Teaching, Learning, Policy & Leadership Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2759
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Item THE PRINCIPAL’S ROLE AND IMPACT ON TEACHER ATTRITION IN AN URBAN SCHOOL DISTRICT: THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE VANDERBILT ASSESSMENT OF LEADERSHIP IN EDUCATION (VAL-ED) RATINGS AND TEACHER ATTRITION.(2018) Ashworth, Megan; Richardson, Pat; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The most significant factor that influences student achievement is the quality and commitment of the teachers who are providing rigorous instruction. As efforts to recruit more individuals into the teaching profession have been successful, determining how to keep highly qualified teachers who provide meaningful and effective instruction remains a concern. According to the U.S. Department of Education, teacher attrition is a local, state, and national problem. Principals play a key role in improving the quality of instruction in their schools through their daily instructional leadership behaviors. If teacher attrition across the United States is going to decrease, principals will be one of the key factors to making this a reality. Discovery Education recently developed the Vanderbilt Assessment of Leadership in Education (VAL-ED) tool, which holds the potential to improve academic and social learning for students as well as supporting the teachers who are providing high-quality education. The purpose of this study was to determine whether there is a correlation between learning-centered leadership behaviors (average score measured on the VAL-ED assessment) and the teacher attrition percentages that determine whether teachers remain in a school longer than 5 years. In addition, the researcher wanted to determine whether there was a correlation between the core components of culture of learning and professional behavior as well as connections to external communities and teacher attrition percentages in an urban school district which are both core components within the VAL-ED tool inclusive of the development of a positive school culture which supports teachers. Findings that emerged from the analysis revealed a moderately significant relationship between attrition percentages and overall scores on the VAL-ED assessment and the VAL-ED scores on the core component culture of learning and professional behavior. According to the study, higher overall effectiveness ratings on the VAL-ED tool had moderately significant associations with lower teacher turnover rates, and culture of learning and professional behavior VAL-ED scores had moderately significant associations with lower teacher turnover rates. Last, connections to external communities scores on VAL-ED had associations with lower teacher turnover rates, but the relationship was not significant.Item The Lived Experience of Beginning Teachers Defining their Pedagogical Way of Being(2013) Frank, Nathan; Hultgren, Francine H; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This hermeneutic phenomenological study explores the lived experience of beginning teachers defining their pedagogical way of being. Many beginning teachers have found frustration and disillusionment during their first year in the classroom, leading to high levels of attrition. Those beginning teachers who remain in the classroom may develop a way of being that opposes how they are as an individual and that pulls them further from the students in their care. How do the individuals who experience this phenomenon make meaning of that experience? What insights about the preparation and support of beginning teachers can be drawn from these experiences? This research is conducted in the tradition of hermeneutic phenomenology, grounded in the work of philosophers such as Heidegger (1962), Gadamer (2006/1975), and Merleau-Ponty (1962). Drawing from these philosophers, van Manen (1997) provides a detailed process used to conduct this form of research. This methodology serves to uncover the essences of this phenomenon, eliciting lived experience through hermeneutic conversation. To uncover the nature of the lived experience of beginning teachers defining their pedagogical way of being, six participants were recruited from urban, suburban, and rural secondary public schools in a south central county in Pennsylvania. The phenomenological text from this study not only reiterates the often noted "challenges" inherent in the first year experience, but also identifies a language of beginning. I seek to understand this language by connecting it to the three Buddhist ways of being, which guides my questioning of the "basics" of the beginning teaching experience, offering a new way of being in the flowing language of becoming. The experiences shared by the participants in this study uncovered many insights that may assist those charged with the care of beginning teachers during the periods of pre-service "formation" and in-service "orientation." I suggest the importance of "reflective conversations" to elicit the language of beginning, facilitated by a caring mentor. As the languages of "blockheadedness" and "splitheadedness" emerge, varying supports may be implemented to permit reflection and growth.