Navigating the teaching profession : motivation, challenges, and retention of educators in the Gambia

Abstract

One of the most crucial concern in many education systems including that of The Gambia has been teacher retention, it is threatening quality education and overall learning outcome. Many educators have left for other jobs that offer lucrative incentives and better working conditions, despite government’s efforts to improve teacher welfare. This has led to concerns on teacher motivation, shortage staffing, and school outcomes. For this reason, this research aims to explore the issues affecting current teacher retention policies and practices, investigate driving factors that motivate individuals to enter the teaching field, and the hurdles they face post-entry. A thorough comprehension of teacher retention would provide valuable insights into the motivations and frustrations circumnavigating the choices in education. Moreover, key significance of findings would create a roadmap for policymakers to design teacher-friendly policies, refine recruitment and retention strategies, and create incentive structures that would ensure long-term engagement. Given the importance of addressing gaps such as advocacy, working conditions, and professional development, portrays how this study has a direct implication on education stakeholders as it provides a guide to improve and add to the ongoing global discussion of teacher attrition and workforce sustainability in the Gambia. With the case study design of the qualitative research approach, this study collected data through focus group discussion, interviews and document analysis to understand teacher motivation, retention and challenges. Among the participants are education officers, school principals, public and private school teachers and pre-service teachers from Gambia College. Using the lens of Hirschman’s Resistance Theory and Becker’s Rational Choice Theory, the findings where interpreted to demonstrate how educational institutions devise mechanisms to retain teachers, and how teachers weigh their career benefits and challenges before embarking on the teaching field. While evaluating their insights subjectively, the study ensured participants’ anonymity to ensure ethical considerations. While teacher retention strategies include teacher welfare and incentives, policy advocacy and inclusion, stakeholder engagement, further findings reveal that individuals are motivated to join teaching intrinsically by passion for teaching and extrinsically by societal influence and job security in teaching. However, inadequate incentives, large classroom size and workload, geographic postings have been identified as major barriers leading to premature exits of teachers. Future research should focus on longitudinal studies tracking teacher attrition pattern since the current research has set the stage for a deeper exploration of teacher retention strategies in the Gambia. Also, dwelling on a comparative analysis between rural and urban teacher retention and attrition could go a long way in understanding what best practices could be retained to help in teacher retention since the current study is only limited posits the urban version. Moreover, government institutions should revisit the process delaying teacher promotions, access to scholarship, support structures enhance teacher commitment while evaluating stakeholder involvement. Furthermore, implementing holistic reforms in teacher remuneration, policy inclusion, stakeholder collaboration, and classroom management can improve public perception of teachings as not just a viable and reputable job, but also one that stimulates intellect and reward. With that, the education system of the Gambia would be able to establish a strong, committed and well-motivated teaching workforce to perpetually deliver quality education for future generations.