Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between teacher's commitment and turnover intentions among the teachers working in secondary schools in the district of Lahore. The data was collected through a self-design questionnaire from 235 male and female teachers of Lahore who were selected by simple random method of sampling. Graphs correlations t-test and one-way ANOVA were used through the SPSS software package for the data analysis. Findings indicate no significant relationship exists between teachers' commitment and turnover intentions. However, it is found that the teachers’ Commitment among the females is higher than that of the male teachers and the teachers’ turnover intention among the male and female teachers is the same. It is recommended to increase teachers' commitment and decrease turnover intentions in Lahore by providing incentives and rewards. For turnover intention, it is recommended that teachers' jobs should be permanent.

Key Words

Relationship, Teachers' Commitment, Turnover Intentions

Introduction

According to Meyer and Allen (1997), teacher commitment and responsibility can be understood as a psychological condition that influences a teacher's connection to their profession and influences their decision to continue their involvement in the field of education. The commitment of teachers can be conceptualized as a fundamental attribute or characteristic that enables them to effectively navigate and respond to stress and adapt to changes in their professional environment. The decision to remain in the teaching profession is contingent upon various variables, including but not limited to honesty, responsibility, confidence, faith, and tolerance.

According to Shen (1998), teachers were classified into three distinct categories. The term "stayers" pertains to educators who exhibit job satisfaction and demonstrate a willingness to continue their careers at their current place of employment. Movers are those who possess a fondness for their chosen occupation and nevertheless express a reluctance to persist in their current job location. Leavers refer to those who express dissatisfaction with the teaching profession and aspire to discontinue their involvement in it, often perceiving teaching as a temporary occupation.

According to Hausman and Goldring (2001), teacher commitment is a crucial factor in enhancing teacher performance and facilitating student learning, while also mitigating teacher turnover and intentions to exit the profession. A study was done to examine teacher dedication in schools within the United States of America. The objective of this study was to examine and compare the levels of teachers' commitment in schools of their own choosing with those who were assigned to their school without their consent. The two educational institutions were selected on the basis of racial criteria. The research design employed a quantitative approach, wherein surveys and questionnaires were administered to the participating teachers. The findings suggest that instructors who voluntarily choose to work in specific schools demonstrate higher levels of commitment compared to those who are assigned to schools against their preferences. Magnet schools exhibit a greater degree of teacher autonomy, indicating that educators possess a significant level of involvement in the decision-making processes of the institution. Conversely, non-magnet teachers report lower levels of autonomy, indicating that they have limited or no participation in the decision-making processes of the school.

According to Travers and Cooper (1996), teacher commitment can be diminished as a result of occupational stress experienced within the workplace or school environment. This, in turn, may prompt teachers to disengage from the teaching profession as a response to the aforementioned occupational stress. This phenomenon has the potential to result in increased rates of absenteeism, premature retirement among educators, and a growing inclination to abandon the esteemed and noble profession of teaching. It has been proposed that the inclusion of objective elements pertaining to teachers' dedication to their jobs can assist us in making informed decisions regarding how to sustain their engagement and connection to the teaching profession. Committed educators are regarded as possessing greater psychological fortitude in their interactions with their educational institution, fellow faculty members, students, and the subject matter they teach.

The existing literature has established that teacher commitment has the potential to enhance instructor patience, performance, and student learning outcomes. However, it is worth noting that limited study has been conducted on the topic of teacher commitment. Through an examination of the factors contributing to teacher dedication, it may be feasible to enhance the academic outcomes of schools that have historically exhibited subpar performance. Additionally, it enables us to address the significant issue of teacher attrition. The disparities among schools with varying levels of achievement may be mitigated.

Turnover intentions can be defined as a deliberate inclination to actively explore other employment opportunities outside of one's current business. work stress has a significant impact on employee work satisfaction, resulting in decreased performance and diminished commitment, ultimately culminating in the desire to terminate employment expeditiously.

Turnover intention has been a big issue for the management of the school education department of the Punjab for many years because the teachers recruited on low scales leaves their job as soon as they get a chance to get a better job. It is a major problem for the department now that is why they have recruited new teachers every year for the last few years.

There are too many researchers who found that the greater the amount of occupational stress on the teachers. The higher the turnover intention of the teachers employed in the Department of School Education of the Punjab. A positive relationship was also found between workplace stress and turnover intentions by Noor and Maad (2008).

Statement of the problem

This study is designed to find out the relationship between teacher's commitment and turnover intentions among school teachers working in secondary schools in the district of Lahore.




Rationale

The findings and results of this study are of great significance to the administration and authorities of the school education department because they become able to know how the teacher’s commitment relates to turnover intentions therefore, they become able to understand the reasons behind the poor participation and performance by the teachers in the schools of the district of Lahore. This study also helps the school management to deal with the low moral absenteeism poor teaching quality, less student satisfaction and turnover and overall performance of teachers. The results of this study may also help the policymakers to revise the recruitment policy of teachers in the province of Punjab. The present policy of teacher recruitment in the Punjab is only based on the numerical scores of the candidates. The results of the study will help the pay and benefits committee of the parliament, and the finance department of the provinces to decide about the pay and benefits of the teachers

Review of Literature

Teacher’s commitment

Hunt and Morgan defined organizational commitment, as the strong struggle to achieve the aims and objectives of the institute and a devoted desire to remain within the institute". According to Meyer and Allen, (1997) organizational commitment is a “psychological condition that expresses the relationship between employee and organization and the worker has making the decision to remain as a worker in the institute”.

Affective commitment is "the worker's emotional attachment with the institute organization. This is the degree of the worker involvement with the Institute." Mueller said that it is related to the employee's feelings, and devotion towards the institute.

Continuance commitment: Meyer and Allen (1997) define continuance commitment as "it is the level of a teacher who thinks the cost of leaving the institute. A teacher who has a high continuance commitment has a true need to remain in the institute.

Normative commitment: Meyer and Allen (1997) describe normative commitment as "It is the level of a teacher who has the emotions of loyalty, obligation and duty to stay in the institute. Generally, normative commitment comes from internal desires which is the result of the norms from the social acceptance processes in society which consist of the emotions of loyalty which yield these results

1. High affective commitment, highly motivated to work as compared to those who have low affective commitment

2. The teachers are ready to put their strong effort into achieving the institutional goals.

3. They have strong feelings about staying to serve in the institutions

Turnover Intentions

According to Hellman (1997) “turnover intention has a strong negative relationship with job satisfaction if the teachers are more satisfied in the profession of teaching there are less chances to leave the profession of teaching if teachers have less level of job satisfaction there are more possibilities to leave the job of teaching in a school". Turnover is the ratio of teachers who leave the job of teaching to the average number of teachers in the school during the year (Lonne, 2001). According to Hertzberg, every teacher working in a particular school has two spheres of needs, these are motivational and hygiene needs. This theory of two spheres of needs indicates every teacher will work in the school till the satisfaction of both kinds of needs have been fulfilled and they make them motivated but when they are not able to fulfil their needs in the school, they do not remain motivated further and they try to find out another job for the satisfaction of their needs by (Vroom, 1964)




Organizational Factors of Turnover Intentions

1. The low compensation is the essential justification behind high educator turnover. Especially for recently enrolled educators.

2. The staff ought to be spurred by the making of motivations, for example, vocational improvement programs (Natukunda,2010).

3. Working environments of a school play a major role in the capability of the school to attract, attain, retain and motivate excellent teachers who are committed to the school.

4. If the employers fail to create group cohesion among the teachers, it creates a chance of teacher turnover.

5. Professional development and a well-managed promotion system increase the teacher’s commitment towards the school and it will reduce the teacher’s turnover intentions.

6. No promotion was one of the basic factors which created the high rate of teacher turnover intentions

7. Poor management of the school is also a very important reason for teacher turnover.

Method and procedure

The study used a descriptive research design because of the nature of the variables that we at hand want to receive information which produced numeric data, required for quantitative. analysis The population of the study were the group of people with the same properties from which the sample was selected (Ali et al., 2021; Azeem et al., 2021; Jabeen et al., 2022; Kanwal et al., 2022; Shahzad et al., 2023a, 2023b; Siddique et al., 2022; Siddique et al., 2021; Siddique, et al., 2023; Siddique, et al., 2023; Siddique et al., 2021). The sample was a subgroup of the population which was used to collect the data ( Jabeen et al., 2022; Kanwal et al., 2022; Lakhan et al., 2020; Mah Jabeen et al., 2021; Munir et al., 2021; Saeed et al., 2021; Sajjad et al., 2022). The target population of this study was every teacher working in all secondary schools of boys and girls situated in the province of Punjab. The accessible population was all male and female. Teacher’s working in all the boys and girls secondary schools of Lahore. This research study was conducted through 235 teachers of 30 Schools in Lahore. The sampling technique used for the selection of schools was stratified random sampling and the participants were selected through simple random sampling. A self-administrative questionnaire was used as the major instrument for the data collection.

Data Analyses & Results

Data obtained from the questionnaire was entered in the computer and statistical package for social scientists (SPSS) program used to analyze it. Descriptive and inferential Statistics such as mean, standard deviation, correlation t-test and one-way ANOVA are applied for the data analyses. The results of the data analyses are as under.

Figure 1

Graph of (frequency histogram) Teachers’ Commitment.



Interpretation: This graph was drawn to measure the teacher’s commitment. It was found that it is also normally distributed among the teachers the normal curve was found mean =3.55, standard division =0.366 N=235.

Figure 2

Graph of Teachers’ Turnover Intentions.



Interpretation; The graph was obtained for the turnover intention of the teachers, which is almost normally distributed with mean =3.24, standard division =0.388, N=235.

Table 1

Correlation between teachers’ commitment and turnover intentions



Correlation is Significant at the 0.01(2tail) T-test of Teachers' Commitment (equal variance assumed)

	Teachers’ commitment	Turnover Intention
Teacher’s Commitment Pearson’s Correlation Sig(2 tail) N	1   235	.079 .227 235
Turnover intention Pearson’s Correlation Sig(2 tail) N	.079 .227 235	1   235

Table 2

Results of t-test of teacher Commitment between male and female teachers in Lahore

Gender	N	Mean	SD	df	t	Sig
Male	177	3.5130	.37516	232	-2.558	.011
Female	57	3.6538	.31458

Table 3

T-test of Turnover Intentions (equal variance assumed)

Gender	N	Mean	SD	df	t	Sig
Male	177	3.2550	.37293	232	-2.558	.364
Female	57	3.2012	.43434

Findings and Conclusions

1. There is no significant relation r = .079, p = .227, between the teacher’s commitment and the turnover intentions of the teachers working in the public secondary schools of Lahore but it was slightly indicated that the increase in the teacher’s commitment decreased the turnover intentions of the teachers in schools of the Lahore.

2. It was also found for males (M=3.5130 SD=0.3752) N=177 for females (M=3.6638 SD=0.3146) N=57 with (df=232 t=-2.558 p=.011 < p=0.05) there is a significant difference for teachers’ Commitment among male and female teachers.

3. Moreover it was also found for males (M=3.2550 SD=0.3729) N=177 for females (M=3.2012 SD=0.4343) N=57 with (df=232 t=-2.558 p=.346 > p=0.05) the results shows that there is no significant difference for teachers’ turnover intentions between the male and female teachers.

Recommendations

1. It is very much necessary to create a proper promotion ladder and promote the teachers very well in time.

2. Teachers must be posted near their accommodations otherwise provide the accommodations within or near the schools.

3. Payment and benefits of the teachers must be linked with the qualification of the teachers not with the post and level of teaching.

4. Female teachers must be providing accommodations within the school or provide them with transport facilities.

5. Non-teaching and non-professional duties of the teachers decrease teachers' commitment for it must be avoided.

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