Although every state in the United States is experiencing a shortage of special education teachers, projections indicate that rural communities are disproportionally impacted (Levin et al., 2015). Despite professional development being widely identified in the literature as a possible method for improving teacher quality and readiness in rural schools, and thereby preventing teacher attrition, few studies have empirically examined the relationship between special education professional development experiences and attrition in rural schools. This project will test the hypothesis that early-career professional development opportunities for rural special educators are related to job satisfaction and attrition. Data for this study came from the 2017-2018 National Teacher and Principal Survey (NTPS). Extraction of data from the NTPS data set isolated early career special education teachers working in rural communities. A latent class analysis (LCA) was used to identify a teacher typology concerning early career professional development, resulting in a two-class model, 'Greater Access to Professional Development' (Latent Class 1) and 'Less Access to Professional Development' (Latent Class 2). These two classes had similar access to a variety of professional development opportunities; however, those in the Greater Access to Professional Development class had greater access overall. Additional analyses examined whether LCA groups differed on measures of job satisfaction and attrition and found that teachers with greater access to professional development experiences report higher levels of job satisfaction than teachers with less access to professional development opportunities. Implications for these findings are described in detail. / Doctor of Philosophy / Every state in the United States is experiencing a shortage of special education teachers. Rural school districts are disproportionately impacted, meaning they are at greater risk for hiring underqualified special education teachers in an effort to address these shortages. Professional development is one way that school districts can improve teacher quality and readiness. This will help prevent turnover, because teachers will be better prepared to handle the challenges associated with their job. However, it is not clear which professional development opportunities are most impactful in terms of improving job satisfaction and preventing attrition. This project examined the relationship between professional development opportunities of special education teachers working in rural communities, job satisfaction, and attrition using data from a nationally representative data set. Results found that special education teachers fell into two groups, those with 'Greater Access to Professional Development' and those with 'Less Access to Professional Development.' These group had similar access to various professional development opportunities; however, those in the 'Greater Access to Professional Development' group had greater access to professional development overall, and especially on preparing students to take annual assessments and analyzing and interpreting student achievement data. Results also found that teachers in the 'Greater Access to Professional Development' group reported higher levels of job satisfaction. These findings suggest that certain professional development opportunities can result in greater job satisfaction amongst rural special education teachers.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/110866 |
| Date | 22 June 2022 |
| Creators | Albright, Jordan |
| Contributors | Psychology, Scarpa-Friedman, Angela, Williams, Thomas O., Ollendick, Thomas H., Breaux, Rosanna |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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