<p> The purpose of the current study was to discern what differentiated administrative supports teachers perceived they needed to continue pursuing their teaching careers based on the problem of high teacher attrition confounding educational leadership. The population receiving the survey was all of the 21,174 public school teachers working in a highly populated county in Texas. This cross section of teachers included teachers of both genders and of all of the racial groups from K-12 public schools defined as urban, suburban, and rural. The number of survey responses included in the analysis was 809. When scoring the perceptions of administrative supports the majority of the teachers answered affirmatively that the supports were important. The highest support item score as agree or strongly agree was 99.75% for discipline, while the lowest item score as agree or strongly agree was 84.17% for technology. The mean, or average, administrative supports scale score for all 10 items of the 809 completed surveys was 4.54 out of a possible 5.0, with a standard deviation of .400. For the hypotheses, no significant differences in administrative supports scale scores were found when the questions were analyzed by experience level, type of preparatory training, teachers' age, race, or principal tenure at campus. Statistical differences were found by gender, level of education, and type of school. Male teachers showed less need for administrative supports than their female counterparts. For teachers' highest level of educational attainment, master's degreed teachers perceived support to be more important than their bachelor degreed peers. High school and early childhood teachers both showed a higher need for support, with early childhood teachers demonstrating a slightly higher need for administrative support than their high school counterparts. </p>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PROQUEST/oai:pqdtoai.proquest.com:3687265 |
| Date | 02 April 2015 |
| Creators | Hayenga, Derik J. |
| Publisher | Dallas Baptist University |
| Source Sets | ProQuest.com |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | thesis |
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