Perception of teachers on factors contributing to teacher turnover among secondary school teachers in uasin-gishu county, Kenya
International Journal of Development Research
Perception of teachers on factors contributing to teacher turnover among secondary school teachers in uasin-gishu county, Kenya
Received 05th April, 2017; Received in revised form 27th May, 2017; Accepted 26th June, 2017; Published online 31st July, 2017
Copyright ©2017, Kipkoech Lydia cheruto and Chepkwony Chesang Naumi. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Adequate teacher supply is critical to the future of quality education delivery and academic performance of students. Concerns about teacher turnover are reported widely as a global phenomenon (Rowan, 2002). Turnover translates into shortages in educator supply and poor learner performance due to disruption of learning programmes and continuity, as well as overcrowded classes (Ingersoll, 2001). The objectives of the study was to investigate the major factors causing teacher turnover in secondary schools in UasinGishu County The studyemployedorganizational commitment theory that posits that teachers’ levels of commitment are determined by factors such as their belief and acceptance of the school organization’s goals and values, the willingness to exert effort on behalf of the school and a strong desire to keep up membership in the organization.The study was conducted in EldoretWest sub -county. It adopted a descriptive survey research design. Purposive sampling was used to select 15 secondary schools in the County and stratified random sampling was used to select 100 respondents to constitute a sampling unit and a unit of analysis respectively. Questionnaires, face to face interviews and document analysis were used to collect data. Descriptive statistics was used to determine and explain proportions.The findings revealed that teacher turnover affected academic performance through disrupted learning. It also revealed that teacher turnover breaks personal and emotional attachment built between teachers and students, which is normally helpful in individualized instruction and student participation in classroom activities.The research findings would be of muchimportance to the government in coming up with measures to improve the image of teaching profession as perceived by the teachers currently in the profession and those yet to join the professionTeachers Service Commission (TSC) and the Ministry of Education (MOE) may consider adopting the recommendations outlined in this thesis so as to come up with better policies to guide the teaching profession. The study recommended that teacher turnover should be avoided as much as possible and when inevitable it should be done at the end of the school calendar year.
