Not All Thwarting Is Equal: Distinct Temporal Patterns Linking Teachers' Psychological Needs to Turnover Intention

Teacher turnover intention has become a critical global concern, compromising teachers' psychological well-being, school workforce stability, and student learning outcomes. While psychological need thwarting (PNT) is recognized as a key antecedent of turnover intention, existing research has predominantly treated PNT as a unidimensional construct and overlooked the possibility that turnover intention may reciprocally shape teachers' subsequent need experiences. Integrating self-determination theory and conservation of resources theory, this study employed a two-wave cross-lagged panel model to examine bidirectional associations between the three PNT dimensions and turnover intention among Chinese teachers.

Data were collected from 1,061 teachers at Time 1 and 812 at Time 2 under a design permitting voluntary, wave-specific participation, with 332 teachers participating in both waves (M age = 41.19 years, SD = 9.13; 69.6% female); cross-lagged models controlling for gender and age were estimated using full information maximum likelihood, drawing on all available observations from 1,541 unique participants, with school ownership and school type incorporated into the missing-data model.

An asymmetric temporal pattern emerged: among the three dimensions, only autonomy thwarting predicted subsequent turnover intention (B = 0.09, 95% CI [0.01, 0.17], β = 0.12, p = 0.023), whereas turnover intention predicted later competence thwarting (B = 0.22, 95% CI [0.02, 0.41], β = 0.11, p = 0.031) and relatedness thwarting (B = 0.19, 95% CI [0.01, 0.37], β = 0.13, p = 0.048) but not autonomy thwarting (B = 0.08, 95% CI [-0.07, 0.24], β = 0.06, p = 0.276). Although these cross-lagged effects were small in magnitude, they demonstrated distinct directional patterns across the three needs.

These findings suggest that turnover intention may function not only as an outcome of adverse need experiences but also as an antecedent of subsequent need states. This asymmetric pattern points to potentially relevant intervention targets: autonomy support for teachers who have not yet developed turnover intention, and competence and relatedness support for those already considering leaving.