Date of Award

Summer 2017

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Educational Research and Administration

Committee Chair

Lilian Hill

Committee Chair Department

Educational Research and Administration

Committee Member 2

Stanley Benigno

Committee Member 2 Department

Educational Research and Administration

Committee Member 3

James T. Fox

Committee Member 3 Department

Educational Research and Administration

Committee Member 4

Kyna Shelley

Committee Member 4 Department

Educational Research and Administration

Abstract

Novice teachers are leaving the profession at an alarming rate. The purpose of this research is to understand the organizational sources that novice teachers perceive as being a lack of administrative support. This phenomenological study explored the perceptions of ten, novice, middle school, and high school teachers, based on their lived experiences, toward the phenomenon of administrative support and how it influenced their career making decisions.

Guided by the theoretical framework of Dr. Victor Vroom’s (1964), expectancy theory, Robert M. House’s, (1971) path-goal leadership theory, Bandura’s (1977) social cognitive and self-efficacy theories, this study set out to investigate how novice teachers perceive a lack of administrative support, and how it influences their self-efficacy and career making decisions.

Data for this qualitative study was collected through semi-structured interviews, reflective journals, field notes, and artifacts were collected and analyzed. The research results supported the theoretical framework of the study, and from this study three importance themes regarding novice teachers’ perceptions of a lack of support emerged: expressive support, instrumental support, and teacher stress. The results of this study found that although novice teachers may disagree on certain aspects of administrative support being important to their self-efficacy and career making decisions, all of the participants in this study agreed on specific elements of expressive support, instrumental support, and teacher stress as being factors in their decision to either migrate or leave the profession. These specific elements were: lack of support with student discipline, not being able to trust the administration to be fair, lack of administrative consistency, lack of respect shown by the administration, lack of modeling by administration, lack of administrators being considered approachable, and lack of building confidence or self-esteem among participants.

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