Recent experimental work in social exchange offers keen insight into factors that enhance commitment to individuals, groups, and relationships. In this article we explore the relevance of this work to school settings. Specifically, we use structural equation modeling and data from the 2004 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) to test whether the commitment-enhancing processes laid out in Lawler’s affect theory of social exchange might reduce teacher turnover, an issue plaguing school districts across the country. Our results support such a model and demonstrate the importance of interdependence for fostering commitment among teachers, with interaction, affect, and cohesion as intervening factors.
Schools today face a number of challenges, not the least of which is teacher turnover. While there is no shortage of new teachers graduating from colleges and universities, the schools that hire these graduates face difficulty retaining them. In fact, approximately 20% of all new teachers leave their positions in the first 3 years (NCTAF, 2007). This phenomenon is particularly prevalent in low-performing schools in urban settings, where 50% of teachers leave within the first 5 years (NCTAF, 2007). These trends negatively affect both students and schools, and are costly to districts, pulling funds from other priorities to recruit and train replacement teachers.
In this paper we draw on insight from recent experimental research in social psychology to both better understand this phenomenon and explore potential solutions. As recent work suggests (e.g., Correll et al., 2007, Taylor and Pillemer, 2009 and Tinkler et al., 2007), the benefits of such bridging are twofold. Insight from social psychological theory originally developed in the laboratory not only adds to our understanding of social phenomena outside the laboratory, but the incorporation of social psychology in sociology’s substantive areas increases social psychology’s visibility and substantiates its importance for sociology in general. In other words, the relationship between experimental social psychology and specific areas (e.g. family, education, and religion) is symbiotic. By examining teacher turnover, an important problem in the sociology of education (Ingersoll, 2001 and Ingersoll, 2007), through the lens of the affect theory of social exchange (Lawler, 2001), we not only enhance our understanding of teacher attrition, but also illustrate the potential of experimental social psychology to those outside the tradition.
