Junior High, Intermediate, Middle School Education and Teaching Commons^™

Teacher Turnover And Teacher Retirement, Dillon Fuchsman

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Teachers have an important impact on students in the short- and long-term, but only teachers’ experience consistently predicts high teacher quality. This dissertation, divided into three chapters, investigates two topics that are related to teachers’ experience levels: turnover and retirement.

The first chapter studies the relationship between voluntary beginning teacher turnover and teachers’ levels of conscientiousness. It uses the data from the Beginning Teacher Longitudinal Study and the effort that teachers put on a survey taken during their first year in the profession as a proxy for teachers’ levels of conscientiousness. The results of this chapter indicate that teachers putting …

Factors Contributing To The Problem Of Student Absenteeism In A Rural School, Angela Denean Durborow

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Student attendance would seem to be a vital link in measuring student success in school. If students are not in school, they miss instruction from the teacher. Without instruction it seems incredibly difficult to complete the work needed to pass classes and be successful in school. The research explored the problem of practice of student absenteeism in a rural school. The study was conducted using mixed methods research methodology, specifically a sequential mixed methods research design. The research questions were as follows: (1) What explicit or implicit messages are parents and the school sending about school attendance? (2) What is …

Perceptions Of A Middle School Reconfiguration: A Descriptive Case Study, Karen Billingsley Lasker

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative research study was to follow 1 principal's journey to assist the district in its reconfiguration goals, and help the school change through deep examination of district personnel's and parents' perceptions of the change process. This was done by acknowledging distinctions and differences between junior high schools, the current middle school, and the new middle school, delineated by current middle school-reform research. This study explored issues regarding the policies, personnel, decision-making strategies, timelines, and organizational structures of the new middle school.

The reconfiguration resulted in rezoning attendance zones, reconstructing the new high school, raising the new …