Does responsibility matter and who is responsible? Exploring the influence and development of teacher responsibility for children's welfare.

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 demands higher teacher quality and stronger accountability for student learning from schools, highlighting educators who write off certain students as incapable of learning. This reluctance to take responsibility for learning is linked to low achievement in studies analyzing secondary school data. Whether teacher responsibility benefits achievement at the elementary school level remains an unexplored empirical question, as does which teachers are willing to accept this responsibility. Using a nationally representative, longitudinal dataset of elementary students, teachers, and schools, I analyzed the importance and development of teachers' willingness to accept responsibility for all children's welfare. Through hierarchical linear models, I first tested whether teacher responsibility is relevant to young children's learning. I next explored what elements of teachers' background and attitudes, what characteristics of teachers' students, and which aspects of school structure, composition, and social organization are associated with teacher responsibility. Teacher responsibility was related to increases in first-graders' reading learning and especially benefited the learning of low-achieving first-graders. But teachers who instructed socially disadvantaged first-graders were less willing to accept responsibility than teachers of socially advantaged students. Concerning school context, teaching in Catholic schools and working with supportive administrative leaders were related to increases in teacher responsibility. The last chapter of the dissertation draws implications from the findings to current educational policy, especially the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.Ph.D.EducationEducational psychologyEducational sociologyElementary educationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/124245/2/3137880.pd