Degree Name

EdD (Doctor of Education)

Program

Educational Leadership

Date of Award

7-2023

Committee Chair or Co-Chairs

Pamela Scott

Committee Members

Jill Channing, William Flora

Abstract

Each year, thousands of novice teachers are hired, and within a few years, many of these teachers decide to leave the profession. Job-embedded practitioners, teachers who have yet to fulfill their academic requirements at their universities to become fully licensed teachers and are taking an alternative route to obtain their teaching licenses, comprise a large proportion of those novice teachers. Local and state school districts spend thousands of dollars trying to recruit new teachers to balance high attrition rates. With current teacher shortages nationwide, schools must find novel mechanisms to combat teacher attrition, rather than constantly hiring new teachers to fill vacancies. Increasing teachers’ sense of self-efficacy is vital to reducing the high rate of turnover. The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine the perceptions of novice teachers who are job-embedded practitioners on how prepared they were for employment and how well they believe they are currently doing. Understanding and increasing new teacher efficacy are essential for school districts nationwide. To address this purpose, individual interviews with 10 novice job-embedded practitioners were conducted. These interviews were transcribed and analyzed using thematic analysis. The novice job-embedded practitioners interviewed in this study described their teaching self-efficacy as a work in progress and highlighted key barriers and facilitators to their self-efficacy. They also described benefits and drawbacks of their teacher preparation programs, highlighting curriculum changes that would significantly enhance their self-efficacy.

Document Type

Dissertation - unrestricted

Copyright

Copyright by the authors.

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