“I Hire for Heart”: The Administrator as an Ecological Keystone for Rural STEM Teacher Retention

• In Event: AERA Research in Progress Roundtable Session Two
  In Invited Roundtable: Research-in-Progress RT007 (Thursday)

Abstract

This study investigates how rural school administrators retain STEM teachers by developing the Ecological Keystone Model, which frames leaders as central integrative forces whose actions stabilize the entire school ecosystem. Through a qualitative multiple-case study of two US rural districts, findings show administrators practice ecological stewardship by engineering supportive professional habitats, constructing adaptive niches, and triggering positive cascades across individual, interpersonal, organizational, community, and policy domains. The study offers two key contributions: it advances a novel agentic theory of leadership for high need contexts, and it demonstrates the context dependency of ecological retention models. This research shows that community and policy realms are critical sites of leadership action in US rural schools, with vital implications for theory and practice.

Author

• Emmanuel Dwamena, University of Connecticut