An analysis of teachers' migration to neighboring countries: Input to policy recommendations and reform

• Main Author: Tanpoco, Manuel R.
• Format: text
• Published: Animo Repository 2014
• Subjects: Teachers—Philippines—Social conditions; Teachers—Job satisfaction—Philippines; Foreign workers, Filipino; Philippines—Emigration and immigration—Economic aspects; Work, Economy and Organizations
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/faculty_research/11578
• Institution: De La Salle University

This study was conducted to analyze the migration of teachers to neighboring countries in terms of their reasons for migrating, encouragements for staying abroad, levels of job satisfaction, degrees of work motivation, and intensities of employee commitment. Participants involved in the study were thirty-eight migrant teachers in Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam chosen by respondent-driven network sampling. The study used the mixed-methods of research. It utilized three research instruments to measure job satisfaction, work motivation, and employee commitment, namely: the Teacher Job Satisfaction Questionnaire or TJSQ (Lester, 1984), the Work Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation Scale or WEIMS (Tremblay,et al, 2009), and the Three-Component Model Employee Commitment Scales or TCM (Meyer, et al, 1993). It also used a researcher-made questionnaire face and content validated by experts and a guided interview following the narrative-inquiry approach. Findings of the study revealed that pay is the main reason for migrating, but it is not a source of job satisfaction of migrant teachers. Rather, migrants are satisfied with their teaching jobs because of Supervision, Colleagues, Responsibility, Work Itself, Advancement, and Recognition. Migrants are also self-determined and motivated at work, and they have already developed a moderate level of affective and normative commitments with their respective schools and organizations. It was revealed that teachers migrate for better salary and benefits, career opportunities, and professional development, as well as desire for travel and adventure, and improvement of teaching/instructional skills. When they were still teaching in the Philippines, they were not very happy about the low salary, poor opportunities for professional development, too large a class size, and the lack of resources and equipment for classroom use. Accordingly, they were encouraged to stay abroad because of high salary, better resources and materials for classroom use, decreased class size, improved benefits for professional development, giving special recognition or assignments to excellent teachers, and reduced teacher workload. The study recommends a 10-point agenda for policy recommendations and reform, which includes creating more opportunities for professional development, raising the salary and/or improving fringe benefits of teachers, initiating collaboration among members of the faculty. changing the Filipino perspective of supervision, designing a faculty orientation program that caters to mentoring, involving the teachers in policy formations and decision-making, recognizing the teachers more in various ways, and lessening the workloads of teachers.