Chapter 1: Building and Sustaining Social Capital: Understanding First Year Teachers’ Sense of Agency and Retention

It is a well-documented phenomenon that teachers leave the profession at an alarming rate (e.g., Ingersoll & May, 2012; Ingersoll, Merrill, & May, 2016), and although teacher attrition for all stages of teachers matter, beginning teachers’ attrition is critical, because the initial years of teaching have long-term implications for teaching effectiveness and career longevity (Guarino, Santibanez, & Daley, 2006; Hong, 2012). Beginning teachers are often characterized as those who are in the “survival period” (Day & Gu, 2010; Huberman, 1989). They tend to struggle to handle both anticipated and unanticipated challenges in their classroom and school settings (e.g., Beauchamp & Thomas, 2011; Pillen, Beijaard, & Den Brok, 2013). Researchers have noted the association between these challenges and their low commitment, emotional burnout, declining well-being, and eventually early departure from their career (e.g., Ingersoll, 2001; Cooper & Alvarado, 2006; Lindqvist, Nordânger, & Carlsson, 2014). In particular, first-year teachers who do not have extensive in-class experiences and established social network within the school, often face multi-level challenges such as managing excessive working hours, learning explicit and implicit norms of the school, maneuvering the social and political structure of the school, and meeting accountability demands (Day & Gu, 2010; Hong, 2010). These challenges have led to increasing rates of attrition for first-year teachers. According to Ingersoll and his colleagues (Ingersoll & Merrill, 2012), first-year teachers’ retention rate has decreased 34% between 1998 and 2008. As existing studies noted, first-year teachers’ attrition is often associated with “inadequate socialization,” in which they are assigned the same teaching load and responsibilities as veteran teachers without the instructional guidance, scaffolding, and social and emotional support that comes with experience (Angelle, 2006; Fantilli & McDougall, 2009). While guidance and support are important for first-year teachers’ development, this study also recognizes that first-year teachers are more than recipients of help. Instead, first-year teachers’ sense of agency needs to be acknowledged and valued, so that they can develop empowering relationships and social capital, which contribute over time to their teaching effectiveness, well-being, and career longevity.