Purpose The purpose of this paper is to describe the relationship between teachers’ professional role, their sense of empowerment, and their attitudes toward managerial promotion (career development) following the implementation of educational forms. Design/methodology/approach The study was conducted in Israel in 2015 and included 663 teachers, 250 elementary school teachers and 413 middle or high school teachers. A questionnaire and statistical analyses (ANOVA, multivariate analysis, and correlations) examined the attitudes of teachers in one of four professional roles toward managerial promotion (their desire for future promotion and sense of organizational fairness). This was compared with their sense of empowerment (comprising feeling respected, professional growth, influence, autonomy, self-efficacy, and decision making), while controlling for their demographic and professional backgrounds. Findings Four-fifths of teachers were interested in pursuing managerial promotion and they perceived the promotion process as moderately fair. The greater teachers’ sense of empowerment, the greater their desire for future promotion and their belief in the fairness of the promotional process. Teachers currently holding a leadership position expressed the strongest sense of empowerment. Practical implications The study presents a multivariate model to predict teachers’ attitudes to managerial promotion on the basis of their professional role and sense of empowerment. The findings have implications for educational policy-making, particularly where there is a national focus on increasing school autonomy. Originality/value The findings will contribute to local and international research on teacher empowerment and career development.

Addressing Sorensen and Tuma's resource–reward theory, we explored teacher attrition from an economic perspective. The study aimed to explore the extent to which teachers' resources and terms of employment correlate with attrition behavior. In a sample of 10,340 Israeli K-12 teachers it was found that many beginning teachers who left the profession were relatively highly educated. Although the literature stresses teachers’ intrinsic motivation for choosing their career, the findings, in line with earlier empirical studies, suggest that job rewards do play an important role in teachers' career decisions. Moreover, the current findings suggest that at lower salary levels, the rewards-attrition association differs by teacher higher-education level. That is, the attrition rates of highly-educated teachers drop more sharply as salary increases, as expected by the theory. Some explanations and policy recommendations are made.

In many countries, the shortage of teachers-mainly of mathematics or science teachers-has become an alarming phenomenon over the years. Many studies have sought to explore the roots of this phenomenon. Whereas most studies have focused on the magnitude and determinants of this shortage, the purpose of this study was to investigate the factors that motivate individuals' decision to become mathematics or science teachers, and the mechanism that supports their continuous engagement in the profession. Data was collected through either a nonanonymous phone call or an online survey. The survey questionnaire consists of four parts. The first part included background information. In the second part, participants rate their motives for selecting teacher training in general and teacher training in mathematics or science in particular. The third part includes items concerning professional identity and the fourth part deals with participants' attitudes towards the shortage of mathematics and science teachers. Findings indicated that teaching-career decisions are mostly related to intrinsic motivations and personal tendencies. Many participants chose to become teachers as a result of idealistic motives, involving a sense of a mission, the desire to work with young generation, as well as the wish to experience professional fulfilment and develop special interests and proficiency in mathematics or science. Moreover, these features are known to predict positive professional engagement. High levels of internal motivation tend to increase teachers' sense of satisfaction and appreciation, professional efficacy, and confidence in their career decision. The results suggest that retention among mathematics and science teachers may be classified through a pyramid of needs, which has three layers. The first layer, the basis of the pyramid is comprised of personal needs embedded with intrinsic motivations. The second layer involves the extrinsic motivations, meaning the occupational needs. Decent occupational conditions are needed as a security net, to ensure the continuous development of a caring, enriching and meaningful approach to the educational endeavour. The third layer encompasses the aspects of professional engagement-professional identity needs.

Teacher attrition has become a challenge in many educational systems worldwide. Many studies have focused onteachers' perspectives, while attempting to identify the factors that motivated teachers' decision to leave theprofession. The present study aimed to explore teacher attrition from the point of view of school leaders - principalsand inspectors. Using qualitative and quantitative methods, the results indicate that school and district leadersperceived teacher attrition via two-dimensional structure, including explicit and implicit dimensions. The explicitdimension refers to the act of leaving. The participants indicated that the main reasons that motivate teachers'decision to leave the profession are related to the stressful working environment and poor job conditions. Theimplicit dimension presents a hidden attrition. Based on cost-benefit theory the study highlights the complexstructure of teacher attrition.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the perceptions of teachers toward national reform in education according to the reform stage (Initiation, Implementation or Institutionalization) attained in their school. The study aim to examined: How do teachers perceive the current reform?; Is there a correlation between teachers' perceptions and reform stage?; To what extent are teachers' perceptions affected by school's mechanisms and school's readiness?Design/methodology/approachThe research methodology is quantitative. Teachers (N = 288) completed a written questionnaire. One-way ANOVA was used to investigate teachers' perceptions of the reform and its contributions to school effectiveness and to teachers' working conditions according to reform stage, while controlling for managerial position, teaching experience and school level. Multivariate modeling was used to examine the relationships between the variables.FindingsTeachers' overall attitudes toward the changes associated with the education reform lay between moderately negative and neutral. Reform was perceived to have made a greater contribution to school effectiveness than to teacher working conditions. School readiness for reform and the presence of school mechanisms supporting reform explained much (41%) of the variance in teachers' attitudes. Teachers holding leadership roles and those whose schools were in the Institutionalization stage exhibited more positive attitudes toward the reform and perceived it as having improved their working conditions to a greater extent than those without leadership roles or whose schools were in the Initiation or Implementation stages, respectively.Originality/valueTeachers' attitudes toward reform have not previously been examined in the context of reform stage.