School Climate And Intention To Quit Teaching Profession Among Secondary School Teachers In Mtwara And Dodoma Regions In Tanzania

ABSTRACT

Tanzania, as it is in other developing countries, has low teachers commitment. This cross sectional survey design study primarily sought to explore the relationship between school climate and intention to quit the teaching profession among secondary school teachers. The key argument is that there are different types of school climate in which teachers work and whether such climate has an influence on teachers‘ intention to quit the teaching profession. It was conducted in four district councils selected from two regions namely Mtwara and Dodoma. The sample comprised of 222 classroom teachers and 24 heads of school that were obtained through simple random sampling and purposive sampling techniques respectively. Quantitative data were subjected to descriptive, Chi Square and Logistic regression analysis, while qualitative data were subjected to content analysis in which themes and patterns were identified. The key findings show that generally, secondary school teachers had positive attitude towards school climate. However, the teachers in public community schools had relatively negative attitude towards components of school climate namely: school physical environment, interpersonal relationships, teaching and learning practices and school safety. It was further revealed that there are various factors that influence teachers‘ intention to quit though the main factors were remuneration and working environment. Comparatively, teachers in Mtwara region had higher intention to quit than their counterparts in Dodoma region. It was further found that teachers who intend to quit were likely to demonstrate withdraw behaviours. Eventually, when all the variables of the study were subjected to the model, there was no single component of the school climate that was statistically significant with teachers‘ intention to quit the teaching profession, except low salary, (p < .01). The low salary strongly fuelled the intention to quit teaching profession. It was then recommended that although it is important to improve the school physical environment, the most important thing to be done to reduce intention to quit among teachers, is to increase salary paid to teachers. The government and other teachers‘ employers are advised to improve their policies towards providing better packages to teachers so as to reduce their intention to quit.