A longitudinal study on starting teachers’ retention intentions: Do pre-teaching work experience and length of working years make a difference?

Abstract

This 4-wave longitudinal study examined how starting teachers' retention intentions changed over three years. One-way repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) found a significant main effect of time on retention intention. Two-way ANOVA also showed a significant main effect of pre-teaching work experience, and years of work experience on retention intention. However, there was no significant interaction effect between time and pre-teaching work experience, and between time and years of prior work experience. These findings suggest that prior work experience in other professions and length of working years did not make a difference in starting teachers’ retention intentions over time.