The College of Education announces the final Dissertation of

Darren  Walker

for the degree of Doctor of Education

November 09, 2017 at 10:00 am in Ball Hall 123

Major Advisor: Charisse Gulosino, EdD

The Effect of the Four Quadrants of the Competing Values Framework on Elementary School Student Achievement

ABSTRACT: The purpose of this study was to explore the relationships between longitudinal assessments of student achievement at 1187 elementary schools and educators’ perceptions of the manner in which their school resolves the “organizational tensions, trade-offs, and conflicts” (Cameron, Quinn, DeGraff, & Thakor, 2006, p. 50) embodied in the Competing Values Framework (CVF). With this end in view, some 24 items were selected from the 2013 state-wide administration of the Teaching, Empowering, Leading, and Learning survey in Tennessee (TELL Tennessee) and used to represent the eight organizational functions residing in the four quadrants of the CVF. After aggregating person-level observations to that of the institution, the result was merged with information pertinent to student and faculty demographic characteristics and with archived Tennessee Department of Education student achievement data in reading and in mathematics, averaged over three years. In the five sets of multiple regression analyses subsequently conducted, student demographic characteristics proved to be the most important factors in explaining variation in student achievement, whether measured as three-year averages of students’ NCE scores in reading and mathematics or as three-year averages of the percent of students proficient in reading and mathematics. Although higher levels of faculty tenure regularly emerged as a statistically significant, if only slight, influence on student outcomes, no such influence was observed with respect to higher levels of faculty experience. Over and above these background variables, the Competing Values Framework (CVF) profiles concerning ‘balance,” “stability,” an “external” orientation, and a disposition towards “rational goals” were all associated with higher NCE scores, but only the CVF “balance” profile was statistically significantly linked to student proficiency scores. While the findings concerning “balance” were consistent with standard CVF expectations and prescriptions, those concerning a disposition towards higher NCE scores and “rational goals” were seen to resonate with the educational reformist literature on magnet schools, charter schools, and the adoption of comprehensive school reform models. Common to all of these strategies is the intent to leverage school improvement by endowing schools with a visible focus and lending their instructional programs a greater coherence.