This study utilized a qualitative research method of data collection in order to understand more about teacher turnover in the private senior secondary schools in the Gambia. It gave the researcher the opportunity to gather valuable and relevant information about the subject at hand. The goal here is to listen to people in their natural settings (Field & Morse, 1992). Creswell (2003) described qualitative as having steps to follow when collecting and analyzing the collected data as well as ways of asking questions. Ways in which data could be collected include observations, interview, documents and artifacts (Erlandson, Harris, Skipper, & Allen, 1993).
A convenience sampling was adopted because of the fact that the researcher used to work for both public and private schools in the Gambia and therefore it was much easier to get the sample needed for the study.
RESEARCH FRAMEWORK
The research frame contains factors that were identified in the literature to be factors that are responsible for teacher turnover in the other hand are the challenges that might trigger teacher turnover in the Gambia. However dependency has been captured in the literature review.
Labor Migration
Every year thousands of African migrants both skilled and unskilled heads for Europe to seek for greener pastures and Teachers are no exceptions. By 2010, there were 65,000 Gambians abroad which is about 4% of the population, Kevin (2015). Kevin also reported that the number of migrants crossing by sea to Italy almost quadrupled from 2013 to 2014, which is about 170,100. With Gambia been the highest contributor. Despite the risk associated with this journey many people are ready to risk their lives. Most of these are influenced by success stories of their friends. Such as their friends building new houses for their families, providing a car, electricity and clean drinking water for the family. So when people in this case teachers see their colleagues doing what they cannot do they end up leaving the teaching field.
Then most of the time they apply for a visa and when they are rejected they go through the “back way” meaning they board ships and canoes and head to Italy or Spain.
The surge in the number of migrants reaching Europe lead to the then prime minister of Spain Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero’s government to sign an agreement with the Gambia to invest $1.3 million to train Gambians for job opportunities in Spain Burnett (2007). Despite all this, the phenomenon shows no sign of abating
Relationship between the Research Framework and the Conceptual Framework
All the factors ( factors responsible for teacher turnover) listed below are found in the conceptual framework in chapter 2. These are issues that most researchers across the globe identified as the leading causes of teacher turnover.
For the challenges that could trigger turnover these are issues that are not found in the literature review except for dependency. These are issues that seemed to be peculiar to the Gambia situation.
Relationship between the Research Questions and Research Framework The researcher was interested in knowing the factors responsible of teacher turnover, the challenges, and the teachers˜ perceptions about their career as well as the potential solutions to teacher turnover in Gambia private senior secondary schools the Gambia. The research questions would help the researcher to understand these issues.
The relationship here as to do with issues that have already been identified as the causes of teacher turnover and also the challenges that have being identified and the anticipated teachers perception about their career. The research questions would explore the hearts and minds of the research participants to find out from them about the issues that they think are responsible for teacher turn over, the challenges that confront them and finally the potential solutions.
Below is the research framework that guided this study.
Below is the research framework that guided this study.
Figure 3.1 Research Framework
Sampling Criteria
In this study, four important criterions were used to select the research participants, the criterions will be relevant in providing the necessary information needed for this research.
Below are the selection criterions for the research participants.
1. They must be teachers in a private school senior secondary school 2. They must be principals in a senior secondary school with more than
5 years working experience
3. They (Teachers) must have worked in the private school for more than two
4. They must be teachers or principals in region one
Challenges that could trigger
Research Participants Selection
Choosing the right sampling for a research can be very challenging, this is because there are many sampling techniques which are sometimes overlapping and hard to understand (Coyne 1997). However this researcher used the convenience sampling because it is the most appropriate and suitable sampling technique for this research. The researcher had worked for some private schools in the Gambia, so this made the study much more convenient.
The research was conducted in region one which has the highest concentration of private senior schools in the Gambia than any other region. In other to fully
understand the factors responsible for teacher turnover in private senior secondary schools in the Gambia, a total of 20 teachers were selected for this research which consisted 17 male teachers and 3 female teachers, the ages of the research participant ranged from 25 to 60 years. Out of the 20 research participants, 2 were principals 1 male and 1 female. All participants are currently working in private senior secondary schools in region one. Nearly all the research participants (teachers) had more than 5 years teaching experience, both principals spend more than two decades on the job.
All the teachers interviewed actually worked for other private schools before moving to their current schools some of them spend more than two years in those schools. Most of the information that they shared with the researcher was based on their experience in the teaching field, precisely in private schools
Table 3.1
Background information of the research participants
Code Name Age Gender Positions Highest Years of Education Experience level
PS1 31-36 M Teacher Other 6-10
PS2 26-30 M Teacher Bachelor 6-10
PS3 31-36 M Teacher Master More than
10
PS4 More than M Teacher Bachelor More than
40 10
PS5 More than M Teacher Bachelor More than
40 10
PS6 25 or less M Teacher Diploma Less than 5
PS7 35 F Teacher Bachelor 9
PS8 31-36 M Teacher Diploma More than
10
PS9 25 or less M Teacher Bachelor More than
10
PS10 25 or less M Teacher Bachelor 5-6
PS11 31-36 M Teacher Bachelor 6-10
PS12 36-40 M Teacher Bachelor More than
10
PS13 More than M Teacher Bachelor More than
40 10
PS14 25or less M Teacher Bachelor More than
10
PS15 More than F Principal Master More than
40 10
Table 3.1 (Continued)
Code Name Age31-36 Gender Position Highest Years of
education Experience
level
PS 16 More than M Principal Bachelor More than
40 10
PS 17 31-36 F Teacher Bachelor 6-10
PS18 More than M Teacher Diploma More than
40 10
PS19 31-26 M Teacher Diploma More than
10
PS20 31-36 M Teacher Diploma More than
10
PS21 31-36 M Teacher Bachelor More than
10
PS22 31-36 M Teacher Bachelor Less than
10
Note:
1. PS: stands for Private School
2. Only two principals took part in this research; they are research participant 15
and 16
Data Collection
This section contains the data collection method as well as the measures for achieving trustworthiness in qualitative research.
An in-depth interview was conducted for this research using a mobile phone to record the interview. The interview was conducted in English which the participants understood well. The interview lasted 30 to 40 minutes; questions were framed in such a way that they allowed probing (Garegae, 2008). In addition, in-depth interview was much more fitting for this research because it allowed the researcher to conduct intensive interviews with the participants and it enabled the researcher to explore their perception on the topic of discussion as well (Boyce & Neale, 2006).This was an opportunity for the interviewees to express their feelings and opinions about the issues they think are responsible for teacher turnover. For most of them this was the first time they have been interviewed about issues related to their profession, so they were exited to share the topic of discussion with this researcher, which was relevant to this study.
However some of them were worried about the confidentiality of their personal identity but this researcher made it clear to them that their identity will not be revealed in a anyway and that the information that they will be giving is purposely for academic purpose. They were also told that they have the right not to participate in the research as well. The researcher gain access to the teachers through their principals. The participants were asked to choose the places that they deem confortable for the research to be conducted and all of them choose their school campuses as the venues for the interview, some were interviewed in their offices, classrooms and others in the open ground of the school.
Measures for Achieving Trustworthiness
The trustworthiness of qualitative research generally is often queried by positivists. Perhaps because of their concepts of validity and reliability cannot be address. Nevertheless one such many naturalistic investigators have however, preferred to use different terminology to distance themselves from positivist paradigm. One such author is Guba, who proposes four criteria that he believes should be considered (Shenton 2004) a. credibility b. transferability c. dependability d. confirmability.
Credibility
It would be worth mentioning that in order to enhance a credibility the researcher as on several occasions consulted the participants to clarified issues that were not well understood after listening to the audio. Credibility is one of the most significant factors in addressing trustworthiness as observed by (Guba & Lincoln, 1994). The researcher did not only make a call but went to meet the participants in person in their schools to ensure credibility is enhanced.
Dependability
Dependability means if the same results will be repeated using the same methodology.
To ensure dependability the following were suggested by (Shenton 2004).
A. The type of research design and how it was done.
B. How the data was generated and give an account of field notes taken.
C. Stating how effective was the inquiry procedures executed.
In order to ensure the dependability of the research, As clearly stated earlier on an in-depth interview was conducted during the research and the interview was recoded using a mobile phone and notes were also taken. It was an effective and quick way of gathering information as it does not required much equipment and the researcher had to listen to the interview over and over and sometimes have to refer to the field notes.
Transferability
Transferability is the degree to which the data can be applied to other situations. In this case the researcher needs to give a vivid picture of the settings of the research, this enable the reader to have a clear and broad understanding of the studies and see if it can be applied in other situations to a wider population (Shenton, 2004).
In other to hence the transferability the researcher did explained earlier on about the participants who were involved in the study as well as the entire settings of the study, which would help the readers and other researchers to have a vivid picture
of the research settings.
Confirmability
It is the degree in which the results of a study do not show any biasness or being influence by the researcher but the results of the true reflection of what has been investigated (Shenton, 2004).
In other to this, the researcher consulted different teachers from different schools across region one as well as the ministry of education which was very instrumental in providing data to this researcher. In addition, the participants varied in many ways in terms of age, qualifications and experience. The researcher allowed the participants to speak their mind throughout the research this has helped to avoid biasness in all forms.
The following table explains the relationship between the research questions and interview questions for teachers.
Table 3.2
Relationship between research questions and interview questions (Teachers)
Research question Research question Research 3 Research 4
1 2
Interview questions Interview Interview questions 10, 11, 12, 14 questions 15, 16, 2, 3, 5,6, 7, 13 intended to answer intended to intended to answer research question 2 answer research research question 4 which was seeking question 3 which which was seeking to find out about the was seeking to to find out about challenges that find out about teachers perceptions teachers face. the solutions to about their career
teacher turnover
Table 3.3 below explains the relationship between the research questions and interview questions for principals.
Table 3.3
Relationship between research questions and interview question (Principal)
Research question Research question Research 3 Research 4
1 2
Interview question 4,5, 10, 11 intended to answer research question 1 which was seeking to find out about the factors responsible for teacher turnover.
Interview questions Interview Interview questions 1, 2, 3, 6, 9, 11 and questions 15, 16, 7, 8
12 intended to 13 intended to intended to answer answer research answer research research question 4 question 2 which question 3 which which was seeking was seeking to find was seeking to to find out about out about the find out about teachers perceptions challenges that the solutions to about their career teachers face. teacher turnover
Table 3.4 contains the qualitative terminologies that are used in qualitative research instead of the quantitative terminologies
Table 3.4
Table 3.3 Qualitative terminologies instead of that of Quantitative
Qualitative Quantitative
Credibility Internal Validity
Transferability External Validity
Dependability Reliability
Confirmability Objectivity
Data Analysis
Qualitative data analyses means making sense out of the data collected, usually from interview, onsite observations and documents, next is presenting the findings in a responsible way to the readers (Caudle, 2004). In other words data analyses involves going through the literature and other relevant documents so as to comprehend the contents and then answer the topic of discussion.
After the data collected was completed the researcher transcribed the data and then code. During the coding process the researcher categorized the data into various categories and then finally the relevant themes were drawn and analyzed.
Research Procedure
This section describes the steps this researcher followed to conduct the research.
1. The researcher identified the research problem that needed to be discussed.
Teachers in private senior schools were identified as the population of study.
2. The researcher identified his research participants.
3. The third section deals with the literature; here the researcher reviewed many literatures so as to have a broader understanding of the factors that influence teacher turnover across the globe.
4. Here the design method and research questions were formulated to address the issues in teacher turnover. The questions were reviewed by the researcher’s thesis adviser to help fit the purpose.
5. An in-depth interview was used to collect the data. The questions were administered to 20 teachers as well as 2 principals in private schools.
6. After the interview the data was transcribed and coded and the main themes were drawn.
7. The findings of the study were highlighted and followed by further discussions on the issues underpinning teacher turnover in the private schools in the Gambia.
8. The researcher made his conclusions based on the findings as well as recommendations for further studies
Figure 3.2. Procedure of the study
Identified research participants Indentified the research
problem
Reviewed Litterature
Developed research questions and research method
Collected data
Analyzed the data
Report findings and discussion
Provided conclusion and recommendation