Date of Graduation

5-2012

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education in Workforce Development Education (EdD)

Degree Level

Graduate

Department

Rehabilitation, Human Resources and Communication Disorders

Advisor/Mentor

Jack De Vore

Committee Member

Kenda Grover

Second Committee Member

Michael Daugherty

Third Committee Member

Gregory Belcher

Keywords

Education, Career and technical education, Intention to stay, Teacher

Abstract

Retaining highly qualified career and technical education teachers is important in maintaining and growing quality secondary career and technical education programs. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to identify factors contributing to teacher retention specifically in the area of career and technical education (CTE) and determine predictability of the factors‟ influence on secondary CTE teachers‟ intent to stay in or leave the teaching profession. The career and technical areas of family and consumer sciences, trade and industrial, health occupations, and agriculture in the state of Kansas made up the population for this study. The six factors that data were collected on were educational preparation, teacher commitment, first year teaching experience, skills and abilities, Social integration and institutional factors. Participants in this study perceived their educational preparation overall as good. No item was given an overall rating of excellent leaving room for improvement in this area. Overall, participants agreed with their commitment to teaching, items pertaining to the first year teaching experience, and their skills and abilities in the profession. Within the category of Social integration, teachers rated that gaining student respect was extremely important. CTE teachers surveyed rated an inner sense of knowing they are doing a good job as extremely important in the construct of institutional factors. All overall ratings of the six factors indicate that teachers tended to agree or rate as important the items under these constructs. Predicting the intent to stay in or leave the profession of teaching was analyzed quantitatively using discriminant analysis. Findings indicate the independent variables of educational preparation, teacher commitment, first year teaching experience, skills and abilities, Social integration, institutional factors, and content area did not have an influence in predicting CTE teachers‟ intent to stay in or leave the profession of teaching.

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