The Impact of Organizational Profiles Within the Competing Values Framework (CVF) on Teachers\u27 Intention to Stay in Their Schools

On February 8th, an announcement came across the intercom to remind teachers and staff of the mandatory faculty meeting held in the library at 2:30, immediately after post duty. During the meeting, the principal distributed Declaration of Intent Form for the upcoming school year to every person in attendance to complete. As a part of the Instructional Leadership Team, I was privy to administration information. Out of 75 teachers and staff members, all selected to return next school year with the exception of two who intended to retire at the end of the school year. As the school year approached the end, over 35 teachers who indicated intent to return either resigned or transferred. The principal began to ponder, Where did I go wrong? The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between the rates at which teachers intent to stay at their schools and the manner in which their schools resolve the tensions and tradeoffs illuminated by the Competing Values Framework(CVF). To answer the study\u27s five research questions, a secondary analysis that applies hierarchical multiple regression to an existing dataset is taken. The dataset in question combines information from the 2013 administration of the Teaching, Empowering, Leading, and Learning (TELL) survey in 1,425 Tennessee schools with concurrent school demographic and student achievement data archived on the Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) website. As the CVF would predict, the balance profile is very strongly linked to the percentage of school stayers , but without the outcome\u27s ambiguous association with the percent of students on free and reduced lunch. Controlling for seven other confounding variables in a hierarchical multiple regression, CVF balance is the one most strongly associated with the outcome and by itself explains roughly 10% of the variability in the outcome. The percent of school stayers is also associated with CVF profiles that privilege the flexible over the stable, the internal over the external, and their confluence in the human relations quadrant. Likewise, school climate due to working conditions is associated with teachers\u27 intention to stay. However, the connection between an emphasis on these CVF orientations and student achievement--- particularly student achievement at high poverty schools--- is complex and further study of these relationships is recommended

The Influence of Balance Within the Competing Values Framework and School Academic Success on Teacher Retention

The primary aim of this study is to use the survey items from the TELL Tennessee Survey (2013) using the Competing Values Framework (CVF) to determine whether teachers\u27 observations about a set of topically organized school climate dimensions and school performance levels are associated with their immediate professional plans. Using a three-by-two-level Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA), we find that the effect of CVF “balance” and school performance level explain much of the variation in the percent of teachers who intend to stay at their current school, independent of the school’s student demographic characteristics. Specifically, the effect of having a balanced as opposed to an unbalanced CVF school profile on the mean percentage of teachers staying at the school slightly exceeded a full standard deviation, while the effect on “staying” in a high-achieving “Performance” school environment is found to be more than one and one-half standard deviations compared to being in a school environment representing state “norms” and in excess of two full standard deviations compared to being in a low-achieving “Priority” environment. Our results suggest that a balanced CVF profile is associated with teacher retention by helping to create school environments that are conducive to learning