Dissertation Archive, WMU Graduate College

Dissertation Defense

Candidate: Tamara H. Rosier

Degree of: Doctor of Philosophy

Department: Teaching, Learning and Leadership

Title: Teachers' Career Decisions in a Cognitive Framework: Logistical Regression Analyses of a National Data Set

Date: Friday, July 30, 2004 10:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m.
3208 Sangren

Committee: Dr. Sue Poppink, Chair
Dr. Joseph Kretovics
Dr. Brooks Applegate

Abstract: Examining the work force decisions of educators is not only relevant, but necessary. Teacher turnover is an important phenomenon to study because it affects an entire system including teachers, students and administration. Teacher attrition often poses financial and organizational problems for districts. Teacher turnover has been studied form different perspectives: economically, sociologically, and politically. This study proposes to examine teacher turnover form three different motivational perspectives: extrinsic, perceptions of beliefs, and social contexts. Extrinsic motivation occurs when an individual engages in an activity for external reasons such as praise, special privileges, and material rewards. Cognitive theorists tend to focus their attention on intrinsic reinforcers based on beliefs, perceptions, attributions, and expectations. Contextual motivation theories believe that motivation takes place in social settings.
This study is about teachers who chose to stay in their current positions (stayers) move horizontally to another position (movers) or leave the profession (leavers) and the motivational patters of such career moves. The data will be provided by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). The instrument will be the teacher survey of Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS). Approximately 40 questions from the survey will be perceptions and social context. First, the extrinsic motivators will be analyzed in order to determine if stayers/movers and leavers' motivational patterns can be predicted. The process will be repeated with the other tow sets of motivators: perceptions and social context.
Logistical regression analyses will be performed in order to predict movers/stayers from leavers on the basis of motivational variables and to determine the percent of variance in the dependent variable explained by the independents. These analyses are expected to show that there are indeed relationships between type of motivation and teacher career decisions.

Related Topics

Main List of Archives:
Dissertation Defenses

Current Dissertation Defenses