Thresholds of persistence: how leadership practices shape teachers’ withdrawal trajectories

Elevated teacher turnover poses enduring challenges internationally, yet how school leadership shapes withdrawal decisions - including whether teachers feel heard or find their voice suppressed - remains empirically underexamined. Through semi-structured interviews with 58 teachers in Scotland who had left teaching or substantially reduced their professional commitments before retirement age, this qualitative study explored how participants understood school leadership's role in their withdrawal trajectories. Drawing on Job Demands-Resources theory, unfolding turnover theory and compassionate leadership frameworks, the analysis traced leadership’s mediating influence between systemic pressures and individual outcomes across three domains: relational trust, teacher development, and working conditions. Leadership practices shaped the pace, mode and emotional tenor of withdrawal, with relational dimensions of leadership emerging as consequential yet largely invisible to current retention monitoring.