Retention and job satisfaction among rural primary school teachers in Malawi

ABSTRACT Teachers are instrumental in promoting equitable access to education. In Malawi, Africa, teaching posts in rural schools go unfilled. This has culminated in discussions about appropriate ways to enhance teacher retention in rural schools. This research adopted Mason and Matas' four-capital model of teacher retention as a framework to study the predictors of teacher retention and job satisfaction. We recruited a total of 305 primary school teachers from 44 rural schools in 21 communities in two of Malawi's three regions. The data were entered into SPSS. Findings from a t-test, analysis of variance, correlations and linear and hierarchical regressions found a positive relation between social and structural capital in the retention model and that teacher retention correlated positively with job satisfaction, with education predicting retention. The article concludes by discussing the need for teacher educators to prioritise social and structural capital to promote rural education.