Principals in the United States are faced with challenging and complex roles as the leaders of our schools. Levels of district, state, and federal mandates and accountability measures coupled with the demands of supporting students, parents, and teachers on a multitude of levels create a job that is almost impossible to keep up with. In addition,…

Although a growing body of research on principal turnover and retention exists in the United States, researchers have conducted very few studies in Canada (Pollock & Hauseman, 2016). Therefore, the purpose of this single embedded case study is to investigate principal turnover and retention in socially vulnerable elementary schools in one…

Individuals working in school settings are particularly vulnerable to work-related stress. Data from the 2013 Gallup-Health-ways Well-Being Index found that 46% of teachers in K-12 settings report high levels of daily stress (Lever et al., 2017). About 40% of Black or African American teachers were considering leaving their jobs, compared with…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of Restorative Practices on teachers' turnover intentions in urban, high-poverty schools. Restorative Practices (RP) is a quickly growing whole school approach to community building and discipline, but little is known about teachers' perceptions of this intervention. This dissertation tests…

The significance of the role of school administrator has been shown in recent years to be second only to the influence of the classroom teacher in terms of increasing student achievement and improving the climate and culture of a school. In recent years, teachers and administrators alike have been leaving the educational profession in large…

We study changes to teacher working conditions from 2016-17 to 2022-23, covering school years before, during, and after the COVID pandemic. We show working conditions were improving leading into the pandemic but declined when the pandemic arrived. Perhaps more surprisingly, the pandemic was not a low point: teacher working conditions have…

Several recent studies have examined the impacts of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) on school operations and student achievement. We complement that work by investigating the law's impacts on teachers' perceptions of their work environments and related job attitudes, including satisfaction and commitment to remain in teaching. Using four waves of the…

There are two separate but related issues that have challenged advocates, researchers and practitioners in the field of early education and care work for decades: improving the quality of children's programs and increasing the wages and benefits of the workers. The solution has been framed as a need for professionalizing the…

This dissertation contributes to the research and discussion of high rates of teacher attrition and migration from our nation's high poverty schools. This study examines a select group of suburban teachers who work in high poverty schools within one of Kansas's wealthiest and often rewarded school districts in order to better understand why they…

This book provides an account and critique of the work ethic, a central aspect of modern capitalist society. Chapter 1 is an introduction. Chapter 2 considers social changes in Europe in the 16th-17th centuries, maintaining that work was imbued with moral qualities and wealth seeking acquired social legitimacy through religious sanction. Chapter 3…

The lives of working-class women were explored through interviews with 63 middle-aged women, most of whom were employed in working-class jobs and living working-class lives in Baltimore, Maryland. The following were among the areas covered in the interviews: the women's lives on and off the job; their job satisfaction; the reasons they work and…