Why they remain: factors influencing teaching sustainability in high-poverty schools

ABSTRACT

Background

With teachers in high-poverty schools facing increased stress, decreased motivation, and job satisfaction, it is imperative to identify educators that can thrive and sustain over time and intend to remain teaching in high-poverty schools despite these concerns. Identifying individual characteristics of teacher sustainability related to one’s intention to remain teaching can help offset teacher attrition and turnover through intervention and support of teachers. This study explored the constructs of teaching sustainability (psychological flexibility (PF), resilience (tRES), and sense of purpose (SOP)) as they relate to a group of physical education teachers working in high-poverty schools.

Research design

This study utilized an interpretivist philosophy. The interviewees volunteered after completing a national survey (N = 538) of PE teachers related to teacher sustainability. Randomly selected teachers (n = 26) participated in semi-structured interviews exploring their perceptions, definitions, and significance of teaching sustainability in high-poverty schools.

Findings

Results from the inductive thematic analysis produced three general dimensions related to teaching sustainability in high-poverty schools: sustaining through career frustrations, awareness and acceptance, and values-driven behavior. Although external factors such as financial discrepancies were real stressors in these teacher’s lives that led to many questioning whether to leave or stay in the profession, the ability to regulate emotions while maintaining a strong internalized meaning and purpose may have helped their efficient management of stressors and sustainability in high-poverty schools over time.

Conclusion

Although this study provides insight into teaching sustainability in high-poverty schools, much is still unknown. The teachers possessed strong individual dispositions that facilitated elevated levels of PF, tRES, and SOP. School administrators in high-poverty schools must establish a strong culture of support to facilitate the teacher sustainability constructs and intentionally recruit teachers with the capacity for possessing strong teacher sustainability dispositions. Identifying ways to increase the constructs of teacher sustainability of physical education teachers can decrease the concerns surrounding teacher attrition and increase job satisfaction for teachers working in high-poverty schools.

KEYWORDS:

• Teacher retention
• physical education
• physical education teacher education
• high-poverty schools
• teaching sustainability

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).