ISA-guided mentorship and teacher turnover

Abstract

A large proportion of teachers are prone to leaving the profession in their first five years of work. This phenomenon, teacher turnover, is a long-standing and costly societal ill. To offset it, governments have implemented mentorship and induction programs. Despite the successes of these programs, turnover is still a troublesome issue. A weakness of the government programs is that they are generalized in nature and cannot cater to the needs of the individual teacher. Identity Structure Analysis can uncover stresses and conflicts of both individual and groups of teachers. It is presented as means for generating mentorship advice that holds potential for overcoming the generalized nature of induction programs. To illustrate how this personalized mentorship advice might manifest, a summary analysis of a single teacher in crisis (teachers in a state of identity crisis are considered the teachers most likely to leave the profession) is generated. In addition, a nomothetic analysis of five teachers in a state of identity crisis is generated to illustrate how from a larger study involving more teachers in crisis, Identity Structure Analysis might reveal something of the nature of the teacher identity crisis.