Teacher commitment: a comparative study of Malaysian ethnic groups in three types of primary schools

Abstract

Commitment is a complex attitude that is potentially influenced by the nature of the groups and is contingent on the context in which an individual functions. Thus, different sociocultural environments will prescribe different imperatives for individuals’ or groups’ attitudes toward their work, particularly teachers’ commitment in a multi-ethnic educational setting. However, previous teacher commitment studies have predominantly been applied to single-sample studies in a multiracial Malaysian context. Therefore, this study attempts to compare the teacher commitment levels and the four dimensions of teacher commitment across Malay, Chinese and Indian teachers who are the dominant ethnicities in three different types of Malaysian primary schools. Questionnaires were administered to 1,154 primary school teachers in Penang, and the obtained data were analysed using AMOS 20.0 and SPSS 20.0. The findings revealed nonsignificant differences for commitment to school, commitment to students, commitment to teaching and commitment to profession for any pair of ethnic groups. Limitations and suggestions for future studies are discussed.