Georgia Southern University Digital Commons@Georgia Southern Electronic Theses and Dissertations Graduate Studies, Jack N. Averitt College of Spring 2018 Novice Teachers' Perception of Mentoring and Teacher Retention Alissa Sasser Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.edu/etd Part of the Education Commons Recommended Citation Sasser, A. Novice Teachers' Perception of Mentoring and Teacher Retention. Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, Ga.
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NOVICE TEACHERS’ PERCEPTION OF MENTORING AND TEACHER RETENTION by ALISSA HANRAHAN SASSER (Under the Direction of Teri Denlea Melton) ABSTRACT Acclimating to the field of education, particularly during the first five years, is significantly challenging for novice teachers. In order to ease the transition into the field with the hopes of supporting retention, novice teachers are usually assigned a mentor. Typically, mentors are veteran teachers who have demonstrated a high level of proficiency as an educator and are assigned to the novice teacher in order to provide technical support in areas such as classroom management and lesson planning, as well to provide social and emotional support to novice teachers. An abundance of research exists to support the effectiveness of mentoring and the impact that it has on retaining novice teachers in the field.
However, little, if any, research exists that specifically indicates the value novice teachers place on the mentoring component of teacher induction programs. Therefore the purpose of this quantitative study was to determine the components of a viable mentoring program that novice teachers perceive as necessary to promoting teacher retention. Findings indicate that novice teachers consider the perceived benefits and outcomes of the program as the most effective component of the program. Therefore, it is evident that novice teachers place value on participating in the mentoring program because they perceive it as being beneficial to their professional practice as an educator.
These findings will be used to support the existing teacher induction program in the district in which the study was employed and the fidelity of its implementation. Based on the findings of the study, the researcher will build on the current teacher induction program by working with district officials to construct a monitoring plan for the teacher induction program, as well as to make revisions or additions to the program for the purpose of promoting teacher retention. INDEX WORDS: Mentoring, Novice teacher, Teacher attrition, Teacher induction, Teacher retention NOVICE TEACHERS’ PERCEPTION OF MENTORING AND TEACHER RETENTION by ALISSA HANRAHAN SASSER B., Brewton-Parker College, Mt., Walden University, Minneapolis, MN, 2007 Ed., Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, GA, 2013 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Georgia Southern University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF EDUCATION STATESBORO, GEORGIA © 2018 ALISSA HANRAHAN SASSER All Rights Reserved 1 NOVICE TEACHERS’ PERCEPTION OF MENTORING AND TEACHER RETENTION by ALISSA HANRAHAN SASSER Major Professor: Teri Denlea Melton Committee: Antonio Gutierrez de Blume Paul Brinson Electronic Version Approved: May 2018 2 DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated first and foremost to God, who makes all things work together for His good. I also dedicate this dissertation to my grandmother, Gladys Elizabeth Hanrahan, to my husband Shane Derek Sasser, and to my dissertation chair Dr.
Teri Denlea Melton. 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to acknowledge my personal team of mentors: Douglas Hanrahan, Dr. Diane Holland, Dr. Joy Collins, Dr.
Ken LeCain, Dr. Tom Bigwood, Dr. Julie Chance, Dr. Todd Veland and Kelly Spence.
Their expertise, encouragement, and insight have been instrumental to my growth and development as a school leader. Also, I would like to thank my methodologist Dr. Antonio Gutierrez de Blume. He worked tirelessly to build my self-efficacy with statistical analysis and carefully guided me in most effectively analyzing this data for the purpose of supporting novice teachers.
In addition, I would like to thank my father-in-law Roger Sasser for editing my research. His feedback about my writing, as well as the questions he posed to clarify my research process, was beneficial to the development of this research. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ……………………………………………………… 3 LIST OF TABLES ……………………………………………………………… 7 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION ……………………………………………………………… 8 Statement of the Problem ……………………………………………………. 13 Significance of the Study …………………………………………………….
14 Procedures …………………………………………………………………… 15 Definition of Key Terms ……………………………………………………. 16 Chapter Summary …………………………………………………………… 17 II REVIEW OF THE RELATED LITERATURE Introduction …………………………………………………………………. 19 Theoretical Framework ……………………………………………………… 20 Teacher Attrition ……………………………………………………………. 23 New Teacher Induction and Mentoring ……………………………………… 28 Mentoring Models …………………………………………………………… 34 Chapter Summary …………………………………………………………… 41 III RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY Introduction ………………………………………………………………….
44 Population, Sample, and Sampling ……………………………………. 46 Presentation of Findings ………………………………………………. 47 Limitations, Delimitations, and Assumptions ………………………………. 48 IV REPORT OF DATA AND DATA ANALYSIS Introduction ………………………………………………………………….
49 Research Design …………………………………………………………… 49 Democratic Profile of Respondents …………………………………………. 50 Findings ……………………………………………………………………… 52 Summary of Findings ……………………………………………………… 56 V SUMMARY, CONCLUSIONS, AND IMPLICATIONS Summary …………………………………………………………………… 57 Analysis of Research Findings ………………………………………………. 59 Discussion of Research Findings ……………………………………………. 70 Impact Statement …………………………………………………………… 71 6 Dissemination …………………………………………………………….
72 REFERENCES …………………………………………………………………… 74 APPENDICES Appendix A: Oregon Mentoring Program: Beginning Teacher Mentor Survey…………………………………………………………. 82 Appendix B: Permission to Conduct Research from the Superintendent of Bulloch County School District ………………………………. 88 Appendix C: Permission to Conduct Research from Georgia Southern University Institutional Review Board ………………………… 90 7 LIST OF TABLES Page Table 1 Descriptive Statistics of Sample ……………………………………. 55 Table 2 Frequencies and Percentiles of Most and Least Effective Components 57 Table 3 Omnibus Results of the Standard Linear Regression with Intent to Stay in the Teaching Profession as the Criterion …………………….
58 Table 4 Results of the Standard Linear Regression Analysis with Intent to Stay in the Teaching Profession as the Criterion ……………………. 59 8 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY While over 200,000 people enter the teaching field each year, the field of teaching itself has become increasingly unstable, with the attrition rate particularly high among teachers with five or fewer years of experience, also referred to as novice teachers (Ingersoll, Merrill, & Stuckey, 2014). Perpetual teacher attrition in a school or school system can have a devastating impact on school culture and student achievement. This is especially true for schools who serve low performing and African American students (Loeb, Ronfeldt, & Wyckoff, 2013).
Georgia has not been immune to the teacher attrition crisis. In fact, 47% of novice teachers leave the profession within five years just within the state alone (Owens, 2015). Based on a state-by-state cost analysis of teacher attrition, the state of Georgia loses up to $82 million each year as a result of teacher attrition (Ingersoll, 2011). Nationwide, 44% of novice teachers leave the field in the first five years, with 50% of those teachers being minority (Ingersoll, Merrill, & Stuckey, 2013).
Novice teachers cite a variety of reasons for their permanent departure from the field. Ultimately, this population of teachers blames their departure from teaching on inadequate administrative support, lack of input in school wide decision-making, student discipline, and poor salaries (Douglass, 2016). For novice teachers to endure the challenges that they will encounter, particularly during the first years, they must not work in isolation. It is the responsibility of school leaders to create a culture that places great value on teacher planning and problem solving for the purpose of student achievement.
In order for novice teachers to acclimate to their school and to the field, they must feel a sense of belonging and a connection to the school organization. In addition, they 9 must feel as if they have attained a certain degree of success within those first few years of teaching, regardless of the obstacles they encounter. If novice teachers do not experience adequate administrative and peer support, they leave the field. High levels of attrition within a school contributes to a disruptive and unstable learning environment, which has a negative impact on student achievement (Curtis, 2012).
Also, when schools have to allocate a large amount of funding and time to training large numbers of recruitment, hiring, and training of new teachers each year due to a high level of attrition, this limits the amount of funding for professional development in other areas of need for veteran and novice teachers alike (Curtis, 2012). One means by which to help novice teachers acclimate is through mentoring. The practice of mentoring new teachers first began in the 1980s. Since the passage of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in 2001, the sense of urgency for schools to hire and retain high quality teachers has placed an even greater importance on the role of teacher induction programs that include a mentoring component.
This law stated that teachers had to be “highly qualified,” which meant that teachers were certified and demonstrated proficiency in given content areas (Klein, 2015). While any teacher who graduates from an accredited teacher education program and passes a state licensure exam is designated as highly qualified, this does not necessarily guarantee their success as a novice teacher. The state of Georgia has not been immune to the attrition crisis from among its population of novice teachers. In order to combat this issue, the Georgia Department of Education in 2016 released specific teacher induction guidance guidelines for schools for the purpose of supporting and retaining novice teachers.
Georgia’s Teacher Induction 10 Guidance includes seven domains for districts to include within their teacher induction programs. These domains include the following: descriptions of the roles and responsibilities of district and school leaders; guidance in regard to the leadership and organizational structures that must be in place in order to support a comprehensive teacher induction program; the criteria for a successful new teacher orientation; guidelines for a mentoring component of the induction program; a description of how to acclimate teachers to the Teacher Keys Evaluation System as well as to the curriculum and assessment expectations; professional learning to support the novice teacher; and, finally, a component for an annual program evaluation (GaDOE, 2016). School systems across the nation have given greater attention to the development of strong teacher induction programs that include on-going mentoring and support for the purpose of improving the retention of new teachers (Ingersoll & Strong, 2011; Matlach & Potemski, 2014). Research has suggested that providing a new teacher with a mentor who teaches in their same subject area and shares a common planning time as a part of the new teacher induction program is the most effective method in helping new teachers acclimate to the profession and has the greatest impact on student achievement (Barlin, Burn, Goldrick, & Osta, 2012; Haynes, 2014; Matlach & Potemski, 2014).
It is generally accepted that mentors have a positive impact on new teachers (Ingersoll & Strong, 2011; McCollum, 2014). Traditionally, the most effective mentoring programs pair a strong veteran teacher with a novice teacher for the purpose of assisting the novice teacher in acclimating to the profession. The most common components of this type of mentoring include collaboration, lesson planning, and one-way observations in which the mentor observes the novice teacher and then provides the novice teacher with 11 feedback (Harris, 2015). While much has been written about the impact of mentoring on novice teachers, the search for research that presents findings in regard to novice teachers and their perceptions of the necessary components of mentoring programs that promote retention in the field has been unsuccessful.
Recently, a needs assessment was conducted at the researcher’s school of employment in preparation for the re-accreditation process. Data from this needs assessment acknowledged that a mentoring system was indeed in place, but the structure for implementation was not formalized nor monitored very effectively. The turnover rate at the school was considerably high during the 2015-2016 school year, further justifying the need for a comprehensive teacher induction program that would provide the support needed for a mentoring model that would be employed with fidelity.