Happiness In Teaching

The research is intended to provide a humanistic understanding of the issue of teacher retention in early childhood education.Qualitative methodologies containing case study,narrative inquiry,open ended interview,participant observation and document review are used to examine the lived experience of an in-service preschool teacher,centering on how the participant makes sense of self experiences,and how these significant events as well as important others impact the decision to remain in teaching or at current campus.Findings demonstrate that the motivation of teacher retaining has been seen as an evolution from external to internal throughout the teacher career,specifically from the environmental support to self-efficacy,self-actualization and self-transcendence.Themes of each part are as followed.Part I is about research proposal covering introduction,literature review,design and methodology.Differed from quantitative surveys brushing across the superficial factors that influence teacher retention,this study conducted qualitative research to explore intrinsic motivations in depth.Part II focusing on the participant's lived experience,is divided into four sections,sprout,growth,blooming and organizational retention,to reveal how the individual's attitude,identity and belief shaped.Part III centers on explanation of teacher persistence based on a series of theories such as life history theory,educational anthropology theory and the theory of well-being.The last part comes up with supportive strategies towards individual pursuit,school administration,teacher training and education,the shift of research paradigm and policies truly aimed at teacher needs,to attract and retain most effective teachers in preschool.