The College of Education announces the final Dissertation of

Portia Hardman

for the degree of Doctor of Education

May 9, 2017 at 1:00 pm in Ball Hall

Major Advisor: Charisse Gulosino, EdD

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

ABSTRACT: The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between the rates at which teachers intend 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’s five research questions, a secondary analysis that applies hierarchical multiple regression to an existing dataset is undertaken. The dataset in question combines information from the 2013 administration of the Teaching, Empowering Leading, and Learning (TELL) survey in 1425 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 that outcome’s 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 percent 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. 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.