Mentoring first-year teachers has become a standard induction practice in most public school systems. To enhance this practice, in 2005 the Florida Bandmasters Association established a mentoring committee to oversee district sponsored mentoring programs. Unfortunately, since that time, mentoring among secondary band directors in the state of Florida has not made much progress. The FBA program did not have guidelines for the mentor or mentee, or a system of evaluation to monitor or assess the benefits and quality of the program. This study used a phenomenographic lens and case study approach to view the lived experiences of mentors and protégés in the Florida Bandmasters Association. Suggestions and guidelines are also offered to improve the quality of mentoring among mentors and novice directors. The comprehensive goal of this study was to illuminate issues, practices, and relationships in mentoring among secondary band directors. The study specifically explored: In what ways do mentors and protégés describe their lived experience and perceived roles in mentor-protégé pairings? In what ways do mentors and protégés value mentoring as a component of a novice director's induction into the music education profession? How do mentors and protégés perceive and describe the collective mentoring relationship? This study adds to the evidence on effective mentoring and effective mentors. Mentoring among secondary band directors in the state of Florida is, at the very least, moderately effective. However, moderately effective mentors will not be the transformational leaders that can prepare novice music educators for success in the future. The Florida Bandmasters Association must take a comprehensive look at the needs of its novice educators and the needs of the career educators expected to guide them.

This qualitative study analyzes a professional development course and its associated influence on the induction of a beginning mathematics teacher from a sociocultural perspective. Specifically, it examines whether a specific high school mathematics professional development course formed a community of practice through the elements of mutual engagement, joint enterprise, and shared repertoire. A community of practice is an inherently sociocultural framework. The results show how each element was present in the professional development, indicating that a community of practice had formed. Using those three elements of community of practice, the study further analyzes the induction of one first-year teacher, Sarah, who was a participant in the community of practice. Sarah's induction is framed as consisting of her conformance to the school mathematics department accepted by both her colleagues and herself, as well as her transformation of the system. The results of the study demonstrate how each element of the community of practice influences each aspect of Sarah's induction into the mathematics department at her school.

The purpose of this study was to examine teacher induction strategies and effectiveness at the school level, specifically focusing on how the principal designed and implemented induction activities. It also investigated if the following factors influenced teacher retention: (a) number of instructional staff members, (b) number of first-year teachers, (c) number of second-year teachers, (d) number of third-year teachers, (e) principal's gender, (f) principal's age, (g) principal's highest degree earned, (h) principal's total years in education, (i) principal's years in an instructional position, (j) principal's administrative experience, (k) year the school opened, (l) student enrollment, and (m) free and reduced lunch percentages. Common patterns and trends in the data were analyzed to reveal differences between schools with high teacher retention and schools with low teacher retention. All principals of elementary schools in Hillsborough County Public Schools, Florida and Orange County Public Schools, Florida were invited to participate in the study. Data were collected through a researcher created, 32-question, online questionnaire. Both quantitative and qualitative data were gathered. A total of 147 principals completed the survey. Descriptive statistics were used to report the findings and recommend various areas in need of further study. Analyses of these data found that induction activities that were cited in literature as important were being implemented in schools. These induction activities, organized from most implemented to least implemented, were: (a) formal observation by the principal, (b) mentoring, (c) offer school-level professional development, (d) provide an open door policy, (e) visit classrooms of new teachers often, (f) final (end of year) assessment conferences, (g) provide common planning time for grade levels, (h) encourage district level professional development, (i) give time to observe veteran teachers, (j) involve new teachers in decision making, (k) mid-year assessment conference, (l) provide positive feedback for effective practice, (m) preliminary assessment conference, (n) team building activities, (o) allow new teachers to teach same grade level for at least two consecutive years, (p) offer in-service targeting school policies and procedures, (q) reduce number of students with discipline issues when assigning students to new teachers, (r) provide common planning time with mentor, (s) implement professional reading book club (t) reduce workload of new teachers, and (u) certification exams study group. Data also revealed that schools with high teacher retention tended to be older schools, smaller schools, and schools with fewer percentages of students who received free and reduced lunch. When compared to principals in low retention schools, the principals in high retention schools tended to have more teaching experience, were assigned to their present school for several years, and were older. High retention schools showed significantly less teacher migration and attrition than low retention schools. Recommendations based on this study include investigating how school culture relates to teacher retention and examining teacher migration in more detail. Research is needed to determine how mobility of a school district, new construction, rezoning, allocation cuts, and the reappointment process for teachers affects teacher migration rates of schools. In addition, further study could be done to target specific induction components to determine how to make them effective at the school level. Mentoring, team-building activities, and scheduling are components of induction that need further study.

No description available.

The literature shows that up to 50% of teachers will leave the profession within their first 5 years of teaching (Saka, Southerland, Kittleson, & Hutner, 2013). Although reasons for departure vary, Johnson and Kardos (2005) found schools with high-poverty and high-minority students display excessive rates of teacher turnover. Teacher induction programs were established to assist beginning teachers as they transition into their new professional career in an attempt to increase retention rates. This research aimed to explore beginning teachers from high need schools’ experiences with university-based PLC induction. A total of 23 teachers participated in the induction programs during the 2015 - 2016 academic year. This research provides findings from three different data sources: interview transcripts, surveys, and focus group transcripts. Data was collected to understand beginning teachers’ experience with induction, the types of support offered by the programs, their intentions to remain at their school, and their attitudes towards the method of program delivery. Findings indicate that the majority of the teachers had positive experiences with the two induction programs. Mostly, the teachers felt that induction provided emotional and personal support. According to the novice teachers, administrative support had the largest influence on their intentions to stay or leave their high need schools. As a result, the teachers provided mixed results as to induction’s impact on their decision to stay or leave their current school. Finally, the majority of teachers prefer in-person models to virtual models although there were advantages and disadvantages to both types of programs.

Thesis advisor: Elizabeth Twomey / New teachers arrive to our nation's schools with a range of educational preparation and professional experience. Schools endeavor to alleviate these differences, build professional capacity, and guarantee the efficacy of new teachers (thus more quickly improving educational quality for children) most frequently through induction programs. Researchers identify mentoring as the most common means of inducting new teachers. The school reform movement and related law have influenced mentoring frequency, goals, and practices, as have recent advances in understanding how adults learn. With the number of new teachers expected in both public and independent schools within the current decade, the intense pressure of reform mandates, and public expectations on teacher quality, the effectiveness of new teacher induction and mentoring programs is paramount. Likewise, as the nation increases in its overall diversity, how mentoring programs address the race and ethnicity of new teachers and mentors, particularly when the vast majority of veteran mentor teachers for the near future will be White, is also critical to program success. This study examined the effect of a newly implemented induction and mentoring program on a cohort of new teachers during their first year of service in an independent school. The school had a strategic initiative to diversify its faculty. Consequently, an essential element of the study was to investigate the experience of new teachers of color who were involved in cross-race mentor-new teacher relationships in contrast to the experience of their White counterparts involved in the same program for the same academic year. An overview of the study, a review of relevant literature, the study's design, results, and discussion of findings and their implications are presented. / Thesis (EdD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Administration and Higher Education.

The researcher examined beginning teacher induction programs in large and small districts in Tennessee for the 1997-1998 school year. Types of induction, formal and informal, were examined. The study looked at the teacher attitudes of job satisfaction, job adjustment, and socialization into the profession of teaching. The research design included five questions with two hypotheses used for testing differences between teacher attitudes in large and small systems. Beginning first-year teachers were surveyed and asked to rate their induction program as to best practices. Teachers rated the occurrence of activities in seven areas and how supportive activities were in their roles as beginning teachers. The questions were tested and statistically analyzed using chi-square and analysis of variance procedures. No differences were found in the occurrence of induction activities in large and small systems. No differences were found in how supportive an event was in large and small systems. A difference was found in job adjustment between large and small systems, but not in job satisfaction or socialization into the profession. Recommendations for further research were made to augment the study.

Despite the enduring relative popularity of teaching as a career, the research literature on teacher preparation suggests that there is growing concern about the state of the field. With each passing year, the demographic realities within k-12 classrooms bring new challenges for the teacher preparation enterprise. Shortages in high need communities and increasing numbers of provisionally certified (or uncertified) teachers represent two areas of concern. Notwithstanding the extraordinarily increasing cultural and linguistic diversity now found among the student population, the teacher population has failed to diversify in kind. The number of new teachers who are ill-prepared to respond to this "demographic imperative" is a glaring cause for concern. This study represents the author's attempt to contribute to this important discourse by studying a cohort of individuals who recently completed a teacher preparation program and started to apply what they learned in their first professional teaching position. The purpose of this research study is twofold. First, the researcher uses phenomenological research methods to investigate the first-year teaching experience. Through a series of interviews, he explores the participants' expectations, experiences, and reflections in order to distill the essence of the phenomenon. Second, the researcher examines the connections between the culturally responsive pedagogical competencies developed during teacher preparation and their attempts to implement the practices in their new classrooms. Analysis of the data showed that the essence of the first-year teaching experience featured the influence of the following: relationships with students, lessons learned through experience, importance of support and mentorship, and the negotiation of challenges. Analysis of their attempts to apply culturally responsive pedagogy revealed their intentions to implement programs and principles; however these were often compromised while managing other realities of the first year experience. The study concludes with a discussion of implications for practice and possibilities for future research.

The purpose of this study was to describe the perceptions of former beginning agriscience teachers and to explore the relationships between these perceptions, the characteristics of former beginning agriscience teachers, work satisfaction, work-life balance, and their reasons for leaving the profession. Information was gathered from former secondary agriscience teachers across Texas who left the profession during the 2001-2 through 2005-6 academic years. A survey instrument was created specifically for this study through which information about perceived work satisfaction, work-life balance, effect of work-life on attrition, and demographic characteristics of the former beginning agriscience teachers was gathered. Data were analyzed using descriptive and correlational statistics. For this population, work satisfaction, work-life balance, and teacher attrition were not found to differentiate among demographic and career characteristics: age, gender, ethnicity, employment, salary, teacher training institution, years of experience, agriscience department size, hours on the job, or FFA area association. The results suggested evidence of an inverse relationship between work satisfaction and beginning agriscience teacher attrition as well as an inverse relationship between work-life balance and agriscience teacher attrition. Nearly half of all respondents reported the wanting of balance between professional work and personal life as their chief reason for leaving the profession. Closely following this reason were the placement of students in agriscience classes who did not choose to be in the elective courses and too much time away from family. Nearly two-thirds of the respondents offered the recommendation to set a maximum student enrollment per class period and to decrease the number of class preparations/course sections taught by beginning teachers. Over half of the respondents made the recommendation to share the load of shows and contests equally among teachers and to increase the number of teachers in the agriscience department. To improve the preparation and retention of agriscience teachers, two-thirds of the respondents recommended a salary increase. The recommendation following salary and given by nearly half of respondents was to provide mentor teachers. And, one-third of respondents offered the recommendation for more follow-ups from university teacher trainers.

abstract: Facing a teacher shortage in math, science, and language arts secondary courses, a suburban, unified, K-12 district partnered with a university in the southwest to create a program for alternatively certified teachers. This specialized program permitted candidates to teach with an intern certificate while completing university coursework leading to certification. During this timeframe, the researcher-practitioner of this study created an alternative teacher induction program focused on cycles of action research. The model was created to capitalize on the content knowledge and work experience of alternatively certified teachers in order to inspire innovation by offering a district-based induction centering on cycles of action research. In the teachers' third year, each teacher conducted action research projects within the framework of Leader Scholar Communities which were facilitated by mentor teachers from the district with content expertise. This study examines the effects of such a model on teachers' identities and propensity toward transformative behaviors. A mixed methods approach was used to investigate the research questions and to help the researcher gain a broader perspective on the topic. Data were collected through a teacher efficacy survey, questionnaire, focus groups, semi-structured interviews, observations, and electronic data. The results from the study indicated that the participants in the study exhibited signs of professional teaching identity, especially in the constructs of on-going process, relationship between person and context, and teacher agency. Additionally, the participants referenced numerous perspective transformations as a result of participating in cycles of action research within the framework of a Community of Practice framework. Implications from this study include valuing alternatively certified teachers, creating outcome-based teacher induction programs, and replicating the T3IP model to include professional development opportunities beyond this unique context. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ed.D. Educational Leadership and Policy Studies 2011