International teacher attrition: multiperspective views

This special issue of Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice (TTTP) features international research on teacher attrition, a perennial problem receiving heightened attention due to its intensity, complexity, and spread. The theme of teacher attrition appears often in the scholarly literature emanating from Canada (i.e. Fantilli & McDougall, 2009), Ireland (i.e. O’Sullivan, 2006), Sweden (i.e. Lindqvist, Nordänger, & Carlsson, 2014), and elsewhere. Finland with its ‘trust through professionalism’ focus also experiences retention and attrition issues (i.e. Heikkinen, Jokinen, & Tynjälä, 2012). Even heavily populated China struggles to retain qualified teachers in its rural schools (i.e. Liu & Onwuegbuzie, 2012). According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), ‘teaching is increasingly . a career of “movement in and out” and the “out” may be permanent. ’ (Skilbeck & Connell, 2003, pp. 32–33). Growing concerns about escalating rates of teacher attrition, along with its calculable and incalculable effects, spurred a group of international researchers to investigate the phenomena over the past four years. As a member of the assembled international research team (i.e. Craig, 2013, 2014, under review), it is my distinct pleasure to edit this TTTP special issue focusing on multiperspectival views of international teacher attrition. The articles in this issue, which present teacher attrition through various theoretical and methodological lenses, feature cases from the United States, the Netherlands, Australia, Israel, Norway, and England. Geert Kelchtermans from Belgium concludes this special issue with an invited commentary, providing valuable insights as he lays his in situ knowledge and experiences alongside those of his international peers. The first article in this collection, Teacher attrition in the USA: The relational elements in a Utah case study, is authored by Melissa Newberry and Yvonne Allsop from Brigham Young University in the United States. Their contribution comprehensively surveys the teacher attrition literature and characterizes the severity of the teacher attrition crisis in the US, particularly in urban areas. The authors go on to paint the educational backdrop of the state of Utah in fine-grained detail. Then, Newberry and Allsop launch into their collective case study of six beginning Utah teachers and their decisions whether or not to leave the teaching profession. Framed methodologically and theoretically by the scholarship of Cochran-Smith et al. (2012) and Kelchtermans (1993), Newberry and Allsop’s research identifies six elements that affect teachers’ decision-making, which they elaborate. The authors conclude that ‘relationships trump economics’ where beginning teachers’ final career decisions are concerned. The enormous problem of beginning and experienced teacher attrition in the US is followed by a more moderate case of beginning teacher attrition in the Netherlands. Authored by Perry den Brok (Eindhoven School of Education), Theo Wubbels (Utrecht University) and Jan van Tartwijk (Utrecht University), the article, Exploring beginning teachers’ attrition in the Netherlands, briefly surveys the international literature and then rigorously presents the Dutch case, using helpful figures and tables as visual aids. What the authors discover speaks to the quality of teacher education in the Netherlands. Yet, den Brok, Wubbells, and van Tartwijk also acknowledge that teachers in the Netherlands are the least satisfied of anyone working in the professions. The authors recommend the use of The Job Demands-Resources Model developed by Dutch organizational psychologists Bakker and Demerouti (2007), to uncover some of the sorely missing pieces of the teacher attrition puzzle. They furthermore suggest that Dutch teacher