Keeping teachers happy: Job satisfaction among primary school teachers in rural Northwest China

Comparative Education Review

Volumn 49, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 173-204

  Sargent, Tanja ^a   Hannum, Emily ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 20744454901     PISSN: 00104086     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/428100     Document Type: Review

References (132)

1. Linda Darling-Hammond, Doing What Matters Most: Investing in Quality Teaching (New York: National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, 1997).
2. Linda Darling-Hammond and J. Green, "Teacher Quality and Equality," in Access to Knowledge, ed. P. Keating and J. I. Goodlad (New York: College Entrance Examination Board, 1990).
3. See also Joseph P. Farrell and João Oliveira, Teachers in Developing Countries: Improving Effectiveness and Managing Costs (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1993);
4. Linda Ankrah-Dove, "The Deployment and Training of Teachers for Remote Rural Schools in Less-Developed Countries," International Review of Education 28 (1982): 3-27;
5. Robert E. Kliltgaard, Khalil Y. Siddiqui, Mohammad Arshad, Naheed Niaz, and Muneer Khan, "The Economics of Teacher Education in Pakistan," Comparative Education Review 29, no. 1 (1985): 97-110.
6. Xu Zhongwei discusses the problem of net movement of teachers out of the teaching profession and into the commercial sector, such as in foreign joint venture companies, other private companies, hotels, and the travel industry, where the working conditions are better and the opportunities for professional advancement more numerous. See Xu Zhongwei, "Shichang jingji yu jiaoshi liudong" [The market economy and teacher turnover], in Shichang jingji dachao xia de jiaoyu gaige, ed. Jin Xibin (Guangzhou: Guangdong Educational Press, 1998), 304.
7. See also Yanjie Bian, "Chinese Social Stratification and Social Mobility," Annual Review of Sociology 28 (2002): 91-116, for an excellent review of increasing social and labor market mobility in postreform China.
8. Albert Park, Scott Rozelle, Christine Wong, Changqing Ren, "Distributional Consequences of Reforming Local Public Finance in China," China Quarterly 147 (1996): 751-78;
9. Mun C. Tsang, "Financial Reform of Basic Education in China," Economics of Education Review 15, no. 4 (1996): 423-44.
10. This is as a result of the new employment-contract system for teachers, which is gradually being implemented in China. See Yi Guobin, "Nongcun zhongxiaoxue jiaoshi pinrenzhi de shijian yu sikao" [The rural primary and middle school teacher employment-contract system: Implementation and considerations], China Education and Research Network (P. R. China), August 14, 2004, available at http://www.edu.cn/20010919/3002166.shtml.
11. Provinces that are classified as being in the northwest are Gansu, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, Qinghai, Shaanxi, and Xinjiang. These provinces share many similarities in terms of climate, geography, economic, and social indicators. They are also home to many ethnic minority groups.
12. One reviewer pointed out that our measurement of job satisfaction is not consistent with strategies employed in the Western industrial psychology literature, which focuses on developing detailed descriptions of specific dimensions of work satisfaction. This literature is certainly relevant to understanding the psychology of teachers in China, and indeed many Chinese scholars of teacher job satisfaction draw heavily on this research (see n. 18). However, we are more interested in teacher satisfaction as a sociological phenomenon rather than a psychological one. For this reason, we seek to discover the relationships between feelings of overall satisfaction and community, school, and individual background factors.
13. Liu Haiyan, "Yingxiang jingji bu fada diqu zhongxiaoxue jiaoshi gongzuo jijixing zhu yinsu fenxi" [An analysis of various factors influencing middle school and elementary school teacher motivation in economically underdeveloped areas], Jiaoyu yu fazhan 1 (1995): 45-49;
14. Chen Weiqi, "Zhongxue jiaoshi gongzuo manyigan de jiegou ji qi yu lizhi qingxiang, gongzuo jijixing de guanxi" [The structure of middle school teachers' feelings of job satisfaction and its relationship to work motivation and the tendency toward attrition from teaching], Xinli fazhan yu jiaoyu 1 (1998): 38-44.
15. See review and discussion of this in Xin Ma and Robert MacMillan, "Influences of Workplace Conditions on Teachers' Job Satisfaction," Journal of Educational Research 93, no. 1 (1999): 39.
16. People's Republic of China Ministry of Education, Suzhi jiaoyu guannian: Xuexi tiyao [The concept of quality education: Key points for study] (Beijing: Shenghuo-dushu-xinzhi sanlian shudian, 2002).
17. See Emily Hannum and Albert Park, "Children's Educational Engagement in Rural China" (unpublished manuscript, Sociology Department, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 2003).
18. Su Zhaorong, "Pinkun diqu jichu jiaoyu shizi duiwu zhuangkuang fenxi yu sikao" [An analysis and discussion of the condition of the basic education teaching force in regions of high poverty], in Zhongguo jichu jiaoyu fazhan yanjiu baogao - 2001 [A report on the development of basic education in China - 2001], ed. National Central Institute of Educational Research (Beijing: Educational Science Press, 2002), 372-76.
19. Su Zhaorong, "Pinkun diqu jichu jiaoyu shizi duiwu zhuangkuang fenxi yu sikao" [An analysis and discussion of the condition of the basic education teaching force in regions of high poverty], in Zhongguo jichu jiaoyu fazhan yanjiu baogao - 2001 [A report on the development of basic education in China - 2001] Ibid., 373.
20. Su Zhaorong, "Pinkun diqu jichu jiaoyu shizi duiwu zhuangkuang fenxi yu sikao" [An analysis and discussion of the condition of the basic education teaching force in regions of high poverty], in Zhongguo jichu jiaoyu fazhan yanjiu baogao - 2001 [A report on the development of basic education in China - 2001] Ibid., 374.
21. Bruce Fuller, "What School Factors Raise Achievement in the Third World?" Review of Educational Research 57, no. 3 (1987): 255-92;
22. Bruce Fuller and Prema Clarke, "Raising School Effects While Ignoring Culture? Local Conditions and the Influence of Classroom Tools, Rules, and Pedagogy," Review of Educational Research 64, no. 1 (1994): 119-57;
23. Albert Park and Emily Hannum, "Do Teachers Affect Learning in Developing Countries?" (paper presented at the Rethinking Social Science Research on the Developing World in the 21st Century conference for the Social Science Research Council, Salt Lake City, UT, 2001).
24. Eric Hanushek, "Interpreting Recent Research on Schools in Developing Countries," World Bank Research Observer 10 (1995): 227-54.
25. For seminal work on the measurement of facet-specific job satisfaction, see F. Herzberg, B. Mausner, R. O. Peterson, and D. F. Capwell, Job Attitudes: Review of Research and Opinion (Pittsburgh: Psychological Service of Pittsburgh, 1957);
26. E. A. Locke, "The Nature and Causes of Job Satisfaction," in Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, ed. M. Dunnette (Chicago: Rand McNally College Publishing, 1976);
27. and Victor Vroom, Work and Motivation (New York: Wiley, 1964). For examples of Chinese research that draws on this work, see Chen, "Zhongxue jiaoshi gongzuo manyigan";
28. Chen Yunying and Sun Zhaobang, "Jiaoshi gongzuo manyidu de celiang yanjiu" [Measurement of teacher satisfaction], Xinli kexue 17, no. 3 (1994): 146-49;
29. Du Xiufang, "Jiaoshi gongzuo manyidu ji qi tigao duice" [The level of teacher job satisfaction and how to raise it], Jiaayu xinli 19 (2003);
30. Feng Bolin, "Jiaoshi gongzuo manyi ji qi yingxiang yinsu de yanjiu" [Factors influencing teacher job satisfaction], Jiaoyu yanjiu 2 (1996): 42-49;
31. He Weiqiang and Xuan Hongping, "Jiaoshi gongzuo manyidu ji qi shehui xinli jizhi yanjiu" [Teacher job satisfaction and its social psychological mechanism], Qiqihaer daxue xuebao - zhexue shehui kexue ban, no. 3 (2002): 114-16;
32. Wang Zuli, "Chuzhong jiaoshi gongzuo manyidu de diaocha yanjiu" [An investigation of junior middle school teacher job satisfaction], Dangdai jiaoyu kexue 11 (2003);
33. Zhang Zhongshan and Wu Zhihong, "Xiaozhang lingdao xingwei yu jiaoshi gongzuo manyidu guanxi yanjiu" [The relationship between principal leadership behaviors and teacher job satisfaction], Xinli kexue 24, no. 1 (2001): 120-21;
34. and Zhou Junhong, "Xuexiao zuzhi qifen yu jiaoshi gongzuo manyidu de xiangguanxing" [The relatedness of school organizational climate and teacher job satisfaction], Meitan gaodeng jiaoyu 4 (1997): 108-9;
35. and Liu, 'Yingxiang jingji bu fada diqu de zhongxiaoxue." For examples of research on facet-specific teacher job satisfaction in the Western literature, see Ma and MacMillan, "Influences of Workplace Conditions"; Pam Poppleton, "The Survey Data," Comparative Education 26, nos. 2/3 (1990): 183-210;
36. F. Rodgers-Jenkinson and D. Chapman, "Job Satisfaction of Jamaican Elementary School Teachers," International Review of Education 36, no. 3 (1990): 299-313;
37. Phillip Schlechty and Victor Vance, "Recruitment, Selection, and Retention: The Shape of the Teaching Force," Elementary School Journal 83, no. 4 (1983): 467-87.
38. For examples of this approach, see D. Chapman and M. A. Lowther, "Teachers' Satisfaction with Teaching," Journal of Educational Research 75, no. 4 (1982): 241-47;
39. and M. Perie, D. Baker, and S. Whitener, Job Satisfaction among America's Teachers: Effects of Workplace Conditions, Background Characteristics, and Teacher Compensation, report of the U.S. Department of Education (Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics, 1997).
40. See also Richard M. Ingersoll, "Teacher Turnover and Teacher Shortages," American Educational Research Journal 38, no. 3 (2001), for a multivariate analysis of individual and school factors that are related to teacher turnover.
41. For an elucidation of factors related to remoteness and teacher willingness to teach in rural schools in developing nations, see Ankrah-Dove, "Deployment and Training of Teachers." The factors she discusses include personal and family factors (teachers raised in the city may not be accustomed to the harsh living conditions in rural areas, and there may be limited opportunities for the spouses to find work or for their children to attend school); social factors (isolation from social activities common to an urban lifestyle and also a feeling that they are strangers among the rural community); economic factors (lower salaries and higher cost of living due to transportation costs and difficulty of obtaining daily necessities); professional factors (lack of access to classroom aids, fewer opportunities for professional interaction with other teachers, and fewer opportunities to be recognized for their work by the authorities). She notes the need for more evidence from case studies and surveys to determine the willingness of teachers to serve in remote rural schools, 9.
42. Ibid., 5.
43. It is now the county-level government that is responsible for the payment of teachers' salaries, but this reform had not yet occurred in the year 2000. Currently, one of the important barriers to staffing schools in rural areas is the lack of money available at the county level for the payment of teachers' salaries. In some places, shortages occur simply because county governments cannot afford to assign enough teachers to the schools.
44. See Lynn Paine, "Making Schools Modern: Paradoxes of Educational Reform," in Zouping in Transition: The Process of Reform in Rural North China, ed. Andrew Walder (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998);
45. Tsang, "Financial Reform of Basic Education in China." Village governments take different shapes and forms, and the role they play in financing village schooling is heavily influenced by the degree of industrialization in the village and their relationship to it. See Jonathan Unger, The Transformation of Rural China (London: Sharpe, 2002);
46. and Jean Oi, "The Evolution of Local State Corporatism," in Walder, Zouping in Transition, for more on this topic.
47. Oi, "The Evolution of Local State Corporatism"; Unger, The Transformation of Rural China.
48. Kevin O' Brien, "Implementing Political Reform in China's Villages," Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 32 (July 1994).
49. Tsang, "Financial Reform of Basic Education in China."
50. Emily Hannum and Albert Park, "Educating China's Rural Children in the 21st Century," Harvard China Review (Spring) 2002: 8-14.
51. The concept of social capital has gained increasing attention in recent decades. See the following important work: J. S. Coleman, "Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital," American Journal of Sociology 94 (1988): S95-S120;
52. Nan Lin, A Theory of Social Structure and Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001);
53. A. Portes, "Social Capital: Its Origins and Applications in Modern Sociology," Annual Review of Sociology 24 (1998): 1-24;
54. R. Putnam, "The Prosperous Community," American Prospect 4, no. 13 (1993).
55. See the case studies of two private village schools established as a result of the collective mobilization of villagers, in Heidi Ross and Jing Lin, "Social Capital and Chinese School Communities" (unpublished manuscript, Educational Studies Department, Colgate University, Hamilton, NY, 2002).
56. Nan Lin, "Building a Network Theory of Social Capital," in Social Capital: Theory and Research, ed. Nan Lin, K. S. Cook, and R. S. Burt (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 2001), 12.
57. Now schools must rely on the county government for finances and the recruitment of teachers; see n. 22.
58. Richard M. Ingersoll, "Teacher Turnover and Teacher Shortages"; and Perie, Baker, and Whitener, Job Satisfaction among America's Teachers.
59. Schlechty and Vance, "Recruitment, Selection, and Retention."
60. Xu, "Shichang jingji yujiaoshi liudong," 307.
61. For research about the relationship between teacher satisfaction and remuneration in China, see also Chen, "Zhongxue jiaoshi gongzuo manyigan";
62. Zhang and Wu, "Xiaozhang lingdao xingwei";
63. Wang, "Chuzhong jiaoshi gongzuo manyidu";
64. Feng, "Jiaoshi gongzuo manyi";
65. Zhu Jirong and Yang Jiping, "Xiaoxue jiaoshi gongzuo manyidu de diaocha yanjiu" [Primary school teachers' level of job satisfaction], Jiaoyu lilun yu shijian 24, no. 1 (2004): 63-64;
66. and Liu, "Yingxiang jingji bu fada diqu zhongxiaoxue."
67. From Gansu Survey of Children and Families qualitative component (teacher interview no. Liu09T, line 189), conducted March 2002. Ten teacher in-depth interviews were collected in rural primary schools as a supplement to the in-depth interviews of 33 mothers and 33 children.
68. There are two primary school systems in China - the 6-year system and the 5-year system. Most of the Chinese primary and secondary schools follow the "six-three-three" educational system - 6 years of primary school education, 3 years of junior secondary school education, and 3 years of senior secondary school education. In many rural localities, schools have adopted the "five-four-three" or "five-three-three" system that was intended to better fit the needs of the local employment market by allowing students to enter vocational training earlier, after 5 years of primary education. See Xiufang Wang, Education in China since 1976 (Jefferson, NC: MacFarland, 2003), 143.
69. Paine, "Making Schools Modern," 213.
70. See Du, "Jiaoshi gongzuo manyidu ji qi tigao duice";
71. Chen, "Zhongxue jiaoshi gongzuo manyigan";
72. Feng, "Jiaoshi gongzuo manyi";
73. and He and Xuan, "Jiaoshi gongzuo manyidu."
74. Gansu Survey of Children and Families qualitative component (teacher interview no. Liu06T, line 125).
75. Susan J. Rosenholtz, "Effective Schools: Interpreting the Evidence," American Journal of Education 93, no. 3 (1985): 352-88.
76. Wang, Education in China since 1976, 118-19.
77. Lynn Paine, "Challenges in Reforming Professional Development" (unpublished manuscript, College of Education, Michigan State University, East Lansing, 2008), present a moving comparison of the availability of opportunities for professional development experienced by a minban teacher in a remote teaching point school in Inner Mongolia and those experienced by a middle school math teacher in Shanghai. For additional information regarding minban teachers, see n. 55.
78. From the Gansu Survey of Children and Families qualitative component (teacher interview no. Liu09T, line 191). Teachers in Dan Lortie's classic study, Schoolteacher (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), expressed this same sense of isolation from adult society. One of the teachers he interviewed said, "I just think you sort of stagnate in a way. You could stagnate more if you wanted to let it happen, if you did not read etc., but I would just like to give and take with adults once in a while . . . and be talking to someone in my same age bracket," 98.
79. Ingersoll, "Teacher Turnover and Teacher Shortages";
80. Valerie E. Lee, Robert F. Dedrick, and Julia B. Smith, "The Effect of Social Organization of Schools on Teachers' Efficacy and Satisfaction," Sociology of Education 64 (1991): 190-208;
81. J. W. Little, "Norms of Collegiality and Experimentation: Workplace Conditions of School Success," American Educational Research Journal 19, no. 3 (1982): 325-40;
82. Rosenholtz, "Effective Schools," and Teachers' Workplace: The Social Organization of Schools (New York: Longman, 1989). Wang Zuli also found that teacher satisfaction was positively related to the extent to which teachers had the perception that their colleagues helped each other and took care of each other.
83. Richard M. Ingersoll, The Status of Teaching as a Profession: 1990-1991, report of the U.S. Department of Education (Washington, DC: National Center for Educational Statistics, 1997) and "Teacher Turnover and Teacher Shortages";
84. Rosenholtz, "Effective Schools."
85. See Lynn Paine, "Teaching and Modernization in Contemporary China," in Education and Modernization: The Chinese Experience, ed. R. Hayhoe (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1992). She argues that the induction process through the jiaoyanzu inhibits teacher innovation and creativity (i.e., teacher autonomy) due to the value it assigns to seniority and the dominance of textual knowledge. On the other hand, it is likely that teachers in Chinese elementary schools experience both substantial administrative support and also collegial cohesion through the activities of the jiaoyanzu.
86. See, e.g., Ronit Bogler, "The Influence of Leadership Style on Teacher Job Satisfaction," Educational Administration Quarterly 37, no. 5 (2001): 662-83;
87. and Zhang and Wu, "Xiaozhang lingdao xingwei."
88. Zhou, "Xuexiao zuzhi qifen."
89. State Education Commission, Zhongguo jiaoyu tongji nianjian - 2001 [Educational Statistics Yearbook of China - 2001] (Beijing: Department of Planning and Construction, 2001), 94.
90. Zhongguo Jiaoyu Tongji Nianjian - 2001 [Educational Statistics Yearbook of China - 2001] Ibid.
91. Zhongguo Jiaoyu Tongji Nianjian - 2001 [Educational Statistics Yearbook of China - 2001] Ibid.
92. Ingersoll, "Teacher Turnover and Teacher Shortages";
93. Richard J. Murnane, "Understanding Teacher Attrition," Harvard Educational Review 57, no. 2 (1987): 177-82;
94. Perie, Baker, and Whitener. Job Satisfaction among America's Teachers:,
95. Zhu and Yang, "Xiaoxue jiaoshi gongzuo manyidu";
96. Feng, "Jiaoshi gongzuo manyi";
97. and Wang, "Chuzhong jiaoshi gongzuo manyidu."
98. Chapman and Lowther, "Teachers' Satisfaction with Teaching";
99. and Ma and MacMillan, "Influences of Workplace Conditions."
100. Linda Darling-Hammond, Beyond the Commission Reports: The Coming Crisis in Teaching (Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corp., 1984);
101. Phillip Schlechty and Victor Vance, "Do Academically Able Teachers Leave Education? The North Carolina Case," Phi Delta Kappan (1981);
102. Xu, "Shichang jingji yu jiaoshi liudong," 305;
103. Wang, "Chuzhong jiaoshi gongzuo manyidu."
104. Lortie, Schoolteacher, 95-96.
105. During the current wave of educational expansion that has come about as a result of the Nine Years of Compulsory Education Law, the daike teachers play the same role that the minban teachers played during the time of the Cultural Revolution. During the Cultural Revolution, there was great expansion in rural education as part of the goal of achieving radical social equity. In order to fill the need for teachers during this period of expansion, junior middle school graduates from the village were hired as minban teachers to teach in the village schools. They did not receive the regular gongban teacher's salary but worked for work points and a small cash subsidy. See Joel Andreas, "Leveling the Little Pagoda: The Impact of College Examinations, and Their Elimination, on Rural Education in China," Comparative Education Review 48, no. 1 (2004): 19. There are still a small proportion of minban teachers teaching in village schools. However, in the past decade the majority of these teachers have been gradually upgraded into gongban teachers.
106. State Education Commission, Zhongguo jiaayu, 94.
107. Su, "Pinkun diqu jichu jiaoyu," 374.
108. See Wang, Education in China since 1976, 117.
109. Ma and MacMillan, "Influences of Workplace Conditions."
110. Gansu Survey of Children and Families qualitative component (teacher interview no. Cai05T, line 147).
111. The questionnaires allowed us to collect a variety of measures related to community and school environment and teacher characteristics. Village leaders answered questions that included questions about village income, the village labor force, various aspects of village resources, distance to the nearest township and county, village education indicators, ethnic composition of the village, access to communication facilities and transportation, cultural facilities in the village, and health facilities. Principal questionnaires collected data including information about school type, length of school day, number of classes, factors determining whether or not a child attends school, information about the teachers and the students in the school, background characteristics of the principal, physical characteristics of the school, and school finances. Teacher questions included those about their place of origin, education level, salary and working conditions, teaching experience, time allocation, certification, rank, job satisfaction, level of participation in professional development activities, and about students.
112. For more details about the Gansu Survey of Children and Families, including access to copies of the questionnaire instruments used, please visit our Web site at http://www.ssc.upenn.edu/china/gscf/mainGscf.htm.
113. Government policy at the turn of the millennium seeks to redress this inequality through the various poverty alleviation measures of the Develop the West campaign, which include increasing central government investment in infrastructure, environmental protection, and resource development in these regions. See Information Office of the State Council, "The Development Oriented Poverty Reduction Program for Rural China" (October 2001, Beijing; cited August 22, 2004), available at http://www.china.org.cn/e-white/fp1015/.
114. UNESCAP, Population and Family Planning in China by Province: Gansu Province (Bangkok: UNES-CAP; cited July 22, 2003), available at http://www.unescap.org/pop/database/chinadata/gansu.htm.
115. World Bank, China: Overcoming Rural Poverty (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2000).
116. Emily Hannum and Meiyan Wang, "Geography and Educational Inequality in China" (paper presented at the 2004 annual meeting of the Chinese Economists Society, Atlanta, July 30-31).
117. One teacher that we spoke to had this comment about his dissatisfaction with his job as a teacher: "The thing that makes me most dissatisfied is the fact that people who are in administration are not educators and they are the ones who lead the educators (waihang lingdao neihang), sometimes it is impossible to bear (laughs) . . . some of the people at the town and county levels don't know anything related to education but they come here and give directives and completely miss the point. . . education should be managed by the educators"; Gansu Survey of Children and Families qualitative component (teacher interview no. Lu07T, line 226).
118. There has been rapid growth of the nonfarm sector in the postreform era with the development of township and village enterprises. At the national level, employment in these enterprises grew from accounting for 7 percent of the total rural employment in 1978 to accounting for 29 percent in 1997. Shenggen Fan, Linxiu Zhang, and Xiaobo Zhang, Growth, Inequality, and Poverty in Rural China: The Role of Public Investments (Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute, 2002). The proportion of the village labor force employed in village enterprises in our sample was very low, with an average of 5 percent. About 32 percent of the village leaders reported that there were no villagers employed in enterprises located in the village. In communities where they exist, township and village enterprises have contributed greatly to the increase in the average income of rural dwellers and the available support for schooling.
119. According to the 2000 census, 14.34 percent of the population of Gansu was illiterate; illiteracy rates for Gansu are higher than for China as a whole. Ibid.; and UNSTAT, United Nations Statistics Division: Statistics on Illiteracy (Geneva: UNSTAT; cited July 22, 2003), available from http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/social/illiteracy.htm.
120. As has been pointed out by an anonymous reviewer, the number of times that the village leader and principal meet may not be as important as the quality of the interaction between the village leader and the principal when they meet. From our fieldwork in rural China, it appears that, in many villages, village leaders and principals are in frequent contact. For the purposes of our model, we assume that less frequent meetings mean that the relationship is strained or that the village leadership is not very involved in the school.
121. Unfortunately, our data do not tell us if the school is a central primary school or not.
122. Sources of this money include government funding, village funding, school budget, individual contributions, and money obtained from Project Hope or other social organizations.
123. Another demographic variable of interest is teacher ethnicity. There are 11 major ethnic minority groups living in Gansu Province, most notably Mongolian and Hui. However, less than 3 percent of the teachers in our sample belong to an ethnic minority group, therefore this variable was not included our models.
124. There is also a group of teachers who graduated from middle school and later bypassed high school graduation and acquired college-level (dazhuan) certification, usually by correspondence course. Due to data limitations, this level of education is counted in our measure as equivalent to high school graduation.
125. We use the command "xtlogit" in STATA, which allows us to do random effects analysis, clustering teachers at the level of the school. Although a three-level model with schools nested within communities would make sense conceptually, the small number of villages containing more than one school makes this strategy untenable.
126. β - 1), where β= the coefficient for the particular variable, x.
127. For a review of this literature, see Claudia Buchmann and Emily Hannum, "Education and Stratification in Developing Countries: A Review of Theories and Research," Annual Review of Sociology 27 (2001): 77-102.
128. Farrell and Oliveira, Teachers in Developing Countries.
129. Rodgers-Jenkinson and Chapman, "Job Satisfaction of Jamaican Elementary School Teachers."
130. Xu, "Shichang jingji yu jiaoshi liudong," 305, claims that the more economically developed areas in China experience much greater volumes and rates of teacher turnover than the less economically developed regions.
131. Ross and Lin, "Social Capital and Chinese School Communities." Additional bivariate analysis of our indicators by whether or not a teacher is certified reveals that daike teachers are significantly more likely to work in smaller, more remote, and poorer villages. They are significantly more likely to be young, unmarried, and female; to have a level of education that is middle school or below; to be from the same village; and to also engage in farm work. They are significantly more likely to teach in incomplete schools and in schools where the conditions are poorer and where there are fewer opportunities for professional development and in-service training. Finally, they are significantly more likely to work for lower salaries but, interestingly, they are also significantly more likely to receive these lower salaries on time.
132. Su, "Pinkun diqu jichu jiaoyu," 374.