UNICEF Mongolia - Teachers College Columbia University

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
three types of schools: city schools, aimag-center schools (province-center schools), and soum-center
schools (district-center schools). The data collecon instruments were piloted in April, and the main
study was carried out from late April unl mid-June. Two schools (Kheni aimag and Ulaanbaatar) could
not be visited due to bad ming (e.g. during the absence of the principal or during the exam period), so
it was decided not to include those two schools in the database. As a result, the database includes 28
schools: nine city schools (Ulaanbaatar, Erdenet), eight aimag-center schools, and eleven soum-center
schools.
We interviewed all available educaon managers of the 28 schools. Typically, large schools have an
educaon manager for the primary grades and another for the lower and upper secondary grades.
Extremely large schools further divide educaon management by lower and upper secondary schools
and/or by subject departments. There were in total 35 educaon managers who were available for an
interview at the day of the visit. In schools that employ more than one educaon manager, we interviewed
all educaon managers who were available on the day of the visit.
In each school we requested to interview five teachers using purposeful sampling. Thus, we asked
the principal or the educaon manager to help us schedule interviews with two young teachers, two
old teachers, and one teacher in the medium age range. In some cases, the teachers filled out the
quesonnaires on their own, and in a few cases, we conducted in-depth interviews with the teachers
using the same quesonnaire/interview guide. Aer the visit to the first four schools in Kheni aimag
and the first two schools in Ulaanbaatar, we redesigned a few of the items in the teacher quesonnaire
by replacing open-ended quesons with closed-ended quesons. In total, 123 teacher quesonnaires
were entered into an SPSS database. Those quesonnaires that were based on the first version (with a
greater proporon of open-ended quesons) were not entered into the SPSS database, but they were
used nevertheless for analysis and interpretaon.
In four of the five aimags, we were also able to interview the directors or deputy-directors of the
Educaon and Culture Departments. We also met with two representaves of the Capital City Educaon
Department. The map (see Figure 4) with the research sites is presented on the following page. Also, the
two standardized quesonnaires for our interviews with teachers and educaon managers are listed in
Appendices 1 and 2.
1
2
3
4
5
6
TEACHERS IN MONGOLIA: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY ON RECRUITMENT INTO TEACHING,
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT, AND RETENTION OF TEACHERS
25