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.,...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Jeffrey Casely-Hayford, Per Lindqvist, Christina Björklund, Gunnar Bergström, Lydia Kwak
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2024-01-01
Series:Education Sciences
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7102/14/1/114
Description
Summary: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.
ISSN:2227-7102