The Future of Education

This work aims to understand the dropout from the teaching profession, the causes and the maintenance aspects that define the dropout phase as a resignation-retention situation (Carver, 2021 ; Kirsch, 2007). The present study aims to investigate the phenomenon of teacher dropout in its subjective dimension. We studied the representational content of teacher’s dropout among teachers and redefining it as a different phenomenon from the teachers’s abandonment.

Considering teacher’s dropout as an object of social representations is relevant. It is a polymorphic object, which has a stake value for teachers and induces a professional identity tension (Hanna et al., 2019). Finally, teacher’s dropout impacts other societal groups and does not represent any orthodoxy for teachers (Bonetto & Lo Monaco, 2018 ; Moliner, 1993).

256 teachers (Age = 40; 197 Women) completed two verbal association questionnaires (Moliner & Lo Monaco, 2017). The first focused on dropout causes, the second on protective and retention factors. A prototypical analysis was conducted (Lo Monaco et al., 2017) to highlight structural hypotheses related to the fields of representations studied.

The results suggest that pupils are at the heart of the aspects that protect teachers from abandonment, in addition to love and passion for teaching. On the other hand, lack of consideration, lack of resources, working conditions and difficulties related to classroom management seem to be responsible for dropout situation.

These results will eventually lead to the creation of a French diagnostic scale for teacher’s dropout. The understanding of these phenomena with the help of social representations and the scale developed will allow a possible intervention-prevention against this phenomenon and a reform of initial teacher training.