Challenging High Teacher Turnover Rates with Training and Development: Teachers Development Program

Abstract

Teaching is one of the undervalued professions in the market, in terms of financial gains. The complexity of the job, being on the weaker side of the social contract, financial shortcomings and abundance of teachers and vacancies in the market makes it difficult for the teachers to remain in the same organization for longer periods. These result in a very high turnover rate in teachers’ employment. Not only does it cause waste of human resources efforts, but also affects the learning journey of the students, which is the core business of educations institutions. There are various reasons that lead teachers to leave their jobs or result in involuntary termination. With a brief mention on a variety of reasons, this project focuses on assessment of teachers’ turnover rates within the context of job requirements of the profession and job descriptions of the private education organization, Pak-Turk Maarif International Schools & Colleges. Lack of command on the field of pedagogy results in poor comprehension of requirements of the job, which eventually translates into poor performance of the job. Poor performances drastically impact teachers motivation on practicing the job, or working for that particular organization. Hence, resignation or termination becomes highly likely. This project breaks down pedagogy into its sub fields, identifies the shortcomings of the teachers in these sub fields and addresses them with a training and development program: Teachers Development Program (TDP). TDP focuses on equipping teachers with fundamental and contemporary concepts and approaches in pedagogy and its sub fields, to enable teachers to practice the requirements of the job separately and individually for each student in a tailored way. With an enhanced knowledge on pedagogy, teachers gain essential knowledge and improve their judgement skills on students, covering a large variety of different cases. Decreased number of poor performers and reinforced good performers eventually build more internalization of the job. With good performances and sufficiently motivated teachers, turnover rates have improved measurably.