Program

Education Doctorate

Number of Pages

125

Year Approved

2024

First Advisor

Jeanine Parolini

Second Reader

Krista Soria

Third Reader

Tracy Reimer

Abstract

This study investigated the relationship between teachers’ job satisfaction and teachers’ satisfaction with their salary, the number of years teaching, and the principals’ communication about the kind of school they want. Teacher attrition in the K–12 public school system is a well-documented problem citing many motives and causes. The recruitment of educators and retention of teachers in public schools has vastly decreased, creating a significant teacher shortage problem. Resulting complications are fewer applicants for open positions, applicants without the desired licensure, added stress on current teachers to fulfill duties, decreasing student academic progress, and dissatisfied teachers. This quantitative study used pre-existing data from the 2020–2021 National Teacher and Principal Survey (NTPS) provided by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) to determine the significance of Minnesota public school teachers’ job satisfaction in relation to teachers’ satisfaction with their salary, the number of years teaching, and the principals’ communication about the kind of school they want. The correlations were tested using a binary logistic regression. The results indicated teachers are more satisfied in the profession when principals communicate the kind of school they want. Teacher satisfaction with their salary was also highly correlated to overall job satisfaction, but the number of years teaching was not. Future research could compare teachers from various states using the same variables to determine if the results are similar across the nation. In addition, future research could narrow the scope of respondents to individual licensure areas and demographics to identify more potential focus areas.

Degree Name

Education Doctorate

Document Type

Doctoral dissertation

Terms of Use and License Information

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

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