Four components that sustain teachers’ commitment to students – a relational and temporal model

Abstract

Teacher commitment is a key factor for explaining how and why teachers care about their students’ learning and well-being, and it is a well-known fact that teachers invest emotionally in their work and their students. The purpose of the article is to contribute to the conceptual underpinning of commitment in relation to the teacher-student relationship and to suggest a conceptual model based on empirical material. Eight teachers were selected for interview, all of whom had been in the profession since 1993 and had reported high commitment throughout their careers. The content of the teachers’ accounts were analysed, with attention to how commitment to students manifested itself in their stories. The analysis resulted in a model consisting of four temporally related components of teacher commitment to students: moral, action/motivational, knowledge/self-confidence and reward/self-esteem. Understanding teacher commitment is important for preventing teacher attrition. Rather than applying general measures to boost commitment, this model provides conceptual bases for addressing deficits in particular components of teacher commitment.

Keywords:

• Moral
• teacher commitment
• teacher-student relationships
• teaching

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the Curriculum Studies faculty seminar at the University of Gävle as well as Per Lindqvist and Ulla-Karin Nordänger at Linnaeus University for valuable comments. Anneli Frelin would like to extend her warm gratitude to the staff at the School of Education, Tampere University, Finland, for their hospitality during her visit as a guest researcher, with special thanks to Anna Rytivaara, the research coordinator.

Notes

1. The years of absence are probably due to parental leave. Sweden has a social insurance for new parents that covers up to 80% of their salary, thus allowing the mother or father to stay at home for about one year with their infants.