The Effect of Teacher Leadership on Retention Plans and Teacher Attitudes among New North Carolina Teachers

• In Event: Roundtable Session 1
  In Roundtable Session: An Investigation of Teacher Retention Plans Among Special Populations Using the 2007-2008 Schools and Staffing Survey

Abstract

Attracting and sustaining highly trained and effective professionals is necessary for the health of schools. Consequently, the high attrition rate of teachers in their first five years is troublesome for schools across the country. This is especially true in North Carolina, where new teacher attrition is higher than the national average. Previous studies suggested that teacher leadership may promote teacher retention. Recognizing first, that teacher attrition presents a significant challenge to schools and second, that leadership opportunities may affect teachers’ intentions to stay or leave, this study investigated the effect of leadership on new teachers’ retention plans and attitudes.

Ingersoll suggested that limited input into school decision-making was associated with higher rates of teachers leaving the profession. This study expands on Ingersoll’s decision-making domain to include the broader concept of teacher leadership. Murphy’s (2005) review of the teacher leadership literature included decision making within the broader leadership realm. Decision-making may contribute to the professionalization of teaching by raising teachers’ sense of empowerment and ownership. Based on this framework, additional benefits of professionalization include empowering teachers to develop ownership over their role as a leader in and out of the classroom and strengthening teachers’ commitment and satisfaction with teaching. Accordingly, this study examined teachers’ formal and informal opportunities to lead and what impact these opportunities had on their intentions to stay.

The overall methodological approach for this study was a causal-comparative, non-experimental design. A causal-comparative design was appropriate since the purpose of the study was to probe the effect that decision-making and leadership engagement had on teachers’ intention to stay in their classroom as well as their attitudes about teaching,. The population of interest for this study was new North Carolina teachers in full-time teaching positions with no more than five years of classroom teaching experience. The sample for this study was taken from the statewide sample of 672 teachers in North Carolina who completed the 2007-09 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS).

A series of correlation analyses were conducted to determine the extent to which variation in intention to stay and teacher attitudes could be predicted by formal and informal leadership opportunities. Results indicated that formal leadership opportunities predicted very little of the variation in teachers’ plans to stay in teaching. This may speak to the limited number of formal leadership roles available to teachers, especially new teachers. It may also call into question the role that formal leadership opportunities play in keeping teachers teaching or improving teacher attitudes about teaching.

Slight, yet positive relationships were found between increased control over classroom decision-making and intentions to stay. These results may lend support for the broader conception of leadership embraced by Barth (2001) and Lambert (2003)that emphasized leadership by all, not just a select few. The analysis suggested that control over selecting teaching techniques was especially important to teachers. This finding supports the notion of teachers as instructional leaders who think critically about how instruction is delivered in their classrooms. A larger sample may provide additional evidence for this finding.

Author

• Lauren Tarabokia Kendall, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill