The more research I conducted, the less convincing the standard retention narrative became. Workload and compensation matter, especially in the current economic climate.
However, these alone could not explain the trends.
I read about and heard from teachers who spoke about values, trust, belonging, agency, identity, purpose, and conflict. Not conflict in the dramatic sense.
Conflict between competing expectations. Conflict between what they believed students needed and what systems required. Conflict between professional judgment and organizational priorities. Conflict between the professional educator they wanted to be and what they perceived the system allowed them to be.
The question I kept returning to was not "Why are teachers leaving?" but rather "What happens when teachers can no longer reconcile these tensions?" This issue became central to the examination.
I did not set out to study conflict. In fact, it wasn't one of the concepts driving the initial research design.
Yet by the end of the study, conflict appeared everywhere.
Teachers described tensions involving leadership, resources, values, policy implementation, relationships, expectations, and professional autonomy.
Different stories, but a common pattern.
The more I analyzed the data, the more conflict emerged as the thread connecting many of the experiences participants described.
Perhaps retention is not simply about reducing challenges, but about understanding how teachers navigate competing commitments over time, in addition to how schools address conflict proactively.