The Divergence in Demographic Factors of Technical and Vocational Education (TVE) Teacher Commitment

Teacher commitment is needed for the development and sustainability of the national education system. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to determine the level of TVE teachers’ commitme nt and to differentiate it based on gender, marital status, and level of education. Plus, the study also identifies the relationship of TVE teachers’ commitment with the selected demographic factor. The sample included 130 secondary school TVE teachers. Gender, marital status, age, years of service, and level of education were the demographic factors that this study focused on. For teacher commitment, the instrument used is a 16-item of 5-point Likert scale Teacher Commitment Scale with four dimensions. Respondents filled out an online survey using a Google Form. The data were analyzed by following descriptive and inferential statistics with SPSS version 25. The result showed that TVE teacher commitment is at a high level and there is no difference in TVE teacher commitment with gender, marital status, and level of education. However, there is a weak and significant relationship between TVE teacher commitment and marital status. As a result of the study, the researcher encourages policymakers to take measures to sustain the level of commitment of TVE teachers.


Introduction
The prominence of the technical and vocational fields has gained much attention. In this Industrial Revolution 4.0 era, the Government takes concrete steps by implementing a new development plan. Teacher commitment is impacted by the struggle of teachers in coping with changes (Billy & Taat, 2020). Colquitt et al (2015) stated commitment and job performance as primary individual outcomes that highly contributed to the organizational achievement. Teacher commitment has been identified as one of the critical factors to determine the future success of education and schools (Luxmi & Yadav, 2011). Moreover, there is a direct relationship between commitment and job performance (Cohen, 2000). Descriptively, prior studies determined teacher commitment is either high level (Mannan & Sharma, 2017;Billy & Taat, 2020) or low level (Lestari & Rahmawati, 2020;Jusoh et al., 2020;Zakaria & Abdul Kadir, 2016). Despite being at a high level, teachers have difficulty adapting to the teaching profession (Lestari & Rahmawati, 2020). As a result, studies on teacher commitment and the factors that affect it are encouraged. Teacher commitment is affected by changes in the educational system, particularly the introduction of new curricula. Teachers' commitment is critical in ensuring that students develop into the Ministry of Education's ideal students (Billy & Taat, 2020). Introduction to a curriculum replacing a 28 -year -the old curriculum is not an easy process. This is because teachers have a great deal of responsibility to ensure that they are always ready to lead change in the classroom by emphasizing professional productivity, adhering to modernization currents, pursuing new technologies, being brave, willing to try new things, innovative, diligent, trustworthy, skilled, and ready to learn ( Som & Ali, 2011). Sahaat and Nasri (2020) discovered that TVE teachers had a modest degree of curricular knowledge since they do not understand the new curriculum's content. Because the policymakers were more inclined and focused on implementation from the ministry's standpoint, the degree of knowledge and implementation of the new curriculum was superficial, incoherent, and fragmented (Senin, 2018). This issue creates a gap for more research into teacher commitment, particularly among TVE teachers.

Research Objectives
The purpose of this study are 1. To determine the level of TVE teachers' commitment.

2.
To differentiate the level of TVE teachers' commitment based on gender, marital status and the level of education. 3. To analyse the relationship between TVE teachers' commitment and selected demographic factor.

Literature Review
The idea of organizational commitment can be applied to describe teacher commitment by considering the nature work of teacher within an organization, represents by education system and school administration (Crosswell & Elliott, 2004;Crosswell & Teach, 2006). Attitudinal commitment and behavioral commitment are part of the fundamental definition of commitment. The idea of attitude commitment is an individual's set of thoughts is aimed at equating his or her personal beliefs and aims with the values and goals of the organisation (Firestone & Pennell, 1993;Armstrong, 2010;Mowday et al., 1982). Behavioral commitment, on the other hand, entails actions taken by individuals in order to feel attached to the organization (Colquitt et al., 2015;Mowday et al., 1982). Mowday et al (1979;1982) has combined these two commitments, attitudinal commitment and behavioural commitment, to define commitment. Ultimately, organisational commitment is defined as an individual's active involvement in the organisation and willingness to contribute to its success (Mowday et al., 1979;1982). Organizational commitment, according to Colquitt et al (2015), is an individual's personal desire to remain as a part of the organisation. When compared to organizational commitment, the dimensions of teacher commitment are described as having differences. Previous studies have confirmed that the teacher commitment is multidimensional (Cohen, 2000;Firestone & Rosenblum, 1988;Somech & Bogler, 2002;Thien et al., 2014). The concept is similar to, but evolved from, the idea of organisational commitment Kanter, 1974;Mowday et al., 1979;1982, Meyer & Ellen, 19911997). Kanter (1974) lists three types of commitments which are control commitment, cohesive commitment and continuance commitment. Whereas, Meyer and Ellen (1991;1997) uses the term component or dimension, stating that organizational commitment consists of three components of commitment namely affective commitment, continuance commitment and narrative commitment. Refer Diagram 1. This theory is one of the most extensively used underlying conceptions in organizational commitment studies.

Diagram 1
The Three-Component Model (TCM) of organisational commitment theory by Meyer and Ellen (1991;1997) However, referring to the teacher's commitment, there are a variety of commitments that focus on teachers when they work in close interactions with students, schools, core tasks, and professions. Firestone and Rosenblum (1988) have listed three types of teacher commitment namely commitment to teach, commitment to school, and commitment to profession. While, Somech and Bogler (2002) stated two commitments, namely commitment to the organization and commitment to the profession. In short, teacher commitment, according to Thien et al (2014) is categorised into four components: commitment to students, commitment to teaching, commitment to school, and commitment to profession. Thien's component of teacher commitment was chosen for this study because it is more comprehensive, and these aspects were used in the development of their  (2017) discovered that age is a predictor of teacher commitment. This study focuses on investigating differences in teacher commitment based on demographic factors and the relationship between them, in addition to determining the level of teacher commitment. As a consequence, the following is the study's framework:

Diagram 2 Research Framework
Research Methodology This is a cross -sectional survey study. The survey is using a Google Forms-based online questionnaire form. The population of this study included Technical and Vocational Education (TVE) secondary school teachers in Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya, Malaysia (N=210). Using the Cochran formula and proportionate stratified random sampling techniques, the required sample was n=168. Instrument A Teacher Commitment Scale by Thien et al (2014) instrument was applied in this study, which had four dimensions of teacher commitment and 16 items on a five-point Likert scale. The instrument was validated by a panel of experts before the data collection to determine face and content validity. The panels are the lecturers from three local universities that specialize in technical and vocational education. The Cronbach's alpha value for this instrument was determined through a pilot study. This value is used to assess the instrument's reliability. The result of the overall Cronbach's alpha value for this instrument is α=.750. The Cronbach's alpha of greater than.70 is excellent to employ, according to George and Mallery (2019).

Data Collection
The Tailored Design Method with five contacts by Dillman et al (2014) organizes the data collection. After receiving official approval from the department of education and the university to conduct extensive research, data was collected in February of 2022. The first contact was made through email on February 4, 2022, and included an official letter, a letter of support from the department, a QR code, and a link to the questionnaire form. After a week, 11 th February 2022, 33 respondents had responded. The second e-mail was issued as a reminder to the teachers who had not responded. This email was issued to remind respondents to cooperate by outlining the significance of the study in considerable detail. For three weeks in a row, the researchers sent these reminder emails. A formal letter with the QR code was delivered through the postal service as a last resort on 15 th of March, 2022. The survey's deadline was set one week after it was delivered, resulting in a final response rate of 77.4 % (n=130). According to the results, 35 (26.9%) of the TVE teachers who responded were male, while 95 (73.1%) were female. The teachers' ages ranged from 26 to 55, with an average of 37.78 years and a standard deviation of 6.975 years. When it comes to marital status, 102 (78.5%) of teachers are married, 20 (15.4%) are single, and a small number (6.2%) of teachers are separated or divorced. The data analysis found that the average number of years spent teaching is 11.26, with a standard deviation of 7.048. Refer Table 1.

Data Analysis
The data were analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 26. Research objective one was the level of teacher commitment, therefore we reported the means and standard deviations. Research objective two, differentiate teacher commitment based on selected demographic factors (gender, marital status and level of education), was achieved using means, standard deviations, independent samples t-test for comparisons between dichotomous variables, and one way analyses of variance (ANOVA) for comparisons between multichotomous variables. Plus, the relationship between teacher commitment and the selected demographic factors is discovered too by using Pearson-product moment correlation, as stated by research objectives three. The selected demographic factors are age, gender, marital status, years of service and level of education. Before doing inferential analysis, several assumptions must be met, particularly for Pearson-product moment correlation, which requires the data to be normally distributed and no outliers. The normal distribution is checked using skewness and kurtosis values, and the outliers are checked using the boxplot. As the result, the skewness values is -.197 and kurtosis values is -.133, the data is normal distributed as the skewness and kurtosis values is in between +2 and -2. The z-score value for the standard population at the 95% confidence level or a significance level of .05 is +/-1.96, Hair et al (2010) rounded this value to +/-2. Other than that, the Q-Q plot showed the data is normal distributed as the observed value and expected values approaching a straight line. Finally, screening for outliers using a boxplot revealed that there is an extreme number that affects the normality of data. Thus, the respondent was dismissed from the case.

Findings
The first research objective is to determine the level of TVE teacher commitment. Teachers were asked to describe their teacher commitment on a five-point Likert scale, including four dimensions: commitment to students, commitment to teaching, commitment to school, and commitment to profession. Overall, the TVE teachers in this study shown a high level of  (M= 2.71,SP= .543) are at the moderate level. To sum up, teachers constantly ensure that the teaching and learning activities they deliver have a good impact on students. The next objective is to differentiate the level of TVE teacher commitment based on selected demographic factors. The first factor is gender, which is a dichotomous variable that was analyzed using an independent sample t-test. Table 3 shows there were no significant differences between males and females for teacher commitment t(130) = .44, p= .965. Table  4 shows the result of one-way ANOVA in order to compare means of marital status and level of education. There were no statistically significant differences between marital status groups as determined by one- way ANOVA F(2,130), =2.925, p =0.57. Similarly, there were no statistical differences in TVE teacher commitment across the four levels of education F(2, 130),= .191, p=.826. The third research objective was to see if there was a relationship between TVE teachers' commitment and a specific demographic factor. To describe the relationship, a Pearson product-moment correlation was used (see Table 5). Based on (Cohen, 1988), a low, positive relationship existed between marital status and TVE teacher commitment (r=.208, p=.018). While, no significant relationship existed between gender, age, years if service and level of education and teacher commitment of TVE teachers.

Conclusion, Implication and Recommendations
As a result of this study of TVE teacher in Federal Territories of Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya, Malaysia, this population has been given critical descriptive results and attributes. TVE teachers in this study identified high level of teacher commitment. This finding is consistent with other studies that indicates the same level of teacher commitment (Lestari & Rahmawati, 2020;Jusoh et al., 2020;Mustafa et al., 2021). Despite the high level of teacher commitment, teachers are having trouble transitioning to their roles as professional academics (Lestari & Rahmawati, 2020). According to the dimensions, teachers have high levels of commitment to students and commitment to teaching. This confirms the findings of the Altun (2017); Raman et al (2015) study, which show that teacher commitment has a positive impact on student achievement. As a result, teachers demonstrate a strong commitment to elevating student accomplishment. Luxmi and Yadav (2011) determine that teacher commitment as one of the most critical factors in determining the educational system's success. Like a result, teachers work hard to ensure that the instructional sessions they offer have a positive impact on their students. Based on demographic factors, there were no significant differences in teacher commitment. Nonetheless, only marital status indicated a significant positive relationship with teacher commitment. These findings differ slightly with those of prior studies that showed a relationship between teacher commitment and age (Mannan & Sailesh, 2017;Zakaria & Abdul Kadir, 2016). Thus, this study has proven that another demographic factor, marital status, has a relationship with teacher commitment and therefore should be explored more in the future. This study provides implications for the Ministry of Education (MOE), literature reviews, and TVE teachers. Teachers comply with the obligation of implementing the national education policy, which is carried out by MOE. A committed teacher will be a great asset to MOE. Academically, this study provides an empirical data regarding the TVE teachers' commitment. This streamlines academicians' access to highlight aspects of the literature for use in their research. Ultimately, by analyzing the degree of TVE teachers' commitment throughout the service, this study aids TVE teachers in self-reflection. While a handful of studies regarding teacher commitment, none of them have focused on TVE teachers. When contrasted to other academic teachers, TVE teachers have different scopes of work. As there were no assistants, like science subject teachers, there was an increment in work regardless of workshop management. This extends the working time for TVE teachers beyond the Ministry of Education's guidelines (Shafie et al., 2014). Even though the study encompassed a survey of TVE teachers in Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya, it was a small sample compared to the entire nation, and it cannot be generalized beyond the population of TVE teachers in Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya. In order to improve the generalization of the findings