Assessment of teachers' career commitment for their retention in public secondary schools of Kitui district.

Abstract

Studies by Oplatka (2007) and Sinyolo (2007) have shown that most teachers in the country enter the profession as a last resort when all efforts to get into other professions have failed. They feel under-paid, and most of them see their peers in other professions to be doing better than them financially. This suggests that a considerable proportion of teachers in Kenyan schools may not be committed to the teaching profession, and may be finding incentives elsewhere. Therefore, they express the desire to quit teaching if opportunities were available. This study investigated the levels of career commitment and established how this influences turnover of teachers in public secondary schools of Kitui District. The objectives of the study were: to establish the level of career commitment among secondary school teachers in Kitui District; to determine the influence of teachers ' career commitment on their intention to quit or remain in the profession; to establish the level of career commitment and across gender, and to establish the level of career commitment across teaching experience among secondary school teachers in Kitui District. The study employed a survey design, to analyze its findings. Samples of 20 public schools were randomly selected using simple sampling technique from which the 20 principals and 80 teachers were involved in the study. Data were collected using questionnaires. Statistics such as frequency counts, means and percentages were used to analyze the quantitative data obtained. The data were analyzed by organizing them into similar themes and tallying the number of similar responses. The results of data analysis were presented in frequency tables and pie charts. It emerged that career commitment among teacher in public secondary schools of Kitui District was low with 55 (72.4%) of the interviewed teachers indicating that they would quit the profession if they got better jobs.