers stay or leave.

This does not mean that school leaders determine everything. It does mean that they influence many of the factors teachers experience every day.

Salary helps, but does not solve the problem

This does not mean that salary is unimportant. On the contrary, higher salaries are associated with slightly better teacher retention. However, these effects appear to be relatively small. Financial bonuses for teachers working in hard-to-staff schools also seem to make little difference on their own, despite the fact that such measures are frequently proposed.

This is consistent with earlier research. Once teachers reach a reasonable income level, factors such as professional autonomy, support from colleagues, meaningful work, and strong school leadership often become more important in their decision to stay.

So what does make a difference?

The factors that appear most consistently across the evidence are remarkably familiar:

• support from school leadership;
• trust within the staff;
• collaboration with colleagues;
• mentoring for beginning teachers;
• opportunities for professional development;
• autonomy;
• manageable workload;
• a positive school climate.

These are all aspects over which schools themselves have, at least to some extent, direct influence.

One important caveat

What makes this study interesting is not so much that it presents new empirical findings. The underlying studies were already known. But the study proposes a new theoretical framework for understanding them. At the same time, I do think that is also its main limitation.

The model is convincingly built on existing evidence, but for now it remains an explanatory framework. It still needs to be tested empirically as a whole. Moreover, many of the underlying studies are observational. Strong associations therefore do not necessarily demonstrate causal relationships.

In other words, it is entirely plausible that strong school leadership contributes to better teacher retention. But it remains difficult to determine how much of that effect is directly caused by leadership itself and how much reflects other characteristics of successful schools.