Assignment task:
Research Topic:
This research will explore how various types of leadership impact retaining teachers in the public schools of North Carolina. The fact that supporting qualified teachers is a problem for schools across the country makes it all the more important to recognize the role school leadership plays in decisions to remain at a school or to quit.
Research Questions:
The following research questions have been formulated in order to guide the study.
- Which leadership styles, particularly transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire leadership styles, affect teacher satisfaction and retention in North Carolina public schools?
- Which leadership strategies enhance teacher retention in detail?
- What is the mindset of leadership between schools with high and low turnover rates?
- How do support and professional development opportunities based on leadership impact teacher retention?
Literature Review and Keywords:
In order to investigate these research issues, a thorough evaluation of the literature will be required. The following reading lists will be essential:
- Theoretical frameworks of leadership: The concept of effective leadership styles and how they are applied particularly the theories of transformational and transactional leadership (VanGronigen, 2022).
- Teacher retention factors: Addressing the question of what factors facilitate or hinder experienced public-school teachers from remaining in teaching.
- Case studies of school leadership: Studying successful models in high retention rate schools: the case of leadership.
- Impact of professional development: Understanding the Impact of Leadership on Professional Development and its Influence on Retention.
Government reports on education, books, educational leadership periodicals, and scholarly journals will all be important sources of information. The following will be crucial search terms for the literature:
- Leadership styles in education
- Teacher retention factors
- Transformational leadership in schools
- Trait and transactional teaching behaviours and their relationship to outcomes.
- Developing teachers and maintaining quality teachers.
- School leadership case studies
- Teacher satisfaction and leadership (Gonzales, 2022)
Data Collection:
We'll be gathering data in a variety of ways to make sure we fully understand the problem. We'll use the following techniques:
Interviews: Interview surveys focused on the school principals and vice-principals as well as teachers from different public schools in North Carolina state. This method is qualitative, and it is suitable for collecting information on personal experiences and perceptions of leadership (Bolden et al., 2023).
Surveys: Questionnaires in a larger sample of teachers which will include the quantitative information on what makes them stay or leave and how they view the leadership within their school.
Site visits: Comparing the retention rates of different schools and observing leadership practices and school environment first-hand.
Document analysis: Analysing the materials of the class policies, the existing organizational programs, and the attendance figures received from the district report.
Anticipated Leadership Challenges:
Diversity of leadership styles: The right comparisons of the similar elements of different leadership approaches in practice can be sometimes hard to make (Perera et al., 2021).
Contextual factors: Factors which may confound the ARL linking teacher retention to leadership behaviour such as external factors like the community around the school, funding levels, demographics of students and faculty.
Gaining access and participation: Obtaining consent to carry out research as well as facilitating the hectic educators' time to talk in interviews and to fill in questionnaires may pose a challenge.
Bias and reliability: Validating the data collected used especially on self-reported satisfaction and/or leadership perception.
Conclusion:
The following proposal aims at describing an elaborate and practical plan that can be used to research on how leadership styles affect teacher retention in the North Carolina public schools. Using rich and varied data sets and addressing the major themes in the literature on teacher retention and leadership, the study also can be used to generate new knowledge in the field of educational leadership and policy to help leadership practices that lead to greater teacher retention.