Norah, an urban voice: [Teaching is not what I expected!] Not at all! I guess I really expected it to be a lot more enjoyable than it has been. I know it has been rough because it is the first year. And it is always going to be rough in your first year. But I never expected it to be like this. I never thought I’d feel so down and so incompetent. It has been very difficult and I think a lot of it didn’t have to happen. A lot of my grief and a lot of my uncertainties about myself as a person, about myself as a teacher, and about the teaching profession—I just don’t think they were necessary…I have always been a go-getter and throughout the I [have] always continued to do my best. But there have been times this year when I felt so small that I couldn’t even scrape myself off the floor. False expectations, shattered dreams, and serious attacks on one’s competence and self-worth— these are the all too common experiences of beginning teachers. Teaching is a demanding and at times debilitating job that requires extraordinary expertise in human relations, tremendous organizational abilities, profound patience, and the wherewithal to makes hundreds of situation-specific decisions over the course of a school day. And, as Norah so vividly illustrates by her comments, the first year of teaching is often an especially trying and even traumatic time for those new to the profession. The difference between a beginning teacher and an experienced one is that the beginner asks, "How am I doing?" and the experienced teacher asks, "How are the children doing?" In Educating Esme: Diary of a Teacher's First Year, Esme Raji Codell reports that her own mentor shared that wisdom with her. Probably most teachers would find that the comparison rings true: The survival priority is no joke for those aspiring to join the ranks. What beginners and career teachers have most in common, however, is care for children. To be an effective and a caring teacher, a new teacher must ask many more questions than "How are the kids and I doing?" during the first years. Among them: How do I get their attention; lead a class discussion; keep, but expand, their interests; discipline fairly; organize a classroom; make curriculum and assessments meaningful; value diversity; build character; use technology; and continue learning as a teacher? The list goes on. It will not do for those who want to be master teachers to put off asking questions that do not begin with the how word; from the very beginning, they must attempt to discover whom, what, and why they teach. Besides offering advice and sympathy (a stapler and an aspirin, as one teacher put it), what can the profession of teaching do to support its newest colleagues? That it is becoming increasingly necessary for the profession to do more for beginners than it has in the past is clear. A baby boomlet combined with a retirement boom will result in a need for 2 million new teachers in the next 10 years. The cost of preparing and recruiting teachers grows higher in light of the statistic that tells us that 50 percent of newcomers will quit within their first five years in the classroom. The public is expressing its concerns, too--concern with unprepared teachers, concern with out-of-field teachers, concern that the best teachers are spread too thin. Teaching is one of the few careers in which the least-experienced members face the greatest challenges and the most responsibilities. The problems that beginners experience are intrinsic to the teaching profession and to the conditions of the school environment (Brock & Grady, 2001; Gordon, 1999). Beginning teachers are making decisions and judgments about themselves in their first-year of teaching. What will these decisions and judgments be if they are not given the opportunities to reflect, both personally and professionally about themselves around the following three concepts: 1) competence, 2) performance, and 3) effectiveness (Debolt, 1992). This research looks at the three beginning teachers as they make their way through the first year of teaching. The voices of the beginning teachers studied will provide eloquent and authentic testimony to the importance and vital nature of teaching and the impact of relationships begun, sustained and renewed along the way.

Teacher attrition is costly for districts, both financially and in terms of student achievement. Districts often address teacher attrition by focusing on recruitment practices or by offering induction support for novice teachers. However, new teachers continue to leave the profession at alarming rates. This qualitative case study provides insight into how new teachers cope with the frustrations and challenges of entry-level teaching. The study examines the entry-level experiences of twelve novice teachers from urban secondary schools, including the perceptions of teaching they developed prior to entry, the aspects of teaching they found most frustrating, how they made sense of what was happening to them, and how they adapted their own behaviors in response to what they experienced. Viewed within a theoretical framework for examining the "newcomer experience" developed by Meryl Reis Louis in 1980, the data suggest that traditional group approaches to supporting novices fail to address the highly individual way in which newcomers "make sense" of teaching as they progress through a series of stages from anticipation through adaptation. From the data, implications may be drawn in terms of "what matters" in the design of support systems for new teachers.

Thesis advisor: Joseph J. Pedulla / This paper describes the literature on teacher attrition as either focusing on the working conditions faced by beginning teachers or highlighting variations in teachers' characteristics as causes for early teacher attrition. This study uses responses to the School and Staffing Survey (SASS) along with the Teacher Follow-Up Survey (TFS) to compare these contrasting views of early teacher attrition. Two logistic regression models were constructed and their relative efficacy in explaining teacher attrition were compared using three statistical techniques; model fit characteristics (e.g. pseudo-R2, Akaike Information Criteria, Bayesian Information Criteria); a comparison of their classification effectiveness, and results from Davidson and MacKinnon's J test (1981). A final model was also constructed using the predictive elements of each of the previous models. Results suggest that the working conditions model better fits the observed data than the teacher characteristics model. The final model highlights the importance of teacher commitment and engagement in the profession in teachers' career decisions. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Research, Measurement, and Evaluation.

Special education teacher attrition has been an ongoing problem for at least 3 decades. This study specifically focused on the attrition of special education teachers in South Carolina. Attrition can have a negative impact on student learning, making it important to identify the causes of attrition among special education teachers to lower attrition in the state and lessen the negative impact on student learning outcomes. The purpose of this quantitative correlational study was to examine attrition whether career satisfaction, perceived administrative support, coping with job-related stress, and attitudes toward students are related to attrition in special education teachers in South Carolina. Bronfenbrenner's ecological theory served as the theoretical framework. In accordance with the study purpose, the research questions for this study assessed the relationship between career satisfaction, perceived administrative support, coping with job-related stress, attitudes toward students, and special education teachers' intent to remain in the field of special education. Data were collected via self-report survey responses from special education teachers from South Carolina and were analyzed thorough use of multinomial logistic regressions. The findings of the multinomial logistic regressions showed that career satisfaction and coping with job-related stress were significant predictors of intent to remain in special education. Perceived administrative support and attitude toward students were not significant predictors of intent to remain in special education. Implications include finding ways to reduce job-related stress for special education teachers. This study contributed to positive social change through the discovery of the reasons why special educators are leaving the field, which could lead to possible ways to alleviate attrition.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between teacher quality variables, student demographic variables, and student performance in order to determine the influence teacher quality variables have on student performance in one large school district. The population for this study included 69 schools during the 2007-2008 school year within one large suburban school district. Included in this study were 47 elementary schools, 14 middle schools, and 8 high schools. In this three-phased study, descriptive correlations were examined, t-tests were conducted comparing each of the variable sets, and partial correlations were conducted in order to determine the strength of associations between teacher quality variables and student performance variables. Findings from this study showed several strong and significant associations. When comparing the highest and lowest quartile of schools based on average years of teaching experience, percentage of within-district transfers, and total teacher mobility, there was a significant difference seen in both the percentage of economically disadvantaged (ED) students and percentage of African American and Hispanic students combined. Further analysis showed a significant difference between the top and bottom quartiles of percentage of ED students and percentage of African American and Hispanic students combined and their performance in both math and reading. Findings showed that teaching experience was negatively associated with student performance in reading and math, however, there was a smaller association in math. Controlling for within-district teacher transfers had a small to medium association between African American and Hispanic students combined and commended performance or meeting standard in math and reading. When controlling for percentages of total teacher mobility (leavers + movers) from campuses, there was a strong negative, partial correlation between percentage of ED students and performance in math (commended only) and reading. Implications for practitioners include the need to improve school leadership, improve working conditions, provide more and better professional support, create incentives to work in challenging schools, improve preparation for work in challenging schools, streamline hiring placement policies, create a coherent set of policies to close the staffing gap, and provide greater funding targeted to student needs.

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Many school divisions throughout the U.S. are having a difficult time retaining teachers (Darling-Hammond, 2010; Ingersoll, R. M., 2004). 'High levels of attrition, estimated to be nearly 8% of the workforce annually, are responsible for the largest share of teacher demand' (Sutcher, Darling-Hammond, and Carver-Thomas, 2016, p. 2). According to Ingersoll and Strong (2011), Ingersoll and Perda (2011), and Skaalvik and Skaalvik (2016), reasons as to why teachers decide to leave the profession or change teaching locations include: job satisfaction, school demographics, student discipline, lack of administrative support, lack of teacher autonomy, and new teacher mentor programs. The purpose of this quantitative study was to identify mentor and mentee teachers' perceptions about the current mentoring program and their recommendations for future revisions that will increase teacher retention. An urban, central Virginia school division was selected for this study. Participants selected for this study have served as a mentor teacher for new teachers hired into the selected division or have recently been hired into the division. The division has approximately 260 full-time teaching professionals. From the beginning of the 2013-14 school year to the conclusion of the 2015-16 school year, 125 teachers were replaced. The attrition rate of the selected division is approximately double the attrition rate in the Commonwealth of Virginia (Pitts, 2017). Mentoring programs appear to be among the prominent approaches to teacher retention (McCann and Johannessen, 2010). The researcher sought to determine perceptions of mentor teachers regarding their suggestions for improvement in the current mentor program as a determining factor in whether teachers decide to remain in their current positions. This study yielded eight findings and six implications. / Ed. D.

Teachers at the local study site continue to leave the elementary school and profession at increasingly high rates creating a teacher shortage. The school staff consists of 33 teachers, with an average of 10 resigning each year. Because of the shortage, state and local school boards, school districts, and school-based administrators share the need to understand this phenomenon. Guided by Herzberg's 2-factor theory, which noted that people are motivated by attributes such as recognition and by Maslow's motivational theory, which refers to human needs and personal beliefs as motivational factors, this study investigated factors that contributed to teacher attrition and retention, as well as strategies used to improve retention of novice teachers. Nine novice teachers employed at the local site participated in e-mail interviews. Participants provided their perception of factors that influenced their decision to remain or stay in the profession. Data were analyzed with an emphasis on seeking emerged themes through the process of open coding. Data analysis revealed a gap in the level of support from mentors and administrators that affected novice teachers' professional growth, as well as their decision to leave or stay in the profession. Participants listed incentives, acknowledgment, and training as the primary strategies for retaining teachers. The findings led to the creation of a professional development program. This study contributes to positive social change by providing educators a deeper understanding of the problem of teacher attrition and by identifying strategies to manage teacher turnover to improve retention efforts.

Thesis advisor: Marilyn Cochran-Smith / Teachers have a powerful impact on student achievement, yet high attrition rates hinder schools in their ability to provide quality instruction. Attrition rates are highest for schools serving low-income, minority students and among small private schools, including Catholic schools. Attrition is especially prevalent among new teachers. Very few studies have focused on the problem of early leaving or the problem of retention in Catholic schools. This study seeks to understand better why public and Catholic school teachers leave teaching early. A mixed methods approach was used. This included 50 in-depth interviews with 15 public and 10 Catholic school teachers who left within the first 5 years. In addition, statistical analyses of public and Catholic school early leavers' responses in the Schools and Staffing and Teacher Follow-Up surveys were used to contextualize and compare the experiences of the 25 teachers interviewed to the larger population of early leavers. This dissertation argues that, to understand why teachers leave early, an approach that examines teachers' entire experiences throughout their short time in the profession is required. A framework informed by sociocultural and commitment theories and prior research on retention and the culture of schools was developed through systematic analysis of the interview and survey data. This analytical framework provides a complex approach for examining the phenomenon of early leaving, which included three aspects: entering commitment, teaching experience, and the decision to leave. Findings suggested that teachers' decisions to leave were influenced by multiple factors within their various contexts. These contexts and factors were constantly changing, making the decision to leave extremely complex. For Catholic school teachers, the decision was even more complicated, influenced not only by the same factors and aspects of early leaving as public school teachers, but also their changing identities as Catholics. Findings also called into question common assumptions about why teachers leave: teachers do not always leave because they are less committed to teaching, or are dissatisfied with teaching or with their salaries. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.