RETAIN Sweden: What does it take to stay?: A discrete choice experiment on teacher’s preferences to stay in the profession and how they align with national reforms
Retaining teachers is one of the major challenges many schools face today. Despite a 25% increase in the number of trained teachers over the past ten years, the proportion of teachers working in the profession has declined over time. The trend of teachers choosing to leave the profession is growing stronger and research has shown that the work environment and working conditions are key factors influencing teachers' decisions to leave the profession.
Aim
The overall aim of the project is to increase our understanding of how to counteract teacher attrition by focusing on how to retain teachers within their profession. This will be accomplished using a discrete-choice experiment (DCE), which will allow for the quantification of the relative importance of teachers' work characteristics and the trade-offs they are willing to make in order to remain in their profession. Moreover, the project will examine how existing national policies and reforms to attract, recruit and retain teachers align with teacher preferences. This will be accomplished by conducting focus group interviews, which will provide a nuanced understanding of the preferences identified in the DCE and of whether national policies and reforms align with teacher’s preferences.
This project aims to investigate which work-related factors teachers consider in their decision to remain in the profession (aim 1); to examine the preferences of teachers and the trade-offs they are willing to make to stay in their profession (aim 2); to assess how national reforms align with teacher’s work-characteristic preferences (aim 3).
Method
The project applies a discrete-choice experiment (DCE), consisting of three parts: a Delphi-survey (n=60 teachers; Aim 1), a DCE-survey (n=1500 teachers; Aim 2), and four focus-group interviews (Aim 3). The Delphi-survey and DCE-survey allow for the quantification of the relative importance of teachers' work characteristics and the trade-offs they are willing to make to remain in their profession.
Project team and funding
Participating researchers are Lydia Kwak (project leader), Helena Tinnerholm Ljungberg (KI), Jeffrey Casely-Hayford (KI), Christina Björklund (KI), Per Lindqvist (Linnéuniversitetet) and Emmanuel Aboagye (Norwegian University of Science and Technology).
The project is funded by FORTE (dnr 2024-00558).