Implication of professional development on teacher retention in public secondary schools of Nyabihu District

Abstract

This research focused on the implication of professional development on teacher retention in public secondary schools of the Nyabihu district, teacher retention is the ability to keep teachers in the classroom while also reducing lesson turnover. Transferring teachers across schools or districts and leaving the profession are examples of turnover. In addition, keeping ineffective teachers should be avoided, but keeping effective teachers will benefit all stakeholders. Professional development has a major impact on teacher retention, as indicated in the Rwanda annual education report, almost 20% of secondary school teaching staff leave within the early years, particularly in Nyabihu district as one of the districts of the country had met this challenge of turnover and this has consequences on students’ academic performance however this study therefore sought to investigate the implication of professional development on teacher retention in public secondary schools, the possible factors responsible for teacher retention in secondary schools in the Nyabihu district, and the possible permanent remedy to this.The researcher used Hertzberg’s Motivation to provide a theoretical foundation for factors pulling teachers which is likely to lead to higher students’ academic performance due to keeping experienced teachers in the classroom, the study was conducted using mixed research design as a method of investigation that associates or integrates both qualitative and quantitative forms, it entails logical presumptions, the application of both qualitative and quantitative methods, and the blending of these methods in a study includes more than just gathering and evaluating both types of data, it also involves using both methodologies so that a study's overall strength is greater than that of either qualitative research or quantitative research ,specifically, an exploratory sequential research design where the quantitative part of data collecting and analysis after the qualitative phase was used .The study population was 860 respondents comprised of teachers, directors of studies, and head teachers of some selected secondary schools, purposive sampling was used to select the respondents who comprised:15 school headteachers out of 45 secondary schools, 264 teachers out of 770, and 15 directors of studies out of 45, the researcher collected data himself through the use of questionnaires, interview guides, and observation schedules as research tools, the data collected was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics as SPSS (v21.0) was used in organizing the quantitative data, the qualitative data was used in explaining and clarifying the quantitative data from questionnaires in addition frequencies and percentages were used to summarize the data and the findings were presented using frequency distribution tables and correlation model was applied therefore the researcher found evidence that teacher retention costs, although difficult to quantify, are significant at both the district and the school level. It was also found that teachers who leave the schools for other areas left consequences and low-performing schools at significantly higher risks and this signified implications for the differential impact of teacher retention in high-need schools, consequently, professional development was seen as the solution to retain teachers in the Nyabihu district