What Retains Experienced Middle School EFL Teachers Who Work Outside the Public Educational System in Guangzhou, China

This study reports the findings of an investigation into the factors that initially motivate and ultimately retain experienced middle-school EFL teachers working outside the public educational system in Guangzhou.A qualitative approach was adopted and semi-structured interviews were conducted on six deliberately selected in-service teachers.The findings suggest that participants entered the teaching profession for both extrinsic and intrinsic (altruistic) reasons with a wide variety of motives mentioned, such as seeing teaching as a backup job, positive influence of former teachers, perceived teaching abilities, the subject of English, time for family, and job security.However, their job commitment seems to be generally enhanced by intrinsic factors like recognition of the significance of working as a teacher and the sense of achievement achieved during teaching even though hygiene factors like salary, workload, leadership, and lack of support mainly serve as unsatisfactory factors.At the same time, teacher's morale is affected by interpersonal relationship, institutional culture, transfer to new institution, and change in perceived justice and life stage, as is suggested by Hagedorn (2000).