
All around the world, there has been a shortage of teachers to reach an effective student-teacher ratio, impacting the quality of education. To address this growing concern, SEAMEO INNOTECH began its work to identify motivating factors for teachers to stay in the profession. What started as a study in the Philippines expanded to other countries in Southeast Asia and transformed into the Regional Teacher Motivation Study. The first phase, concluded in 2024, identified three core and five contributing motivating factors influencing teachers’ decisions to remain in the teaching profession. These factors form the Southeast Asian Framework on Teacher Motivation in Staying in the Profession (SEA-TM). The current study, the second phase of the research, aims to examine the different aspects of teacher motivation to stay in the profession based on the SEA-TM. Quantitative data were gathered using a survey derived from the SEA-TM and distributed to ten participating countries: Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Thailand, Timor-Leste, and Vietnam. As the first regional paper, this discussion paper focuses on the results of the descriptive statistics employed to determine teacher respondents’ level of motivation for staying in the profession. The results show that teachers in Southeast Asia are highly motivated. They also generally agreed with statements related to all eight factors that contribute to teacher motivation to stay.

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