Browsing by Subject "ERI-malli"

Objectives. Teacher attrition and the possible lack of qualified teachers has been a topic of public discussion for many years and has also raised concern in Finland. This has raised a need to examine teacher stress and the reasons behind teacher attrition. The aim of this study was to investigate how work stress, estimated by Siegrist's (1996) Effort – Reward Imbalance model (ERI model), affects class teachers' intention to leave teaching career. The main hypothesis was that high effort combined with low rewards predicts intention to leave teaching career. In addition it was investigated how different levels of effort, reward and overcommitment effect on intention to leave the profession. Methods. The data for this study were collected with a questionnaire in 2013-2014. The subjects were 1-6 grade teachers from randomly picked schools in Helsinki metropolitan area. Altogether 74 teachers from 34 schools participated to this study. The age of the participants was 43,5 years on average (range 25-63 years). Work stress was measured with ERI-questionnaire. Results. The effort-reward imbalance predicted teachers' intention to leave the profession. Also lower rewards predicted teacher's intention to leave the profession. Closer examination of the data showed that the lack of 'esteem' was the only variable that caused the connection between low rewards and intention to leave teaching. High effort or overcommitment didn't predict teachers' intention to leave the profession. Conclusions. This study shows that ERI model can predict Finnish school teachers' intention to leave teaching. Moreover this study demonstrates the importance of 'esteem' at the work environment when predicting teachers' well-being and intention to leave the profession.