De-professionalized and Demoralized: A Longitudinal Examination of Teachers' Perception of Their Work and Teacher Turnover During the Accountability Era in the United States

Abstract

The purpose of this dissertation, presented in a three article format, is to describe the changes in teachers’ perceptions of their work, and how those changes relate to teacher turnover, through the state and federal accountability policy eras in the United States. The three articles are united by a teacher perception of de-professionalization and demoralization framework that is operationalized using the restricted use Schools and Staffing Surveys and Teacher Follow-up Surveys administered by the National Center for Education Statistics from 1993 to 2008. The first article uses hierarchical linear modeling to identify teacher and school level predictors of teacher perception of de-professionalization and demoralization and changes in teacher perceptions from the state accountability policy era of the mid-1990s through the height of the federal accountability era under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. The second article uses structural equation modeling to examine differences in the relationship of teacher perception of de-professionalization and demoralization to teacher intent to leave and realized turnover between teachers who cited accountability policies as a factor in their turnover decision and those who did not. The third article uses hierarchical linear modeling with teachers clustered within time periods to determine changes in the relationship of teacher perception of de-professionalization and demoralization to turnover in models that also include teacher and school context factors. Changes in these relationships are compared between public and private school teachers. Each article also discusses the findings in relationship to previous research, implications for policy and practice, and identifies limitations and future research directions.