Enculturating a Protective Professional Community - Processes of Teacher Retention in a Swedish Hard-to-Staff School

• This study presented a positive deviant case: a Swedish hard-to-staff school which has had a low rate of teacher turnover over time. In line with the purpose of studying positive deviance in organisations, our exploratory inquiry was geared towards understanding how and why 'at-risk' teachers, i.e., teachers who teach in subjects which are known to have high levels of staffing difficulties in Sweden, stayed at this particular school. Using a modified grounded theory approach, our results suggested that teachers remained at the school due to being embedded in a protective professional community that was enculturated by different expressions of collegiality. Finally, these findings are discussed in relation to the theoretical concepts of teachers' job embeddedness and social capital.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences (hsv//eng)

Keyword

teacher retention

hard-to-staff school

teacher turnover

collegiality

teacher community

job embeddedness

Pedagogics and Educational Sciences

Pedagogik och Utbildningsvetenskap

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)