Document Type
Doctor of Education Capstone
Original Publication Date
2024
Client
Stafford County Public Schools
Location
Stafford County, Virginia
Date of Submission
May 2024
Abstract
Stafford County Public Schools requested an evaluation of their current support of Early Career Teachers (ECTs) with one to three years experience, and its potential impact on retention efforts. They stamped this request with urgency, noting the COVID-19 pandemic and teacher pay as two driving factors, specifically, impacting retention of teachers within their first three years. Our Capstone team sought a deeper understanding of the following issues in three research questions: 1) types of support across their division and within their school buildings, 2) the impact of current practices of support, and 3) division-wide considerations for enhancing current systems of support for ECTs. While pay surfaced as a top consideration for a new teacher’s intention to return, a review of the literature highlighted additional influences such as the condition of school leadership, access to quality mentorship, and healthy working environments as largely contributing factors. The Capstone team used a mixed-methods approach to collect new survey data from teachers with 1-3 and 4-7 years of experience and interview responses from building principals, corroborating these findings using secondary datasets from the Stafford team. Findings centered on variability in the ways ECTs are being supported at the school-level across the county. Specifically, the team found incongruencies in the types and frequency of professional learning being delivered to ECTs, access to common planning time during the school day for ECTs, and the quality of mentorship being offered to ECTs. The findings also included the importance of trusting relationships between ECTs and their leadership teams and the need for ECTs to feel valued in their professional placements. These findings informed 10 systemic improvement recommendations made by the Capstone team regarding new teacher onboarding and through-year support, professional learning for school-based leadership teams, and instructional coaching and mentor-pairing.
Rights
© The Authors
Included in
Educational Administration and Supervision Commons, Educational Leadership Commons, Teacher Education and Professional Development Commons