Article Review: Education Theories
The empirical article, “Recruiting expert teachers into high-need schools: Leadership, money, and colleagues” by Audrey Amrein-Beardsley for the journal of Education Policy Analysis Archives, investigates the important elements of educational policymakers while recruiting teachers for the high-needs schools. The article uses Arizona state as the base of the survey to extrapolate the factors that influence the recruitment and retention of the teacher vis a vis education policy. More specifically, Amrein-Beardsley discusses the eight factors that play a significant role in evaluating the educational policies for recruiting teachers for high-needs schools. The survey validates the survey instrument to sublimate the credibility of the research from the perspective of educational leadership. In the context of quantitative analysis, the article uses credible and authentic empirical sources to establish the correlation between educational leadership and the factors that affect teacher retention standards in high-needs schools. Most importantly, educational leadership plays a noteworthy role in impacting the student learning outcomes; second, after classroom teaching. Thus, incorporating educational leadership into the factors that affect classroom teaching augments an achievement trajectory necessary for educational policymakers.
Research Purpose and Relevance to Educational Leadership
From the perspective of the high-needs, the research seeks to investigate the factors as well as job-related preferences for the expert teachers. By extension, the recruitment of expert teachers after considering their ideal working environment forms the basis of policy implications that underpin the value of educational leadership. Overall, the primary objective of the survey aims to improve student learning outcomes based on the important factors of educational leadership. The state context of Arizona’s education informs the purpose of the research in light of the factors that affect teacher quality and recruitment in high-needs schools. By extension, the state of education in Arizona and the prior conservative politics augments the relevance of the research to the educational leadership. The purpose of the study extrapolates the dominant factors in retaining and recruiting expert teachers for high-needs schools. Understanding and applying the educational leadership in the wake of unprecedented accountability presents the relevance of the empirical research to the teacher turnover rates. The pedagogy of the empirical survey seeks to establish the policy implications that affect the recruitment of expert teachers in high-needs schools in the account of incentives and educational policies. Most importantly, the relevance of the survey to the educational leadership points to the systematic approach to recruit and retain expert teachers for the policymakers while implementing actionable plans.
Theoretical Constructs, Research Questions, and Methodology
Amrein-Beardsley develops the theoretical framework for the research in front of the concept of teacher retention and recruitment. The foundational knowledge explains and helps to understand the phenomena of educational leadership, policy, and student learning outcomes. The theoretical framework utilized for the empirical research cites burning out as the most common reason low teacher retention alongside economic, social, and demographic issues. Pucella also identifies the working environment and the low salary as the factors that influence the decisions to leave schools. Using the traditional methods of inquiry or the unstructured survey Berry and Ferriter theorized leadership, involvement in the decision-making, and learning facilities in high-needs schools as the primary factors that affect teacher retention and recruitment. This theoretical framework for the research establishes a foundation of the knowledge to base the research questions and formulate the purpose of the study for the primary objectives of the survey. From the literature that constructs the theoretical framework for the survey, Amrein-Beardsley states that the qualification of the teachers influences the student learning outcomes. Overall, teacher retention and recruitment strategies form the theoretical construct for the Arizona survey to validate the empirical instrument of the research.
The sampled expert teachers responded to the survey questions from the online survey instrument that utilized the questionnaires. One of the most important questions asked was the type of financial resources that would entice them to teach in high-needs schools. The salary represents a significant job-related factor in the survey instrument. Even so, the professional development of the teachers provided an insightful analogy into the aspect of teacher recruitment and retention based on the extent of committing to career goals. At the same time, the questionnaire focused on the programs that would motivate the expert teaches to take the leadership responsibilities by serving as mentors and coaches. This question informs the relevance for the purpose of the research to the educational leadership. Besides, the survey focused on the tools to validate the administrators as expert teachers to recruit them into the leadership roles for the high-needs schools. Student behavior and student learning outcomes represented some of the questions that dominated the survey questionnaires in light of the motivation of the students as well as the use of the standardized test results to assess the expert teacher’s performance.
The research study developed a list of expert teachers to participate in the survey from the Arizona teacher’s union and the NBPTS certified teachers to include 207 participants. The primary researchers sent emails that invited the participants in the survey. The details for the reasons to participate in the study were documented in the link with a timeline of two weeks allocated to complete the online survey. In light of the sample representation, 89 expert teachers participated in the research that used the concept of the survey instrument to articulate the job-related factors that affect teacher recruitment and retention in high-needs schools. The research study used the ANOVA analysis and the Pearson chi-square to address the impact of the low response rate from the shortlisted participants on the results. From the 60 job-related preferences, the researcher developed an online survey instrument that informed the recommendations for the study to the policymakers. The validated survey instrument generates eight factors from the survey that was reliably consistent in articulating the purpose of the study. The coefficients identified salary, community, administration, students, teacher professionalism, student achievement, and caring as the primary factors that affect teacher recruitment and retention in high-needs schools.
Strengths and Weaknesses
The strength of the research survey manifests in the ability of the study to evaluate the most important job-related factors that influence the decision of the expert teachers to leave school from the 60 elements identified. The design of the survey describes the topic of teacher recruitment and retention in an exploratory context to validate the survey instrument and influence policy implications. The survey enhances the possibilities of future research because the significant section of the respondents helps to identify the important issues to present in the future survey questionnaires. Hypothetically, the survey has the potential to streamline the policy implications for different regions. The open-ended questions included in the survey instrument link augment the response of the participants to reflect on the value of the responses. While the exploratory nature of the survey provides detailed information for the purpose of the study, the study uses a limited sample because of the low response rate. At the same time, the study localizes the survey to Arizona to decrease the ability of the study to draw generalizations from the empirical findings.
References
Amrein-Beardsley, A. (2012). Recruiting expert teachers into high-needs schools: Leadership, money, and colleagues. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 20(27), n27. Retrieved from http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/941.
Bush, T., Bell, L., & Middlewood, D. (Eds.). (2019). Principles of Educational Leadership & Management. SAGE Publications Limited.