An Examination of School Leadership Types and Their Effect on Teacher Turnover Intentions: Evidence from TALIS

Teacher turnover due to school transitions disrupts stability and performance globally. This study examines how instructional and distributed leadership relate to teachers’ intentions to change schools using 2013 and 2018 TALIS survey data from 250,000 educators across 48 systems. Multilevel modeling showed distributed leadership negatively correlated with turnover intentions, while instructional leadership had no significant effect. However, country-specific analyses revealed no consistent patterns, underscoring context dependence. These findings highlight the nuanced role of leadership in retention, emphasizing the need for comparative research on cultural moderators to inform localized retention strategies worldwide.