Educational Leadership Commons^™

Coequal Responsibility For Feedback And Trust In Teacher Professional Development, Stefanie Whitney

Doctorate in Education

Instructional feedback offers a critical contribution to teacher professional development aimed at improving student learning outcomes. The most influential feedback comes from principals who have developed strong collegial relationships with teachers through observation-based understanding of their instructional practices, intentional interpersonal connection, and collaboration on shared goals. In essence, collegial relationships between principals and teachers nurture the development of trust, an essential element in the process of giving and receiving feedback. Unfortunately, instructional feedback has historically been delivered through teacher evaluations, which attempt to serve two contradictory purposes: To evaluate for retention and to nurture professional development. These dual purposes have …

Teacher Retention In High-Poverty, Urban Schools, Jill Love

Graduate Teacher Education

Abstract

Teaching has always been about the success of the students. Students who have effective, qualified teachers show the most success. Throughout the years, schools in urban areas have struggled to keep quality teachers within their buildings. Due to teacher turnover in the neediest schools, the students are greatly affected. The students in high-poverty urban schools are some of the lowest performing students across the country. When you pair low performance with significant teacher turnover, the outcome is grim. Research shows that districts and schools need to do more than just recruit qualified teachers, they must also retain them for …

Exploring Teacher-Parent Communication: A Qualitative Analysis Of Secondary Early Career Educators' Experiences, Kama J. Konda-Varilek

Doctorate in Education

Teacher-parent communication (TPC) is considered a professional responsibility for all teachers, yet it is most often associated with teachers of elementary-aged students; comparatively less is known about how secondary teachers communicate with parents or how they learn to do so. The qualitative study conducted in May 2020 used semi-structured interviews to examine how South Dakota secondary early career educators (ECEs) learned to communicate with parents and their experiences with TPC. The research questions focused on the definition of effective TPC, experiences from teacher preparation programs (TPPs) with TPC, experiences from in-service years and TPC, recommendations for preparing secondary ECEs for …

Student Connectedness And Academic Achievement: A Quantitative Study Of Career And Technical Education Students, Kern Mcginley

CUP Ed.D. Dissertations

The focus of this correlational study in an Alaskan career and technical (CTE) school environment was to explore the research question that guided this study: In a large urban school district of Alaska, with a diverse student population, what is the relationship between the CTE student connectedness level and academic achievement levels? Participants included 132 high school students, Grades 10 through 12. Additional research questions were developed to examine the strength of the relationship between student connectedness and academic achievement by gender and ethnicity. Data were collected using an online survey with a combination of demographic questions and Goodenow’s (1993b) …

Teaching Middle School Children Affected By Homelessness: An Interpretive Phenomenological Investigation Of Teachers’ Lived Experiences, Timothy B. Smart

CUP Ed.D. Dissertations

The human experience occupies the central role in phenomenological research. In this interpretive phenomenological study, the researcher recruited and interviewed secondary school teachers from three public urban schools in the Pacific Northwest in order to have them describe their lived experiences that relate to instructing students affected by homelessness. The researcher used two semi-structured, conversational interviews with six participants who reflected on how their classroom experiences influenced their teaching, engagement strategies, emotional states, and student relationships. The conceptual framework for this study included: Homelessness in America, public school setting, impact of homelessness, and teacher perspective. In this study, the researcher …