Occupational embeddedness of early career teachers – the

importance of role stress and support

Anita Sandmeier, Julia Mühlhausen, Martin Gubler EARLI, Aachen, 13. August 2019

• Teacher shortages are an increasing challenge for many OECD

countries (OECD, 2005)

• Teacher shortage Quality of the teaching workforce and School

Quality (Ingersoll & May, 2012; Guarino, Santibanez & Daley, 2006; Ingersoll & May, 2012; Hanushek, Rivkin &

Schiman, 2016)

Retaining and supporting existing teaching staff: «What keeps

teachers going?» (Nieto, 2003)

How do role stress and social job resources affect occupational

embeddedness and occupational turnover intention?

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Pragmatic grounding and main research question

Teachers occupational mobility: state of research

• Research on teachers occupational mobility is an heterogeneous

(Herzog, 2014) and a “theoretically inconsistent” (Rinke, 2008, p. 10) area.

• Occupational mobility and turnover has different destinations:

organizational turnover, occupational turnover, unpaid work or non-

work options (Sandmeier, Gubler & Herzog, 2018; Herzog, 2007)

Sandmeier, A., Gubler, M., & Herzog, S. (2018). Berufliche Mobilität von

Lehrpersonen - Ein strukturierter Überblick über das Forschungsfeld. Journal for

Educational Research Online, 10(2), 54–73.

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4Sandmeier, A., Gubler, M., & Herzog, S. (2018)

Theoretical framework

Turnover as a time-based process: Distal influences (e.g., role stress,

social support) intermediate antecedents (occupational

embeddedness) direct antecedents (turnover intentions) voluntary

turnover (Hom et al., 2012, p. 832).

Concept of embeddedness (Mitchell, Holtom, Lee, Sablynski and Erez,

2001; Ng & Feldman, 2007): e.g. “I’m too caught up in this occupation to

leave.”

Following the job demands-resources theory (Bakker & Demerouti,

2014) we expect that job demands will challenge embeddedness and

job resources will foster it.

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Research model and hypotheses(Hom et al., 2012; Mitchell et al., 2011; Bakker & Demerouti, 2014)

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Role Overload

Role Ambiguity

Role Conflict

Supervisor Support

Team Support

OccupationalEmbeddedness

OccupationalTurnover Intention

-

-

-

-

+

+

H1: The higher the demands associated with the

professional role, the lower occupational embeddedness

and thus retention (Conley & You, 2014).

H2: Competent, supportive school principals and

school-based networks reduce turnover, especially in

career entry (Borman & Dowling, 2008).

H3: Job resources buffer the negative effect of job

demands on occupational embeddedness (Bakker &

Demerouti, 2014).

Method: Sample and analytical procedures

Study “What keeps teachers going? Was hält Lehrpersonen in der

Schule (WahLiS)”

• Sub-sample: K-12 teachers with max. 6 years of work experience

(N=199)

• Validated and accepted scales, which were slighty adapted to the

school context if necessary

• Statistical analyses using SPSS version 25 with the PROCESS v3.3

plug-in from Hayes (2013) and lavaan (Rosseel, 2012) in the open

source Statistiksoftware R (R Core Team, 2018).

7

8

-.549

Results (cross sectional analysis)

MLR-Estimation, N=198, robust values for the fit indices.

Occupational

Embeddedness

Role ambiguity

Role overload

Supervisor

support

Team support

.285

-.235

be1 be2

Modell-Fit Indices: 𝜒2 = 102.41, df = 59, p = .000, CFI = .944, TLI = .925, RMSEA = .065, SRMR = .061

be3 be4 be5 be6

Occupational

Turnover-

intention

.243

lv1

lv2

lv3_r

statistisch signifikant statistisch nicht signifikant

Does social support buffer the negative impact of role

stressors?

Regression analysis with interaction terms (Plug-In PROCESS for

SPSS, Hayes, 2013)

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Role overload

Role ambiguity

Team support

Occupational

embeddedness

Supervisor support

Two-way interaction between Role ambiguity*Team support

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Conditional effects of the focal predictor at values of the moderator(s):

COSUP Effect se t p LLCI ULCI

-.6762 -.0151 .1159 -.1300 .8967 -.2436 .2135

.0000 -.1755 .0911 -1.9255 .0556 -.3553 .0043

.6762 -.3359 .1264 -2.6579 .0085 -.5852 -.0866

above average role ambiguity (z= .60)

below average role ambiguity (z= -.60)

Occupationale

mbeddedness

Coworker support

Practical implications

Occupational embeddedness in the career entry phase can be

supported by

(1) clarification of the professional role to lower role ambiguity

(2) enabling and promoting support from the team

(3) reduction of individual tasks to lower role overload.

School management has an important role in organizing and designing

these factors.

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Thank you for your attention and comments!

Contact:

Anita Sandmeier (anita.sandmeier@phsz.ch)

References

Bakker, A. B., & Demerouti, E. (2014). Job Demands–Resources Theory. In Wellbeing (S. 1–28). American Cancer

Society.

Chesnut, S. R., & Burley, H. (2015). Self-efficacy as a predictor of commitment to the teaching profession: A meta-

analysis. Educational Research Review, 15, 1–16.

Crossley, C. D., Bennett, R. J., Jex, S. M., & Burnfield, J. L. (2007). Development of a global measure of job

embeddedness and integration into a traditional model of voluntary turnover. Journal of Applied

Psychology, 92(4), 1031.

Denzler, S. (2014). Bedarf an Lehrpersonen und ihre Rekrutierung. Zentrale Aussagen im Bildungsbericht Schweiz 2014.

Eisenberger, R., Stinglhamber, F., Vandenberghe, C., Sucharski, I. L., & Rhoades, L. (2002). Perceived supervisor

support: Contributions to perceived organizational support and employee retention. Journal of Applied

Psychology, 87(3), 565.

Guarino, C. M., Santibanez, L., & Daley, G. A. (2006). Teacher recruitment and retention: A review of the recent

empirical literature. Review of Educational Research, 76(2), 173-208.

Herzog, S. (2007). Beanspruchung und Bewältigung im Lehrerberuf. Münster: Waxmann.

Hanushek, E. A., Rivkin, S. G., & Schiman, J. C. (2016). Dynamic effects of teacher turnover on the quality of

instruction. Economics of Education Review, 55, 132-148.

Hayes, A. F. (2016). The PROCESS macro for SPSS and SAS. URL: http://www. processmacro. org (visited on

07/09/2018).

Hom, P. W., Mitchell, T. R., Lee, T. W., & Griffeth, R. W. (2012). Reviewing employee turnover: focusing on proximal

withdrawal states and an expanded criterion. Psychological Bulletin, 138(5), 831.

Ingersoll, R. M., & May, H. (2012). The magnitude, destinations, and determinants of mathematics and science teacher

turnover. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 34(4), 435-464.

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Referenzen und weitere Literaturempfehlungen

Mitchell, T. R., Holtom, B. C., Lee, T. W., Sablynski, C. J., & Erez, M. (2001). Why people stay: Using job embeddedness

to predict voluntary turnover. Academy of Management Journal, 44(6), 1102–1121.

Ng, T. W., & Feldman, D. C. (2007). Organizational embeddedness and occupational embeddedness across career

stages. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 70(2), 336–351.

Peterson, M. F., Smith, P. B., Akande, A., Ayestaran, S., Bochner, S., Callan, V., ... & Hofmann, K. (1995). Role conflict,

ambiguity, and overload: A 21-nation study. Academy of Management Journal, 38(2), 429-452.

Pfitzner-Eden, F., Thiel, F., & Horsley, J. (2014). An Adapted Measure of Teacher Self-Efficacy for Preservice Teachers:

Exploring its Validity Across two Countries. Zeitschrift Für Pädagogische Psychologie, 28(3), 83–92.

Sandmeier, A., Gubler, M., & Herzog, S. (2018). Berufliche Mobilität von Lehrpersonen - Ein strukturierter Überblick über

das Forschungsfeld. Journal for Educational Research Online, 10(2), 54–73.

Van der Doef, M., & Maes, S. (2002). Teacher-specific quality of work versus general quality of work assessment: A

comparison of their validity regarding burnout,(psycho) somatic well-being and job satisfaction. Anxiety, Stress &

Coping, 15(4), 327-344.

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Additional Slides: Correlationmatrix

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Tabelle 1: Correlations between study variables, reliability and descriptives

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

1 Occupational embeddedness (.85)

2 Occupational turnover intention −.47*** (.83)

3 Role conflict −.09 .16* (.50)

4 Role ambiguity −.24** .25** .15* (.78)

5 Role overload −.27*** .37*** .47*** .25*** (.86)

6 Supervisor Support .16* −.30*** −.08 −.30*** −.29*** (.82)

7 Team Support .31*** −.30*** −.10 −.32*** −.22*** .53*** (.80)

M 3.52 1.78 3.02 2.08 2.98 4.00 4.08

SD .766 1.10 .743 .600 .933 .805 .676

Range 1 - 5 1 - 7 1 - 5 1 - 5 1 - 5 1 - 5 1 - 5

Notes: N=199; * p ≤ .05; ** p ≤ 0.01; *** p ≤ 0.001; Reliabilität der Skalen anhand Cronbach's Alpha

Werten sind entlang der Diagonalen vermerkt.

Backup Slide: Moderatoranalysis with PROCESS (Hayes,

2013)

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OUTCOME VARIABLE:

OCCEMB

Model Summary

R R-sq MSE F df1 df2 p

.4197 .1762 .4983 6.8430 6.0000 192.0000 .0000

Model

coeff se t p LLCI ULCI

constant 4.1942 .3954 10.6070 .0000 3.4143 4.9741

ROLEAMB -.1755 .0911 -1.9255 .0556 -.3553 .0043

COSUP .3105 .0894 3.4719 .0006 .1341 .4870

Int_1 -.2372 .1182 -2.0066 .0462 -.4704 -.0040

GESUP -.0877 .0761 -1.1519 .2508 -.2378 .0624

ROLECON .0694 .0770 .9008 .3688 -.0826 .2214

ROLOV -.1894 .0643 -2.9441 .0036 -.3163 -.0625

Product terms key:

Int_1 : ROLEAMB x COSUP

Back up Slide: Measures

Measures Authors Items

Occupational Embeddedness Crossley et al. (2007) I’m too caught up in this occupation to leave.

Occupational

TurnoverintentionLeiter et al. (2011) I am actively looking for other career opportunities.

Role conflict Peterson et al. (1995)I often get involved in situations in which there are conflicting

requirements.

Role ambiguity Peterson et al. (1995) My responsibilities are clearly defined. (R)

Role overload Peterson et al. (1995) I feel overburdened in my role.

Supervisor SupportEisenberger et al.

(2002)My superior considers my goals and values.

Team SupportVan der Doef & Maes

(2002)

I can ask my colleagues for help when I have problems at

work

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