An Investigation Into Middle School Novice English Teachers' Intentions To Leave The Teaching Profession

Teachers' turnover intentions,as a strong predictor of actual teacher turnover behaviors,have been deemed to impact on teachers' teaching performance,students' achievements,teaching team stability and education development.As the teacher research constantly goes deeper,teachers' turnover intentions have captured continuing concern across the globe.A huge bulk of studies have extensively investigated language teacher attrition and turnover intentions of language teachers,and explored possible antecedents in the past two decades.However,few attempts have been made to explore English teachers' turnover intentions in China,let alone those of middle school novice English teachers.This study,therefore,aimed to investigate middle school novice English teachers' turnover intentions in Yunnan Province,explore the possible predictors,and scrutinize the relationship between teachers' intentions to leave the teaching profession and demographic variables such as employment status,years of teaching,and school type.For achieving these aims,this study adopted a mixed-methods approach.A total of 219 novice English teachers in middle schools participated in the questionnaire survey for quantitative data collection,and 8 of them were invited to be interviewed for qualitative data collection.To analyze the quantitative data,SPSS22.0 was employed to conduct exploratory factor analysis,description analysis,correlation analysis and stepwise multiple regression analysis.The results obtained from data analysis showed that:(1)the overall level of middle school novice English teachers' turnover intentions in Yunnan was at a medium level(M=3.21),and the results of three items in turnover intention scale ranked as follows: possibility(M=3.55)> frequency(M=3.11)> regret(M=2.96);(2)significant differences were found in novice English teachers' turnover intentions by employment status and years of teaching.The intentions of temporary teachers to leave the teaching profession were stronger than regular teachers,and as the years of teaching increased,their intentions to leave weakened.Besides,due to the association between school type and employment status,teachers in different schools might havedifferent turnover intentions;(3)contextual variables,professional identity and job satisfaction were negatively related to novice English teachers' turnover intentions,while a positive correlation was found between their turnover intentions and work variables.They were ranked as: job satisfaction > contextual variables > work variables > professional identity.In accordance with the results of regression analysis,these four factors could altogether account for 34.3% variation of novice English teachers' turnover intentions,which means that the four factors had a certain predictive effect on their intentions to leave the teaching profession;(4)contextual variables,work variables and professional identity were found related to job satisfaction significantly,ranking like this: contextual variables > work variables >professional identity.Moreover,27.7% variation of job satisfaction could be explained by contextual variables,work variables and professional identity altogether;(5)contextual variables,work variables,and professional identity could directly and indirectly through job satisfaction affect novice English teachers' intentions to leave the teaching profession.This study contributes to demystify the level of novice English teachers' intentions to leave the teaching profession.The findings may shed light on how to reduce the turnover intentions of novice English teachers,and provide tentative suggestions for enhancing their commitment to the teaching profession,maintaining the stability of teaching team and promoting the development of education.The thesis ends with the limitations of the study and suggestions for further research.