The College of Education announces the final Dissertation of

Laquetta Jones-Taylor

for the degree of Doctor of Education

May 8, 2017 at 10:00 am in 123 Ball Hall

Major Advisor: Charisse Gulosino, EdD

Competing Values Framework and its impact on teacher satisfaction: Evidence from Tennessee schools

ABSTRACT: The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between the level at which educators’ express satisfaction with their schools as “a good place to work and learn” 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 level of respondent satisfaction at the school 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 12 percent of the variability in the outcome. Although the level of respondent satisfaction is also associated with CVF profiles that privilege the flexible over the stable, the internal over the external, and the confluence of the two in the “human relations” quadrant, the connection between an emphasis on these CVF orientations and student achievement—particularly student achievement at “high poverty” schools—is less than straightforward. Further study of these relationships is recommended.