The influence of professional identity and occupational well-being on retention intention of rural teachers in China

Rural teachers are fundamental to rural education. Currently, the high turnover rate of rural teachers is a bottleneck that restricts the improvement of rural education quality. However, most existing studies focus on why rural teachers cannot stay but do not pay enough attention to the reasons for them to stay. Therefore, from the perspective of retention, this study breaks through the limitations of teacher stability represented by teacher turnover in the past and further enriches the theoretical understanding of rural teacher retention. This study adopts a questionnaire survey of 588 rural teachers in Yulin City, Shaanxi province, China. It found that the overall retention intention (emotional retention and interest retention) of rural teachers was not very strong, and it shows statistically significant differences in terms of age, address on their ID card, marital status, educational level, years of teaching in rural areas, and the type of house they currently live in. The following three strategies are proposed in the hope of stabilizing the rural teacher team: (i) Focus on key groups and accurately meet the real needs of rural teachers, (ii) Strengthen professional identity to improve benefit retention intention, and (iii) Promote occupational happiness to further enhance the emotional retention intention of rural school teachers.