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How can I help you? A study of onboarding and ongoing supports for new teachers

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How can I help you? A study of onboarding and ongoing supports for new teachers

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Content Running head: SUPPORTS FOR NEW TEACHERS 1

HOW CAN I HELP YOU? A STUDY OF ONBOARDING AND ONGOING SUPPORTS FOR
NEW TEACHERS

by
Robert Caughey

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ROSSIER SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF EDUCATION

August 2018

Copyright 2018 Robert Caughey
SUPPORTS FOR NEW TEACHERS

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DEDICATION
This dissertation is dedicated to my lovely, wonderful, supportive, and amazing wife,
Nicole Caughey. Without your constant support and encouragement, none of this would be.
Love, love, love, and love.
To my three daughters: Avery, Taylor, and Jordyn. You are everything; you can be or do
anything.
To my mom: your son is a doctor!
To my brother: yes, you will have to call me doctor.
And finally, to my deceased father, William Caughey, Sr.: This dissertation is yours more
than it is mine. It is dedicated to, but not responsible for, your happiness.

Yes, Avery, I can read that book now.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
There are so many people who guided me throughout this journey, and I am blessed to
have them in my life. I must acknowledge them here.
My family, who offered so much support and allowed this all to happen. When I had
fears that this dissertation would cease to be, you were there.
Ms. Pamela Kennedy, my sixth grade English teacher, who taught me the two most
important and powerful words I ever learned: YOU CAN.
My many students who I worked with over the years: your chorus of voices has carried
me to this point. Thank you. Go, bid the soldiers shoot.
My colleagues, whose support has been unwavering, especially Bjorn Paige, Dr.
Weatherford and Dr. Jones. Thank you for allowing me to “dissertate” when I needed to. And
now I can finally wear my nametag.
My dissertation committee, especially Dr. Julie Slayton. I cannot imagine going through
this process without our Sunday phone calls, the exceptional feedback, and your keen ability to
make me a better researcher, thinker, and person than I ever thought I could be. You demanded
so much of me—I hope I lived up to those expectations. And Dr. Nicole MacCalla and Dr.
Monique Datta—your feedback and influence have been exceptional and valuable. I could not
have done this without you. Mahalo.
And my OCL Cohort One homies: Brett, Jason, Lauren, Amber, and even Kyle. Without
your support, text messages, and memes, none of this would be. Fight on (optional)!
Without you all, I never would have finished this program and spent eternity in the
purgatory of ABD. Thank you for giving me what I needed to finish.
There is no heavier burden than a great potential.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

DEDICATION…………………………………………………………………………………….2
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………………………………….3
LIST OF TABLES……………………………………………………………………………...…6
LIST OF FIGURES…………………………………………………………………………...…..7
ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………………………8
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………….9
Organizational Context and Mission…………………………………………………….10
Organizational Performance Goal………………………………………………………..11
Related Literature…………………………………………………………………….…..12
Importance of the Study………………………………………………………………….13
Stakeholder for the Study and Stakeholder Performance Goal………………………….14
Purpose of the Project and Research Questions………………………………………….14
Definitions………………………………………………………………………………..15
Organization of the Study………………………………………………………………..15
CHAPTER TWO: REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE………………………………………….17
Literature Specific to Teacher Preparedness……………………………………………..17
Clark and Estes Organizational Problem Solving Framework…………………………..19
New Teachers Knowledge, Motivation, and Organizational Influencers………….....….19
Conceptual Framework:………………………………………………………………….29
CHAPTER THREE: METHODS………………………………………………………………..34
Purpose of the Project ……………………………………………………………………34
Research Questions………………………………………………………………………34
Participating Stakeholders…………………………………………………………….…35
Interviewing Sampling Criteria and Rationale……………………………………….….35
Interview Sampling Recruitment Strategy and Rationale……………………………….36
Data Collection and Instrumentation………………………………………………….…37
Data Analysis……………………………………………………………………………38
Credibility and Trustworthiness…………………………………………………………40
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Ethics……………………………………………………………………………………..43
Limitations and Delimitations……………………………………………………………45
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………….46
CHAPTER FOUR: RESULTS AND FINDINGS………………………………………………47
Finding 1:New Teachers and the Onboarding Support Experience……………………..49
Theme 1: New Teachers and Class Schedules…………………………………..49
Theme 2: New Teachers and Class Preparedness……………………………….54
Theme 3: New Teachers and Classroom Management………………………….57
Theme 4: New Teachers and Difficult Parents…………………………………..61
Finding 2: New Teachers and the Ongoing Support Experience .……………...………..65
Theme 1: The Importance of the BTSA Mentor…………………………………65
Theme 2: New Teachers and Professional Development………………………..69
Theme 3: New Teacher and the Administrative Evaluation Cycle………………72
Conclusion……………………………………………………………….………………77
CHAPTER FIVE: DISCUSSIONS, IMPLICATIONS, RECOMMENDATIONS……………..79
Summary of Findings…………………………………………………………………….80
Implications and Recommendations for Policy………………………………………….87
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………….89
REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………………….…….90
APPENDIX A: Interview Protocol………………………………………………………………96
APPENDIX B: Informed Consent/ Information Sheet…………………………………………100
APPENDIX C: Recruitment Letter……………………………………………………………..102
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LIST OF TABLES
Table 1. Organizational Mission, Global Goal, and Stakeholders’ Goals……………………….13
Table 2. List of Participants, Their Subjects, and the Content of the Classes……………...……37

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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1. Interactive Conceptual Framework……………………………………………………30
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ABSTRACT

Research suggests that new teachers are leaving the profession at an alarming rate.
Because of this, schools are continually forced to hire younger, less experienced teachers in order
to staff their schools. In order to ensure schools continue to perform at high levels, districts need
to ensure that the new teachers are effective by the end of their first year. The underlying
problem addressed in this study was new teachers’ perceptions regarding both onboarding and
ongoing supports offered by school districts in relation to their preparedness to be effective in
their classrooms and schools by the end of their first year. The study was based on 11 middle and
high school teachers, all of whom were new to the teaching profession. The findings revealed
that the new teachers did not perceive the onboarding and ongoing supports from the district to
be beneficial to them becoming effective teachers in the district.
SUPPORTS FOR NEW TEACHERS

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CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
For myriad reasons, schools, have difficulty attracting and developing quality teachers
and retaining their services. In the United States, teacher attrition, especially at low income and
high minority schools, is at a problematic high (Ingersoll& Merill, 2012). For the purpose of this
discussion, attrition may include teachers leaving the profession or leaving for work at other
schools. Accordingly, schools are continually forced to hire younger, less experienced
teachers in order to staff their schools (Borman & Dowling, 2008). If schools do not increase
their retention rate of well quality and experienced teachers, students who attend poorer and/or
higher minority schools will continue to receive an inferior education to their counterparts at
higher income schools with fewer minority students (Ronfeldt, Loeb, & Wyckoff, 2013).
Continued teacher attrition will further exasperate the well documented opportunity gap between
these students. Therefore, school districts must ensure that they are hiring well qualified teachers
and that they are supporting them in becoming effective educators.
Because the attrition rate among teachers is so high, school districts need to do to ensure
that their teachers are adequately prepared to work in their districts. Teachers need to be prepared
to face the challenges posed by their respective school districts and ready to offer each of
their students high quality instruction. With teacher attrition a problem nationwide, all school
districts should work to ensure that they are supporting their new teachers to prepare them for
success. Therefore, I explored whether new teachers in a in suburban, low minority, high
performing school were properly onboarded and offered ongoing support to ensure they would
be 100% effective teachers in the district. For the purpose of this study, an effective
teacher was defined as how well prepared they were to:
a. Demonstrate subject matter expertise.
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b. Teach their assigned classes.
c. Handle classroom management or disciplinary issues.
d. Effectively communicate with parents, guardians, or other educational rights
holders.
e. Differentiate instruction for all students, including SPED, 504s, EL, etc.
f. Utilize various effective pedagogical techniques during classroom instruction.
g. Meet the subject specific subject standards (re: Common Core State Standards,
Next Generation Science Standards, History–Social Science Framework for
California Public Schools, etc.).
h. Consistently use formative and summative data to assess students and inform
instruction.
Organizational Context and Mission
The organization studied was a high performing school district in Southern
California. For the purpose of this study, the district was referred to as Southern California
Union High School District (SCUHSD).
1
The district was made up of 5 middle schools, 4 high
schools, and 1 alternative high school. The district served nearly 12,000 students in an affluent
community of Southern California. The district repeatedly demonstrated success by nearly all
accepted measurements: in 2015 n early 80% of SCUHSD students who attempted an Advanced
Placement exam passed with a 3 or higher compared to 60% nation-wide, in 2015 the cohort
graduation rate for SCUHSD was just shy of 100% while the state-wide average was a little over
81%, 80% of students met or exceeded standards on the English Language Arts (ELA) Smarter

1
Southern California Union High School District [SCUHSD] is a pseudonym for the high school district
represented in this study.
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Balanced Assessment (SBAC) and 71% met or exceeded standard on the Mathematics Smarter
Balanced Assessment in 2015. These, and other makers, were evidence of a high performing
school district.
Because of teacher retirement and growth in student populations, the SCUHSD hired
between 35 and 40 teachers during the 2016-2017 school year. Twelve of those teachers were
new teachers, having never worked for another public-school district before SCUHSD.
According to the district’s strategic plan, the district sought highly qualified and accomplished
educators to staff its schools. In addition, the district sought to support its new teachers through
the evaluation process, participation in a state-wide induction program, and district provided
professional development.
Organizational Performance Goal
At the time of the study, SCUHSD expected each of their newly hired temporary and
probationary teachers to be 100% prepared to be effective teachers in the district by the end of
their first year of employment
2
(SCUHSD, 2016). According to SCUHSD, effective meant
Engaging and supporting all students in learning, creating and maintaining effective
environments for student learning, understanding an organizing subject matter for student
learning, planning instruction and designing learning experiences for all students,
assessing students for learning, and developing as a professional educator. (CSTP, 2009,
p. 3)
While SCUHSD’s definition of effective was expansive, by the end of their first year
with SCUHSD, the district expected each of its newly hired temporary and probationary teachers
to have effective command of their classrooms, to have knowledge of district procedures in
place, and have a working knowledge of their campus environment (Principal, A., personal
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communication, June 2, 2016). The district posited that much of the information regarding
effectiveness would be obtained through the new teachers’ participation in the district’s
Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment Program (SCUHSD, 2016). This induction program
took place over the course of 2 school years and included monthly meetings, observations,
reflections, and the assignment of a BTSA mentor teacher to help with the transition to
SCUHSD. The rest of the information was to be gleaned through their participation in
Administrative Evaluation Process using The California Standards for the Teaching Profession
(CTSP) as their measurement of effective teaching and. District-developed professional
development.
Related Literature
The teacher shortage in America has been well documented (Ingersoll, 2002). According
to Newburry and Allsop (2017), “it comes to leaving the profession, it has been found that up to
30-46% of new teachers quit teaching within the first 5 years and nearly 8-14% of all teachers
leave teaching in any given year” (p. 863). As cited in Sinclair (2008), the first few years of a
teaching assignment are impacted by “Limited initial teacher education, negative practicum
experiences, work intensification, low pay, student misbehavior and a lack of public respect” (p.
79). New teachers are often not prepared to face the stress, burnout, lack of support from their
principals, sleeplessness, and other issues related to the profession (Amschler & McKenzie,
2010; Gratz & Claffey, 1996). There has been a great deal of research done regarding the
challenges faced by new teachers (Djonko-Moore, 2016; Donaldson, 2009; Kelly, 2004; Stosich,
2016). The challenges include, but are not limited to, late hiring dates, student misbehavior,
inclusion of high populations of students with special needs, lack of time to prepare classrooms
or lessons, and many other difficulties that prevent them from becoming effective teachers. The
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goal of this study was to evaluate that population in order to ensure that SCUHSD was
adequately supporting its new teachers to be effective employees in the district.
Importance of the Study
It was important to evaluate the organization’s performance in relationship to the
performance goal of preparing their new teacher to be 100% effective teachers for
SCUHSD. Part of the SCHUHSD strategic plan includes hiring and retaining effective
teachers in order to ensure the success of their academic programs. Therefore, SCUHSD must
work to ensure that once a teacher is hired and achieves probationary or tenures status, that
he/she will be an effective teacher. The retention of effective teachers will ensure that
SCUHSD’s academic programs will continue to perform at high levels it has repeatedly
demonstrated. SCUHSD seeks to hire the best teachers possible; therefore, the district needs to
provide and environment that will meet the performance needs of all of its new teachers.
Table 1.
Organizational mission, global goal, and stakeholders’ goals
Organizational Mission

SCUHSD mission is to provide a world-class education that engages students, inspires achievement and
community services, and prepare them to become lifelong learners and accomplished members of society.
Performance Goal
SCUHSD new teachers will be 100% prepared to be effective teachers in the district.
SCUHSD Goal #1

By the end 2016-2017 school
year, SCUHSD would hire and
retain well-qualified teachers.
SCUHSD Goal #2

By the end 2016-2017 school
year, SCUHSD would revaluate their
induction program, professional
development, and observation process to
ensure they are preparing their teachers to be
100% effective.
SCUHSD Goal #3

By the end 2017-2018 school
year, SCUHSD would survey
their new teachers to assess
their perceptions of
preparedness and
effectiveness.

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Stakeholder for the Study and Stakeholder Performance Goal
The main focus of this study was teachers hired to work in SCUHSD for the 2016-2017
school years. The stakeholders’ goal was to be retained as teachers with SCUHSD. However, the
organizations’ goal for the stakeholders was that he/she would be 100% effective be the end
of his/her first year of employment with the district. This was important for the district and each
of its schools to maintain rigorous academic environments and meet state mandated scores
on the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) and SBAC
exams. Failure to accomplish these goals would diminish SCUHSD’s students’ scores on these
between 35 and 40 teachers during the 2016-2017 school year. Twelve of those teachers were
new teachers, having never worked for another public-school district before SCUHSD.
Purpose of the Project and Research Questions
The purpose of this project was to evaluate the degree to which the Southern California
Union High School District was meeting its goal of purposefully preparing new teachers to be
100% prepared to be effective teachers in the district. SCUHSD had repeatedly demonstrated
rigorous academic success. For example, SCUHSD students scored significantly better than
other students state-wide on the SBAC exams: 586 on Reading, 609 in Math, and 586 in
Writing (CDE.CA.GOV). These scores were nearly 100 points above the state-wide average in
each category. Therefore, SCUHSD must work to support the preparedness of their new teachers
to ensure that this academic success continues.
While a complete performance examination would have focused on all stakeholders, for
practical purposes the stakeholder group focused on in this analysis was 11 new secondary
teachers hired and employed by SCUHSD for the 2016-2017 academic year. As such, the
questions that guided this study were the following:
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1. What are new teachers’ perceptions of SCUHSD’s onboarding process to ensure they
would be 100% effective?
2. What are new teachers’ perceptions of the ongoing support provided by SCUHSD to
ensure they would be 100% effective?
Definitions
BTSA: BTSA is the Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment Program that was established by
the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CCTC) and the California Department of
Education (CDE).
SCUHSD: SCUHSD in the Southern California Union High School District, a middle and high
school district serving parts of Southern California.
Temporary Teacher: Someone who is employed at least one semester and up to one complete
school year without receiving probationary status.
Administrative Evaluation Cycle: Meetings/Observations that include a Planning Conference,
Evaluation, and Post Conference.
Professional Development: District developed professional learning events developed to assist in
improving teacher practices and improve in student learning.
Organization of the Study
This study is organized in five chapters. This chapter, Chapter One, provided the reader
with the key concepts and terminology commonly found in a discussion about hiring new
teachers and SCUHSD. The organization’s mission, goals and stakeholders as well as the initial
concepts of gap analysis were introduced. Chapter Two provides a review of current literature
surrounding the scope of the study. Topics of knowledge, motivation, and organizational issues
will be addressed. It also provides the interactive conceptual framework that guided the methods
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used for the study. Chapter Three details the methodology that was used to determine the study
sample, data collection, and analysis. Chapter Four includes the discussion of the results and
findings. The fifth and final chapter concludes the dissertation with a discussion of findings, and
recommendations for practice, policy, and further research.
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CHAPTER TWO: REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE
The purpose of this study was to examine the perceived effectiveness of the onboarding and
ongoing supports offered new teachers hired to work for Southern California Union High School
District. The research questions guiding this study were:
1. What are new teachers’ perceptions of SCUHSD’s onboarding process to ensure
they would be 100% effective?
2. What are new teachers’ perceptions of the ongoing support provided by SCUHSD
to ensure they would be 100% effective?
Ensuring that effective teachers were working in the district would allow SCUHSD and
its students to continue to demonstrate success on the CAASPP and SBAC exams, produce high
cohort graduation rates, perform well on the SAT and ACT exams, and support their
preparedness for success in 4-year universities and colleges. In order to answer the research
questions, the following bodies of literature were examined: educational literature specific to
teacher preparedness, paying special attention to knowledge and skills (K) and motivation (M) in
order to understand new teachers, and organizational (O) conditions, in order to understand the
role of the organization. First, I offer literature that is directly related to new teacher
preparedness. Then I turn my attention to an overview of KMO literature. Finally, I review
literature paying special attention to knowledge and skills and motivation factors that might
contribute to the ability of the new teachers to be effective classroom teachers, and
organizational conditions, in order to understand the role of the organization.
Literature Specific to Teacher Preparedness
The factors that inhibit first year teachers from becoming effective educators are many
(Dugas, 2016; Nourie, 2011; Smeaton & Waters, 2013). While their teacher preparation
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programs are expected to instill in them basic subject matter and pedagogical knowledge, new
teachers often face difficulty when they take ownership over the own classrooms (Onafowora,
2005). Many teacher training programs help develop knowledge regarding classroom
management, subject matter expertise, and legal ramifications of decisions; however, few
programs prepare teachers for the reality of what the profession truly entails (Curry & O’Brien,
2012). Graduates from teacher preparation programs often believe were not adequately prepared
to meet the needs of the students it their classrooms, despite the training they received in the pre-
service programs (Stanulis, Fallona, & Pearson, 2002). Terms used to describe the feelings of
those enduring the hardships of those first years include, “trial by fire,” “lost at sea,” and “sink or
swim” (Ingersoll & Strong, 2011). In fact, the challenges faced by new teachers is so
considerable that according to Ingersoll and Strong (2011), teaching is a profession that
“cannibalizes its young” (p. 3). Ingersoll and Strong (2011) indicate that between 40% and 50%
leave the profession within their 5 years of teaching. While these teachers may have been
motivated by their pre-service programs, many find that they are unable to become effective
teachers during those first years on the job. (Sinclair, 2008). First year teachers face the greatest
challenges and the most responsibilities compared to their colleagues who are more experienced
(Brock & Grady, 1997).
While they may possess the subject matter expertise to be an effective classroom teacher,
there are many other elements that act as impediments to becoming an effective educator during
those first years. Classroom management issues, late hiring, difficult scheduling assignments,
collegial climate, and other factors make becoming an effective classroom teacher during those
first years a considerable challenge (Pogodzinski, Youngs, & Frank, 2013; Smart & Igo, 2010;
Smeaton & Waters, 2013; Zepeda & Mayers, 2001). According to Fantilli and McDougall
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(2009), new teachers perceive that a lack of practical tasks in their pre-service programs and a
lack of subject specific professional development inhibit them from being effective teachers. A
failure to employ a hiring process that allows new teachers to be “hired and assigned to grades
with ample time to gain familiarity with the school and curriculum, set-up and organize their
classroom, and plan their first week” (p. 823) also contributes to their inability to be 100%
effective and prepared to teach the courses they were assigned.
Clark and Estes’s (2008) Organizational Problem Solving Framework
In order to analyze the extent to which new teachers hired in SCUHSD perceived
themselves to be prepared to be 100% effective teachers in the district, Clark and Estes’s gap
analysis was utilized. Gap analysis is an analytical method used to identify differences between
intended performance and actual performance within an organization (Clark & Estes, 2008). The
process begins with identifying organizations' goals. The next step is to determine the current
performance of the organization. This information was presented in Chapter 1. The next step
includes theorizing about possible causes for the deficiencies, then a gathering of information or
data. The final steps include identifying solutions and evaluating outcomes of the proposed
solutions. According to Rueda (2011), gap analysis offers an efficient way to identify and assess
goals, describe gaps in performance, and identify factors contributing to the performance levels.
New Teachers Knowledge and Motivation Influences
Knowledge and Skills
This literature review examines the knowledge-related influences that would be important
for the new teachers to SCUHSD to be 100% effective by the end of their first year of teaching
in the district. The literature is presented in terms of various knowledge types associated with
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perceived effectiveness. The various knowledge types listed below will be broken down this
section.
Knowledge types. This section focuses on three types of knowledge influences:
declarative knowledge influences, procedural knowledge influences, and metacognitive
knowledge influences. Declarative knowledge is factual knowledge, knowledge that can be
readily demonstrated on demand (Krathwohl, 2002). For example, asking a teacher what it
means to be effective is an example of declarative knowledge. Procedural knowledge, on the
other hand, is the understanding of how something is done, understanding the steps necessary to
complete a particular task or series of tasks (Krathwohl, 2002). For example, the knowledge of
the steps necessary take attendance or how to properly respond to a parent email is an example of
procedural knowledge. Metacognitive knowledge, or self-knowledge, refers to a person’s ability
to reflect on the knowledge he/she has obtained in an effort to improve or adjust his/her actions
(Krathwohl, 2002). For example, reflecting on a lesson or evaluating his/her own presentation of
a lab for students is an example of metacognitive knowledge.
Stakeholder knowledge influences. The purpose of this section it to examine literature
related to teacher training programs and the preparedness they offer to new teachers regarding
the realities of the teaching profession. Many teacher training programs are theory based,
analyzing learning styles of students, organizations of units of study, among other topics
(Shoffner, Brown, Pratt, Long, & Salyer, 2010). This section is broken up into the three types of
knowledge related to the teaching profession: declarative knowledge, procedural knowledge, and
metacognitive knowledge.
Declarative knowledge influences. In this section, I will review the literature that
indicates any declarative (i.e., factual or conceptual) knowledge that is relevant to new teachers’
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perceptions of how prepared they are. Declarative knowledge is factual information that can be
exhibited when necessary (Krathwohl, 2002).
There are many issues of declarative knowledge relevant to teacher preparedness
programs. While most teacher preparation programs focus on classroom management, subject
knowledge, and the pedagogical skills necessary to teach to diverse populations, little is taught
about the minutia of the day to day job (Curry & O’Brien, 2012). The conceptual knowledge
learned in their teacher preparation programs can often be difficult to implement once left to
work in their own classrooms—classroom often filled with behavioral issues, students with
special needs, students performing below grade level, and other issues associated with classroom
teaching. According to Harris et al. (2001), a major cause of job dissatisfaction amongst teachers
is the lack of lack of alignment between job expectations and job realities. Thus, while novices in
regards to pedagogy and best practices, many teachers are not equipped with the declarative
knowledge regarding how to implement that knowledge into their own classrooms (Smeaton &
Waters, 2013).
One of the biggest complaints amongst teachers is the amount of stress they face (Harris
2011). These stresses include the many demands on teachers, classroom management issues, lack
of parental involvement, bureaucratic frustrations, and myriad other complaints, none of which
new teachers are prepared for during their preservice training (Goldhaber & Cohen, 2014). This
lack of preparedness has had dramatic effect on teachers’ ability to create classroom
environments that are conducive to learning (Smeaton & Waters, 2013). While their preparation
programs helped them learn the main theories associated with teaching and learning, new
teachers can struggle with how to implement those ideas in their own classroom environments
(Shoffner et al., 2010).
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Procedural knowledge influences. In this section, I review the literature that indicates
procedural (i.e., information needed to perform a task) knowledge (Krathwohl, 2002) that is
relevant to perceptions of effectiveness of new teachers.
Teacher pre-service programs focus many procedural knowledge issues, including how to
properly arrange the physical aspects of a classroom, how to establish a fair and equitable
discipline policy, and other procedural skills necessary to properly teach and run a classroom
(Wong, 2001). They are then provided with the opportunities to implement these practices once
they are given their own classrooms. However, in addition to using the procedural knowledge
associated with effective teaching, teachers face many challenges each day—from physical
challenges, like heavy lifting, bending, and carrying, to the constant barrage of communicable
diseases, to other challenges like lengthy periods of time without bathroom breaks, all interfering
with their ability to be effective (Gratz & Claffey, 1996). While pre-service programs focus on
how to deal with theoretical aspects of the day-to-day activities involved with teaching, new
teachers are often unprepared to initiate those actions in their own classrooms.
Metacognitive knowledge influences. Metacognition is an important part of the learning
process (Baker, 2006). Metacognitive practices are not often a part of teacher preparedness
programs. Many universities require teachers to reflect on lessons, classroom management
practices, and other decisions. However, there is little emphasis on teachers reflecting on their
own health and wellbeing—aspects closely associated with their ability to be effective educators
(Amschler & McKenzie, 2010). Building time to reflect on a lesson, an activity, a day of
professional development would allow new teachers to be more introspective about their own
practice; however, new teachers are often overwhelmed by their day-to-day activities and
metacognition is not completed (Shoffner et al., 2010). They are not given time to evaluate their
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own abilities to be effective educators, to make changes and adapt lesson, classroom
management techniques, lesson organization. Instead, new teachers operate in survival mode,
often feeling isolated in their classrooms, unable to offer purposeful reflection on their actions
(Fantilli & McDougall, 2009; Shoffner et al., 2010).
Metacognitive influences could have a great effect on teacher perceived preparation to be
effective teachers. Harris (2011) argues a need for programs in Canada in teacher preparation
programs that include cognitive and perceptual, affective and emotional, physiological, and
behavioral wellbeing. While many education programs emphasize this method of metacognitive
reflection, very few new teachers are allotted time to reflect on their teaching (Harris, 2011).
Therefore, many teachers lack the time reflect on their pedagogical choices.
Motivation
In this section I review literature that focuses on motivation-related influences that would
be pertinent to the achievement of new teachers to SCUHSD being 100% effective at the end of
their first year teaching in the district. Motivation theory is significant and important because it
provides people with inspiration or desire to complete a specific task (Pintrich, 2001). For the
purpose of this literature review, I discuss two motivational theories: self-efficacy and goal
orientation theory.
Self-Efficacy. According to Pajaras (2009) self-efficacy is one of the necessary
components of motivation, welfare, and desire to work towards specific results. Without the
belief that a task can in fact be completed, people generally lack agency to pursue difficult or
challenging tasks (Pajaras, 2009). Self-efficacy influences thought processes, courses of action,
effort given to a specific task, amount of perseverance a person commits to a challenging task,
and the amount of stress one faces when dealing with challenging tasks (Bandura, 1997). Thus,
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self-efficacy plays a major role in motivation because a person needs to believe he/she is capable
of completing a specific task, otherwise he she will have little want and desire to do so.
Pre-service teachers and educators. Teacher efficacy has been defined as “The
teacher’s belief in his or her capability to organize and execute courses of action required to
successfully accomplish a specific teaching task in a particular context” (Tschannen-Moran,
Woolfolk Hoy, Hoy, 1998, p. 233). Teachers with higher levels of self-efficacy tend to be more
adventurous in their teaching methods, more apt to seek out methods of instructional
improvement, and experiment more with instructional strategies (Bray-Clark & Bates, 2003).
Because of the many demands associated with their profession, new teachers often suffer from
lower levels of self-efficacy leading to an absence of motivation, tiredness, and personal crises
(Gokce, 2010). New teachers are often motivated by their commitment to helping young people
learn, the freedoms often associated with teaching, and collegiality of their fellow teachers, they
can quickly become discouraged when facing the realities of the job (Sinclair, 2008). According
to Bray-Clark and Bates (2003),
efficacy beliefs can influence how hard and how long an individual will persevere at a
particular task, how resilient people will be when faced with obstacles, and the amount of
stress or anxiety they will experience in a given situation. (p. 15)
A specific issue related to self-efficacy is that many teachers begin their career as very motived
by the idea of teaching; however, the realities of teaching lead to less motivation over time
(Sinclair, 2008). In addition, teachers are often motivated by expectations on how well they
perform and the value placed on their profession (Visser-Wijnveen, Stes, & Van Petegem, 2014).
This is often diminished by the realities of the profession. According to Anthony and Ord (2008),
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teachers begin the profession with admirable goals, however, these goals are often diminished by
low pay, lack of resources, and many of the other stressors associated with the profession.
According to Skaalviks and Skaalvik (2010), teachers with higher levels of self-efficacy
are more like to be able to deal with the many stressors associated with teaching. However, very
few pre-service programs include self-efficacy training in their curriculum. Thus, teachers who
lack the proper training in self-efficacy may lack the mental health skills necessary to deal with
the challenges of being a classroom teacher, affecting the perception of their own preparedness.
According to Sinclair (2008), teachers are motivated by similar things: a desire to work with
students, an altruistic goal of making a difference, and the influence of family members or
influential teachers from their past. While their motivation is sound, they are not prepared to face
the realities of the job that include long hours, student discipline issues, lack of control over their
environment, and many other challenges. The discrepancies between their motivation to become
teachers and the realities of the profession can lead to a perceived lack of preparedness to
become and effective teacher (Gokce, 2010).
Goal orientation. Another important motivating factor for teachers is goal orientation.
Goal orientation focuses on reasons why people choose to engage in a particular activity (Yough
& Anderman, 2006). According to Yough and Anderman, (2006), focusing on mastering a
practice, development, knowledge, and improvement promotes motivation. While many teacher
education programs focus on mastery of subject matter knowledge, classroom management
policies, and other related matters, new teachers often struggle to implement effective
instructional techniques during their first years of instruction due to extraneous influences like
student behavior, lack of resources, and other factors (Nourie, 2011). For the purpose of this
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study, mastery goals, when a person’s goal is to master a task, and performance goals, when a
person compares his/her performance to others (Yough & Anderman, 2006), were relevant.
Pre-Service teachers and educators. According to Eyal and Roth (2011), teachers are
often motivated by setting goals. These goals are often professional in nature, such as earning
tenure, becoming department chair, or receiving accolades for their teaching. According to
Gultekin and Acar (2014), teachers need to be encouraged to improve their own skills. In
addition, teachers need to be encouraged to focus on and address issues that affect their teaching,
like a lack of clearly established classroom procedures or misunderstanding of the
implementation of new standards for instruction. Teachers need to be encouraged to learn and
practice new pedagogical skills (Gultekin & Acar, 2014).
Organizational Conditions
While knowledge and motivation certainly affect worker performance, organizations also
directly impact employee performance (Clark & Estes, 2008). From the resources they provide,
to the values they cultivate, to the process regarding how work should be completed,
organizations greatly affect the lives of their employees (Clark & Estes, 2008). One of the
biggest factors affected by organizations is the culture they cultivate. According to Clark and
Estes (2008), culture describes “the core values, goals, beliefs, emotions, and processes learned
as people develop over time in our work environments” (p. 108). While some of these cultural
practices can be overt, like establishing a mission statement or hours associated with the
workday, other can be covert or hidden and also have a significant impact on the performance of
individuals within an organization (Schien, 1990). These covert or hidden cultural norms can
often be difficult to quantify; however, they can have a major impact on employee
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performance. Therefore, understanding the way in which an organization impacts employee
performance is often a difficult task.
Once a culture is established within an organization, it is often passed down from one
generation to the next, affecting each subsequent group of employees entering the workplace
(Schien, 1990). Therefore, monitoring and evaluating the impact that an organization has on the
culture of their employees is a crucial aspect of organizational change. The cultural values of an
organization can become automated, meaning that employees become so used to invisible or
covert norms that they begin to take precedence over time (Clark & Estes, 2008). These patterns
may include when employees arrive to work (before or after required hours), when they leave
work (before or after required hours), whether or not employees work through lunch, or bring
work home with them in the evening. Once covert norms are established, they can be difficult
and slow to change (Clark & Estes, 2008).
Schools as Organizations
In the case of educational organizations, superintendents, principals, and other
administrators play a significant role in the organization’s impact on employee performance.
According to Eyal and Roth (2011), principals can provide autonomy to teachers and help
develop environments that are supportive for teachers. Leaders of educational organizations are
often responsible for establishing overt cultural norms and behaviors when leading schools:
developing bell schedules, arrange master schedules, deciding budgetary priorities. While these
factors contribute to teacher stress and burnout, there are other factors that organizational leaders
can do to help improve teachers’ perception of their ability to become effective teachers (Eyal &
Roth, 2011)
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There are a number of organizational cultural influences that affect teachers’ perceived
preparedness. According to Schien (1990), cultural norms, beliefs, and values, can become
pervasive, “And, as they continue to work, they gradually become transformed into
nondiscussible assumptions supported by articulated sets of beliefs, norms, and operational rules
of behavior” (p. 29). At schools, these cultural norms and beliefs include teachers working
beyond their assigned hours, working at home, coming to work when sick, suffering from
sleeplessness and other sleep problems, and increased consumption of alcohol (Amschler &
McKenzie, 2010). While the organizations themselves would not likely support these behaviors,
many teachers subscribe to them because they are a part of the organizational culture of the
organization (Knoblauch & Woolfolk Hoy, 2008).
One of the largest organizational factors affecting new teachers is the Beginning Teacher
Support and Assessment (BTSA) program. This program was developed in 1992 with a goal for
teachers new to the profession to “expand, enrich and deepen their teaching knowledge and skill
through collegial reflection as well as continued instruction and study” (Lovo, Cavazos, &
Simmons, 2006, p. 54). According to Lovo et al. (2006), “the BTSA program was designed to
provide a smooth transition into the complex responsibilities of teaching, seeking to increase the
retention of beginning teachers and improve learning opportunities for their K-12 students” (p.
54). While BTSA can serve as a purposeful means of retaining teachers in the profession, its
effectiveness can be limited by organizational factors such as overcrowded schools, schools with
large and impersonal staffs, and weak leadership (WestEd, 2003).

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Conceptual Framework: The Interaction of Stakeholder’s Knowledge and Motivation and
the Organization Context
A conceptual framework acts as a framework for a study, establishing a relationship
between the concepts and influences related to a given problem of practice (Maxwell, 2013).
Also referred to as a theoretical framework, it provides a frame for the study, guiding the
examination of the research questions (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). The conceptual framework for
this study brings together the organizational, stakeholder knowledge, and stakeholder
motivational influences to examine the interaction between them. According to Maxwell (2013),
the conceptual framework “inform[s] the rest of your design—to help you to assess and refine
your goals, develop realistic and relevant research questions, select appropriate methods, and
identify potential validity threats to your conclusions” (p. 39). The conceptual framework
represented in Figure 1. was the guiding force behind this study, allowing for a detailed
examination of the research question. To answer this research question, I analyzed the perceived
preparedness of teachers new to SCUHSD, specifically focusing on their knowledge and
motivation, as well as organizational conditions related to them becoming effective teachers in
the district. In addition, the study sought to examine how new teachers’ experiences provided
insight into the organizational elements of SCUHSD contributed to or inhibited the achievement
of the organizational goal of recruiting, selecting, and retaining highly qualified employees, and
staffing their schools with accomplished educators.
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Figure 1. Interactive Conceptual Framework
The conceptual framework above includes declarative and procedural knowledge,
metacognition, goal orientation and self-efficacy. I argued that in order for new teachers to be
effective in SCUHSD they had to have knowledge of the many procedures associated with
employment with the district. According to Ingersoll and Strong (2011), “teaching is complex
work, that preemployment teacher preparation is rarely sufficient to provide all of the knowledge
and skill necessary to successful teaching, and that significant portion can only be acquired while
on the job” (p. 3). By the end of their first year, at minimum, new teachers to SCUHSD are
expected to be knowledgeable about the organizational procedures of their school and have a
working knowledge of their campus environment. These organizational procedures and
declarative knowledge include, but are not limited to, taking attendance, proper email protocol,
meeting attendance (district-wide professional development, IEP meetings, 504 meetings,
professional learning community meetings), proper parent communication, completing district
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and state mandated trainings, grading requirements, and other procedures (A. Principal, personal
communication, June 5, 2016). I asserted that these organizational elements interact with the new
teachers’ knowledge of how to successfully navigate the many procedures associated with
teaching for SCUHSD. The organization provides some of the procedural information via the
district’s BTSA induction program; however, much of the information is expected knowledge to
have been obtained via the teachers’ preparation programs (SDUHSD BTSA Coordinator,
personal communication, June 5,2016). According to Ingersoll and Strong (2011), “there is a role
for schools in providing an environment where novices are able to learn the craft and survive and
succeed as teachers” (p. 4). Drawing from Bowsher, Sparks, and Hoyer (2018), I argued that new
teachers must acquire this procedural knowledge if they are going to be 100% prepared to be
effective teachers in the district. New teachers should also be metacognitive, reflecting on the
knowledge they possess and the means to properly obtain that necessary knowledge. If the
SCUHSD were to encourage and promote metacognition amongst its new times, to provide time
for and promote it, the likelihood that the teacher would be better prepared to be effective would
likely increase. If teachers were given time to evaluate their own their lessons, their coursework,
their responses to a classroom management issue or a difficult parent interaction, that reflection
may afford them the chance to improve their teaching and pedagogical practices in many
different ways.
In addition to the procedural knowledge associated with working for SCUHSD, new
teachers must also be motivated by goal-orientation—they must possess the motivation and
desire to be effective teachers in the district. Many new teachers base their knowledge on the
teaching profession based on their scholastic experiences, their teacher preparation programs,
and their student teaching (Pogodzinski et al., 2013). Yet the realities of the profession often do
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not match their perceptions (Curry & O’Brien, 2012). New teacher must be focused on mastering
their craft, becoming effective at classroom management, and developing subject-matter
expertise (Yough & Anderman, 2006). In addition, new teachers should also focus on goal
setting: earning tenure, becoming department chair, or earning accolades for their teaching. With
this in mind, if SCUHSD focused on teachers developing self-specific goals, through
professional development, BTSA, or the administrative evaluation cycle, then teachers may
spend more time seeking out subject-specific PD, participating more actively in BTSA, and
engaging in the evaluation cycle in order to achieve their own goals.
The cultural settings, models, and norms within SCUHSD impact the declarative and
procedural knowledge, metacognition, goal orientation and self-efficacy of their new teachers.
Teachers new to SCUHSD are expected to engage their students, to meet their copious
professional obligations (attendance, paperwork, evaluations, IEP/504 meetings, state obligated
reporting, professional development and in-services), and to excel in the six areas of evaluation
set forth by the California Standards for the Teaching Profession:
1. Engaging and supporting all students in learning
2. Creating and maintaining effective environments for student learning,
3. Understanding an organizing subject matter for student learning,
4. Planning instruction and designing learning experiences for all students,
5. Assessing students for learning,
6. and Developing as a professional educator. (California Standards for the Teaching
Profession, 2009, p. 5)
The obligations of the new teachers are aplenty and how SCUHSD emphasizes the
importance of these obligations have a direct impact on a teacher’s knowledge and motivation.
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Therefore, as an organization SCUHSD should seek to develop onboarding and ongoing supports
to help ensure that new teachers will be prepared to be 100% effective. As it stands, the district
makes decisions regarding class schedules not based on their actual knowledge of the teachers or
the teacher's abilities, but instead based on the district's perceived knowledge of the teachers as
well as needs of the master schedule. New teachers then found themselves unprepared to teach
the classes they were assigned or, in some cases, completely unfamiliar with the appropriate
curriculum to best meet the needs of their students. If SCUHSD were to gather additional
information about the teachers, their subject matter expertise, their ability to meet the subject
matter standards, as well as their ability to effectively manage their classroom or deal with
difficult parents, then the teachers would be better prepared to be 100% effective.
My conceptual framework brought together the stakeholder goals and organizational
elements to study how they interact and affect new teachers’ ability to be 100% effective in the
district. It combines literature on teacher preparedness and knowledge and represents my theory
of how these components interact and influence new teachers to SCUHSD. This conceptual
framework was the foundation of my study and it was used to develop interview protocols and
for the coding and analysis that took place after the interviews. It acted as the guide for my study
as I sought to understand new teachers’ abilities to be effective in SCUHSD.
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CHAPTER THREE: METHODS
Purpose of the Project
The purpose of this study was to examine the perceived effectiveness of the onboarding
and ongoing supports offered new teachers hired to work for Southern California Union High
School District. The challenges of new teachers are well documented (Dugas, 2016; Nourie,
2011; Smeaton & Waters, 2013). They face issues of classroom management, lack of time to
prepare their classrooms or lesson plan, and difficulties implementing new and effective
instructional methods, despite the training they received in the pre-service programs (Stanulis,
Fallona, & Pearson, 2002). Therefore, SCUHSD must understand new teachers’ perceptions of
the onboarding and support provided to them so that they could become 100% effective by the
end of their first year. Having effective teachers allows SCUHSD and its students to continue to
perform at the exceptional academic standards as measured by CAASPP, cohort graduation rates,
SAT and ACT scores, and other measurements.
Research Questions
Among the many causes of teacher attrition, the question was whether teachers were
adequately prepared for the realities of the teaching profession. This study set out to answer the
following research questions:
1. What are new teachers’ perceptions of SCUHSD’s onboarding process to ensure they
would be 100% effective?
2. What are new teachers’ perceptions of the ongoing support provided by SCUHSD to
ensure they would be 100% effective?

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Participating Stakeholders
The purpose of this study was to understand new teachers’ perceptions of the Southern
California Union High School District’s onboarding and support process and the ways the
district positioned them to become 100% effective by the end of their first year. Therefore, the
stakeholder group for this study was new teachers hired to work in SCUHSD for the 2016-
2017 school years. These teachers were new to the profession, having recently completed the
preliminary work for a single subject teaching credential in the State of California. In order to
participate in this study, the SCUHSD had to be the first public school district the new teachers
had been employed by. As such, this study used convenient sampling of this stakeholder
group. All of the teachers included in this study were participating in the district’s three-tier
supports for new teachers: The California Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment (BTSA)
induction program, district led professional development (PD), and the administrative evaluation
cycle using The California Standards for the Teaching Profession (CTSP) as their measurement
of effective teaching.
Interview Sampling Criteria and Rationale
Criterion 1. All new SCUHSD participate in BTSA Induction as a part of their three-tier
ongoing supports. Therefore, in order to best facilitate this study, volunteers from the teachers
participating in BTSA in SCUHSD participated in the interviews. Asking for volunteers
ensured that the teachers did not feel intimidated and forced to participate in the study, therefore
allowing them to speak freely.
Criterion 2. In order to participate in the study, the teachers had to have been hired for
the 2016-2017 school year. This ensured that the teachers were new to the profession and
SCUHSD. My sampled included first year teachers.
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Criterion 3. Teachers had to be new to the teaching profession, having not taught in a
previous public-school district (beyond their student teaching).
Interview Sampling (Recruitment) Strategy and Rationale
This study used qualitative, open-ended, semi-structured interviews. The main criterion
for the sampling was new teachers for which SCUHSD was the first place of educational
employment. I sought to enlist new teachers to SCUHSD who participated in BTSA to
participate in interviews in order to discuss their feelings and experiences regarding their
perceived preparedness to work in SCUHSD. I only included teachers newly hired to the district
for the 2016-2017. As a part of my initial outreach and in order to recruit volunteers, I briefly
spoke at a BTSA meeting after school. I explained the project, the research questions, and the
importance of the study. I informed each potential volunteer that his/her participation was
voluntary and not participating would have no negative impact on his/her employment. I asked
for names and email addresses of volunteers willing to participate in the study. All but one the 12
new SCUHSD teachers agreed to participate. The number of total participants was 11. Of the 11
participants, 8 were assigned to teach high school and 3 were assigned to teach at the middle
school level. Of the 11 teachers, two taught mathematics, two taught social science, two were
special education (SPED) teachers, two taught science, one taught foreign language, and one
taught multiple courses.

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Table 2.
List of participants, their subjects, and the content of the classes.
Name School/Grade Subject

Avery Middle School Mathematics
Camryn Middle School Business, Robotics, Electives
Harper Middle School Foreign Language
Nicole Middle School/High School SPED

Cassidy High School SPED
Cooper High School Mathematics
Holden High School Social Science
James High School Science
Jordyn High School Science
William High School Visual and Performing Arts
Taylor High School Social Science

Data Collection and Instrumentation
The data collection for this study followed a basic qualitative research model. This
allowed me to gather information about new teachers’ perceptions of the district’s approach to
onboarding and support in relation to their abilities to be 100% effective teachers for SCUHSD
(Merriam & Tisdell, 2009). The primary means of data collection for this study was interviews.
For more detailed information, one on one interviews were conducted with participants to gather
more data about his/her experiences working as a new teacher with Southern California Union
High School district. Because of each of the new teachers had differing experiences (based on
where they taught, their age, their experience in their teaching credential program), one on one
interviews allowed for a richer data set to explore how each of these new teachers was dealing
with the various experiences they faced as a new teacher to the district. The interviews were
conducted at different school sites throughout SCUHSD, including middle and high schools. The
interviews lasted between 25 and 60 minutes.
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Interviews
For this study, new teachers were informally interviewed once to collect data and
information about their perceptions of the district’s efforts to onboard and support them so that
they would be effective teachers for SCUHSD. Before each interview I reminded the participants
that I was there to interview them as a researcher for the University of Southern California, not
as an employee for SCUHSD. The interviews were conducted at various school sites around
the district. For the purpose of data collection, the interviews were semi-structured and lasted
between 25 and 60 minutes. The semi-structured method was selected because it allowed the
participants to expand upon their answers and to provide details about their unique experiences
working with SCUHSD (Merriam & Tisdell, 2009). The interview questions for this study were
composed by drawing from the Conceptual Framework introduced in Chapter Two. The
questions addressed new teachers’ pre-service qualifications (where they received their teaching
credential and where the conducted their student teaching), the reasoning behind seeking
employment with SCUHSD, how well prepared they feel to meet the needs of the students in
their classrooms, challenges and difficulties they have faced during their first year of teaching,
influence of BTSA, professional development, and the observation process on their perceived
preparedness to be effective teachers, and other questions related to their experiences with the
district (see Appendix A). All interviews were recorded and transcribed with the permission of
the participants using a third-party application. Transcriptions were backread for errors in
transcription using the initial recording.
Data Analysis
Once the data was collected, I engaged in multiple phases of analysis. First, with the
interviews complete, I used a third-party service for transcription of the interview recordings.
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While waiting for the transcriptions to be completed, I then composed reflective memos to
develop ideas or concepts that I wanted to evaluate in future interviews (Harding, 2003). I used
the memos to record my initial thoughts, ideas, and opinions about the interview. These data
memos allowed me to keep a brief but purposeful analysis as I begin to develop my theory
(Harding, 2003).
Once the transcriptions were complete, I reread the interviews with the transcriptions to
ensure there were no errors or portions of the recording that were not audible to the transcribers.
All the names of schools, participants, or other SCUHSD were omitted, helping to ensure the
anonymity of the participants. I used many of Corbin and Strauss’ (2008) analytical techniques
as I reviewed data and develop my codebook. These techniques included drawing upon personal
experience, looking at language, and other analytical tools (Corbin & Strauss, 2008). This
analysis helped me to identify trends within the various interviews that I was analyzing. With the
interviews transcribed and reviewed, I began open coding. During open coding I looked for
trends, repetition of ideas and conceptual themes, and motifs (Harding, 2003). These codes
allowed me to visually retrieve and sort data in order to assist with data analysis (Miles,
Huberman, & Saldaña, 2014). During open code I sought to identify in vivo codes as they
appeared in the interviews. These in vivo codes included “I struggled with,” “I wish there had
been more,” “challenges,” and “difficult.” Once I established my in vivo codes, I examined the
interviews for a priori codes, using the conceptual framework as my guide. I began using a priori
codes, such as “BTSA,” “evaluations,” “district office,” “mentors,” “discipline,” “professional
development,” and “support.” With the a priori codes established, I used a web service to create
a “Wordle,” a visual word cloud of the most commonly used words in the interviews. The
Wordle created a visual representation of the interviews, allowing me to visually see patterns of
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repeated words in a one-page image and helped me with axial coding. These phases of analysis
helped me to establish my codebook.
With the codes developed, I will then begin to create my codebook to be used in the
analysis of future interviews. This codebook was helpful as I begin to establish theories
connected to my conceptual framework. I sought connections between my organization and my
stakeholders, focusing on potential knowledge and motivation issues connected with both. With
the codebook complete, and multiple interviews transcribed, I will then begin to use my
codebook to establish findings. For each of the interviews I composed an analytic memo.
These memos allowed me to briefly summarize each memo, highlight the motifs, patterns, and
codes present in each interview. These memos acted as a concise review of each interview and
allowed me to begin making specific connections between my research questions, my conceptual
framework, my codebook, and the beginning stages of my analysis and findings (Miles et al.,
2014). With the analytical memos completed, I then put my axial codes into a correlation chart,
using each of the interviews to demonstrate the way in which each participant relates to the
identified themes. The correlation chart allowed me to cross reference participants and themes,
further solidifying connections between the participants’ interviews. The correlation chart
assisted me in establishing the themes and findings for this study.
Credibility and Trustworthiness
In order to ensure the credibility of this study, I sought only volunteers for participation,
did not offer initial incentives for participation, and reminded and ensured that all participants
could have suspend their participation in the study at any time without consequences. In addition,
I also received permission to use a third-party service to record and transcribe all of the
interviews. In order to increase validity, I conducted member checks during each of the
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interviews. According to Maxwell (2013), member checks are the “single most important way of
ruling out the possibility of misinterpreting the meaning of what participants say and do” (p.
126). This allowed me to validate respondents’ answers and seek clarification in an effort to
ensure accurate answer from interviewees during the interviews (Merriam & Tisdell, 2009). In
order to ensure accuracy of the data collection, I recorded each of the interviews. Once recorded,
interviews were transcribed into written form using a third-party application. I then backchecked
the interviews with the transcriptions to ensure the accuracy of the transcriptions.
Throughout the research process I was careful to consider my role in SCUHSD. Because
I am member of this community, (I am former teacher in the district and an acting assistant
principal for one of the comprehensive high schools within SCUHSD), I consistently reminded
myself of my biases. In order to identify and reflect on my own biases, I used reflexivity.
According to Merriam and Tisdell, (2009), reflexivity is the recognition of the influence the
researcher has on the study, and how the research affects the researcher. Reflexivity helped me to
recognize my own biases and focus only on the how the interviewees’ answers relate to my
research questions (Merriam & Tisdell, 2009). I listened closely and gathered my data through
the position of the insider/outsider. I consistently reminded my interviewees and myself that I
was there to conduct research and collect data, not in the role of assistant principal or district
official. This helped to mitigate questions of bias (Maxwell, 2013; Merriam & Tisdell, 2016).
While my role in the district provided me access to this group of participants, I wanted to be sure
to understand that their experiences are unique to them and not a reflection of my own
experiences and biases.
Having worked with new SCUHSD teachers in a variety of capacities, both as a
department chair and as an assistant principal, I had extensive knowledge about the experiences
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of teachers new to the district. According to Maxwell (2013), this is both beneficial and
challenging to the research process. While it would be impossible for me to eliminate my prior
knowledge, influence, and biases, I did my best to mitigate them and to understand how they
may impact me and the participants (Maxwell, 2013). To assist with this, I had to work to
actively listen to my participants, to not consider their answers through my own experiences or
the experiences of other new SCUSHD teachers. For example, I have been a part of many
interviews during my tenure with SCUHSD; however, I had to work with myself to not
impose my opinions about the interview process (the number of people on each panel, the
questions asked, etc.) while the participants were answering. While my own experiences help me
to relate to theirs, I did not disclose this information during the interviews.
During the research process I had to continuously remind myself about my role in the
district and to not allow my role to inhibit my data analysis. Because the district is small, I know
many of the administrators and teachers at the school sites where my interviewees worked. When
I arrived at the school sites for interviews, I would not share with site administration the name of
the teacher I was there to interview. Instead, I would remind them of my role in keeping the
participants confidential and would refer to the participating teacher using non-identifiable
language. I also had to remind myself that I would meet with these people (site administrators)
socially, in professional settings, and in various other capacities. I had to remind myself to
protect the confidentiality of my study participants even after the data collection was complete,
that the participants’ opinions were presented for me to help with data collection and analysis,
not fodder for a social conversation. I also reminded participants that I would not hold my
feelings for their superiors or their colleagues against them, and I made that clear at the start and
the finish of each interview. This was particularly important during my interviews, as there were
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a series of questions about the administrative evaluation cycle. When drafting my interview
protocols, I was careful to develop those questions so that they would not force the participant to
cast judgment on their perceived judgment on the quality of their administrator. I hoped that this
decision would allow the participant to provide candid and honest answers while not influencing
the participant to hold back or refrain from an honest response to a question.
In addition, I had to take into account that these new teachers might one day be my
subordinates, as teachers often shift sites from campus to campus during their first years
teaching. Therefore, I consistently reminded myself and my interviewees that I was there acting
in the capacity of a researcher, and that their opinions would not be held against them. I also
worked to ensure that my colleagues, those in leadership positions, were no privy to names of the
participants or any of the data or analysis until the study is complete and published. I protected
the identity of the interviewees the best of my ability, ensuring them repeatedly that their
opinions do not have an effect on their employment. In order to also ensure that I was not
imposing my personal perspective onto the respondents’ interviews, I wrote reflective memos
after each interview, allowing me to provide a quick summary of the interview and to begin my
initial phases of analysis. In order to peer review my data, I regularly worked with my
dissertation chair during the analysis phase of this study. Feedback from my chair helped me
to distinguish my personal perspectives from the perspectives of the participants and really hear
their voices in the interviews.
Ethics
As a researcher seeking to gather information about specific research questions, I made
ethical choices when conducting my study in order to protect the participants in the study and to
protect the validity of the data (Glense, 2011). Because the data collection entailed interviews, I
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provided all participants with informed consent forms. These forms ensured that all participants
understood and agreed that their participation in the study was voluntary, that their answers
would be kept confidential, and they could withdraw from the study at any point without any
consequence. In order to ensure the safety of participants, I submitted the details of my study to
the University of Southern California Institutional Review Board (IRB) and the study was
approved. I also abided by all rules and regulations regarding the rights of those choosing to
participate in the study. Each participant will sign a consent form prior to the study commencing.
In addition, I reminded participants before each interview that their participation in the
study was voluntary and that their identities would be kept confidential. I received from each
participant permission to audio record interviews prior to the interviews occurring.
Participants were also reminded that I offered no incentives to coerce them into participation in
the study. At the conclusion of the study I provided a hand written thank you card to each
participant thank them for their participation in the study. The lack of incentives helped to ensure
that participants were not coerced to participate and the thank you card acknowledged that their
time and participation were appreciated.
At the time of the study, I was the assistant principal for one of the highs schools in
Southern California Union High School District. Because of my position, I did not seek to
include new teachers from the high school where I worked as to avoid perceived coercion due to
my leadership role. Another ethical issue that I considered was the presentation of my data.
Because I am an administrator in the district, I could seek to gain from the research I conducted.
The research could prove helpful for the district and could be used to improve their practice in
onboarding and ongoing supports for new SCUHSD teachers. With this in mind, it was necessary
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for me to continually respect my participants and remember my role as a researcher for the
University of Southern California when discussing the data and the research process.
Limitations and Delimitations
The main limitation of this study was the number of participants who chose to contribute
their personal information to the study. The precise number of new teachers hired by SCUHSD
for the 2016-2017 school year was small and for credibility and ethical reasons, I did not
interview teachers from my current school site. Therefore, I did not know the exact number of
possible participants until this information is finalized at the start of the 2015-2016 school year.
Also, new teachers are very, very busy and I was very cognizant of adding an additional task for
the new teachers to complete. In order to mitigate this limitation, I met with teachers at their
convenience: before school, after school, during their prep. periods, during their lunch, in order
to best meet their scheduling needs.
In addition, I also had to consider my role as an assistant principal as a limitation, as
participants may not have been forthcoming, as they may have believed their responses might
have an impact on their employment. In order to address this concern, I repeatedly reminded
participants that I was there working in the capacity of a researcher for the University of
Southern California. I used my USC email address for all communications, met with participants
at their school sites, and even refrained from wearing attire connected with my school site in
order to emphasize my role as a researcher and not an assistant principal.
Finally, as a novice researcher, there were plenty of mistakes that I may have made. For
example, I may have produced an interview protocol that did not address my research questions
as thoroughly as I expected. In addition, I could have asked better follow up questions, allowing
the participants to respond to some questions more thoroughly, providing me with additional data
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to address the research questions. Upon reflection, I wish I would have spent more time
developing my research questions and better aligned my interview protocol to support them. In
hindsight, while the interviews provided rich data, an analysis of that data lead to a few revisions
of the research questions for this study. Such mistakes may have provided little or no beneficial
data. In addition, because I was a novice researcher, I may have made mistakes in the initial data
analysis, missing data or misinterpreting data. In order to react to this, I conducted a thorough
analysis of the data, conducting coding and analysis at multiple levels in order to ensure my
findings and themes were accurate.
Conclusion
The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine the perceived effectiveness of the
onboarding and ongoing supports offered new teachers hired to work for Southern California
Union High School District. This chapter described the design of the study, described the
criterion for participation, and identified the methodology used in conducting the study. This
chapter also described how the data was collected and the steps used in data analysis. Also
provided were the process used to maintain credibility and trustworthiness, as well as mitigate
any ethical concerns. Finally, the chapter addressed limitations and delimitations. The
methodologies discussed in this chapter were chosen to support the study's purpose in evaluating
the perceived effectiveness of the onboarding and ongoing supports offered new teachers hired to
work for Southern California Union High School District. The next chapter discusses the results
and findings of this study.

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CHAPTER FOUR: RESULTS AND FINDINGS
The purpose of this study was to examine the perceived effectiveness of the onboarding
and ongoing supports offered new teachers hired to work for Southern California Union High
School District. Eleven probationary teachers, new to the district and new to public education,
were interviewed using a semi-structured open-ended interview protocol. Both middle and high
school teachers were included in this study. All of the teachers included in this study were
participating in the district’s three-tier supports for new teachers: The California Beginning
Teacher Support and Assessment (BTSA) induction program, district led professional
development (PD), and the administrative evaluation cycle using The California Standards for
the Teaching Profession (CTSP) as their measurement of effective teaching.
The research questions that guided this study were:
1. What are new teachers’ perceptions of SCUHSD’s onboarding process to ensure they
would be 100% effective?
2. What are new teachers’ perceptions of the ongoing support provided by SCUHSD to
ensure they would be 100% effective?
For the purpose of this study, an effective teacher was defined as how well prepared they were
to:
1. Demonstrate subject matter expertise.
2. Teach their assigned classes.
3. Handle classroom management or disciplinary issues.
4. Effectively communicate with parents, guardians, or other educational rights holders.
5. Differentiate instruction for all students, including SPED, 504s, EL, etc.
6. Utilize various effective pedagogical techniques during classroom instruction.
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7. Meet the subject specific subject standards (re: Common Core State Standards, Next
Generation Science Standards, History–Social Science Framework for California
Public Schools, etc.).
8. Consistently use formative and summative data to assess students and inform
instruction.
The interviews of the 11 probationary teachers revealed that while new teachers had
various motivators for wanting to work in the district, the district’s onboarding and ongoing
supports did not foster their ability to be 100% prepared to be effective in the district. More
specifically, two findings emerged from the data. The first related to the approach taken by the
district to onboard teachers. The four themes that emerged were: The district did not set new
teachers up for success because new teachers were not assigned classes that were consistent with
their content knowledge and skills. SCUSHD did not attend to the new teachers’ perceptions
about what they needed in order to be successful. New teachers had little to no say in their class
schedules. Second, new teachers did not believe they were prepared to teach the classes they
were assigned. Third, new teachers did not perceive themselves to be fully prepared to work with
difficult students, leading to difficulties with classroom management. And finally, new teachers
were unprepared to deal with demanding or pushy parents, leading to difficult interactions with
parents.
The second finding to emerge related to teachers’ perceptions of the way the district
provided them with ongoing support and their perceptions of their ability to develop the skills
needed to be effective with their students and the parent community. This finding is reflected in
the types of professional development they were afforded through BTSA and district led
professional development. The themes related to this finding are: First, according to the new
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teachers, the most effective aspect of the BTSA program to support new teachers was the mentor
program led by the district’s BTSA Support Providers. Second, while the district offered district-
led professional development, few probationary teachers believed it was a good ongoing support
to help them become an effective teacher. And third, teachers had mixed impressions regarding
the effectiveness of their participation in the administrative evaluation cycle. I will address each
of these findings and themes in the following pages.
Finding One: New Teachers did not Experience the District’s Onboarding
Process as Setting Them up to be 100% effective by the End of the First Year
The first finding to emerge from the data is directly responsive to research question 1:
What are new teachers’ perceptions of SCUHSD’s onboarding process to ensure they would be
100% effective? The first theme that was revealed is that new teachers communicated that the
district’s approach to placing them in schools set them up for significant challenges and not for
certain success. The second theme to emerge was that teachers were often unprepared to teach
the classes they were assigned leading to difficulties struggling with the curriculum and the
learning needs of their students. The third theme to emerge was that new teachers did not believe
they were prepared to deal with difficult students, leading to issues with classroom management.
The fourth theme to emerge from this finding was that new SCUHSD teachers did not see
themselves as prepared to deal with difficult parents, leading to challenging parental interactions.
These four themes, discussed below, emerged from this finding with regard to how SCUHSD’s
onboard process prepared new teachers to be 100% effective.
Theme 1: Class Schedules Did Not Position Temporary Teachers for Success
The first theme that emerged is that Southern California Union High School District
did not position new teachers for success because new teachers were not assigned classes that
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were consistent with their content knowledge and skills. Southern California Union High
School District hired probationary teachers by subject. For example, they hosted separate
interviews for mathematics, English, social science, foreign languages, and so on. This
allowed SCUHSD to sort applicants by their teaching credentials. While a single subject teaching
credential offered SCUHSD some evidence of an applicant’s subject matter expertise, it did not
take into account the varying levels of expertise required within specific subjects. For example,
in the English Language Arts, a teacher might have been asked to teach remediation courses,
college preparation classes, or Advanced Placement courses. The same was true for other
subjects, such as mathematics, where a teacher might be asked to teach everything from algebra,
to statistics, to geometry, to calculus, to trigonometry, to basic addition and subtraction. It all
depended on the courses a teacher was assigned. Of the 11 teachers interviewed for this study, 8
of the 11indicated that their class schedules did not position them for success. Therefore, 73% of
new SCUHSD teachers started the year without being positioned for success.
Teachers were hired based on their teaching credential and assigned to teach classes that
were not necessarily consistent with their specific content knowledge and skills. For instance, the
district did not investigate new teachers’ own understanding of the grade level or classes they
would be best positioned to teach and they had little to no say in the classes they were assigned
to teach. One example of the process used to determine which courses new teachers would teach
is reflected in James’ statements regarding the way his teaching options were presented to him
during his hiring interview. When asked about whether he would like to teach middle or high
school, James said, “The correct answer, which was any, and then I was also asked a question,
‘Would you teach AP?’ I said, ‘Sure.’” Here, James indicated that he did not believe he was free
to communicate the grade level he thought he was best positioned to teach but rather that he had
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to communicate a “correct answer,” and that answer was “any” grade level that the district
believed he should be teaching. Moreover, he was not asked whether he believed he was
qualified to teach an AP class, and instead he was simply asked if he “would” teach AP. They
inquired about his willingness to teach the course, not about his ability. They did not discover his
subject matter expertise, pedagogical skills, or anything else. Thus, the district appeared to be
focused more on developing its master schedule than on identifying the best match between new
teachers and the content and students they were going to be teaching, leading to lower levels of
confidence and self-efficacy amongst its new teachers. According to Mohamadi and Hassan
(2012) “Teachers’ confidence in their ability to perform the actions that lead to student learning
is one of the few individual characteristics that reliably predicts teacher practice and student
outcomes” (p. 427). Because he had little input into the class schedule he was assigned, James
lacked the self-efficacy towards his ability to successful teach the classes he was assigned.
SCUHSD’s failure to provide James the necessary supports during the onboarding process
interfered with his ability to be prepared to meet the needs of his class schedule and believe he
was positioned to support his students.
Similarly, Avery’s experience demonstrated that SCUHSD did not assign new teachers to
teach classes that were consistent with their specific content knowledge and skills, and instead
focused on the district’s master schedule needs. Avery was hired to teach math and her credential
only authorized her to teach middle school courses. Hired early in April, she would have liked to
have taught Honors Math, a course she had taught during her student teaching. Avery said, “It
would’ve been nice to continue teaching honors though just because I had already worked
through the curriculum and had already developed a lot of keys for the honors curriculum.”
However, at the end of summer her department chair reached out and said “Okay, this is what
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you’re teaching.” Rather than Honors Math, Avery was assigned Math BE, a below grade level
course for students who had exposure to but had yet to develop an understanding of all seventh
grade standards, and Integrated Math B, a mid-range math class for eighth graders. Unlike
James, Avery had the experience to teaching the Honors Math course; however, she was
assigned a class schedule that was inconsistent with her knowledge and abilities. Her experience
teaching the Honors math course was or should have been known to her department chair, as it
was shared during the interview process—which the department chair attended. Rather than
assigning her classes with which she had knowledge and experience, Avery was assigned class
with which she has no direct experience teaching. This decision proved to be a challenge for her,
as she struggled to work with below-grade level learners who, in her words, “Didn’t care about
Math at all.” In Avery’s case, her expertise and knowledge were not taken into consideration.
Instead, it appeared from Avery’s experience that the district attended to their master-schedule
needs, to have a teacher in the classroom, whether that teacher was the best fit for the particular
students or not. As suggested by Yough and Anderman (2006), new teachers should be focused
on mastering their craft, becoming effective at classroom management, and developing their
subject-matter expertise. The district’s approach to placing Avery interfered with her ability to
engage in any of these behaviors and developing the necessary skills to be 100% effectives.
An additional example of SCUHSD not setting up a teacher to be 100% effective was
Nicole. Nicole, a special education teacher (SPED), was hired mid-year, in January, months after
the school year had started. Possessing an Educational Specialist Instruction Credential, Nicole
had only recently completed her Education Specialist Level I Teacher Preparation Program and
was hired without an interview. Nicole needed full-time employment, so she took the district’s
offer: She would be split between two school sites (a high school and a middle school), she
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would be team teaching an English class, she would be teaching an Academic Support class,
and would be managing a caseload of 10 students. Nicole had little knowledge about team-
teaching the English course and would have preferred Math or Science. When asked about her
knowledge and expertise to teach the Academic Support class and manage her caseload of
students, Nicole responded, “I had no idea what I was doing. So that I was kinda thrown at... I
was thrown a really hard messy caseload from the previous case manager who was there for like
a long-term sub position.” Nicole’s statement demonstrates that she was not prepared to teach the
classes she was assigned. She lacked subject-matter expertise and the knowledge regarding how
to work with a difficult caseload. Here SCUHSD appears to have put the needs of two
schools’ master schedules before Nicole’s content knowledge and skills. Without an interview,
an onboarding or orientation process, and midway through the school year, SCUHSD gave
Nicole a schedule that would have been a challenge for a veteran teacher, let alone someone with
the limited experience and expertise of Nicole in order to support the mater schedules of two
school sites. According to Bray-Clark and Bates (2003),
efficacy beliefs can influence how hard and how long an individual will persevere at a
particular task, how resilient people will be when faced with obstacles, and the amount of
stress or anxiety they will experience in a given situation. (p. 15)
Nicole’s statements demonstrate that her lack of self-efficacy was leading to difficulties
managing the many tasks she was assigned. Nicole did not believe that SCUHSD provided her
with the needed supports to be 100% effective.

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Theme 2: Teachers Were Not Prepared to Teach the Classes They Were Assigned
The second theme that emerged is directly related to the first theme: New SCUHSD
teachers were often not prepared to teach the classes they were assigned. Because teachers
assigned class schedules based on the needs of the master schedule as opposed to the teachers’
knowledge and expertise, teachers often lacked the content knowledge or subject matter
expertise to teach the classes they were assigned. While the interview process included the
submission of a resume, letters of recommendation, submission of transcripts, and an interview,
little time was spent inquiring regarding teacher preparedness to instruct the classes they were
scheduled. Of the 11 participants of this study, 7, or 64%, shared that they were unprepared to
teach the classes they were assigned, leading to difficulties.
One example of the lack of attention to new teachers’ preparedness could be seen in new
high school teacher Jordyn’s experience. When she was hired, she was assigned to teach Biology
and Sheltered English Earth and Space. In SCUHSD, Earth and Space was the study of the solar
system, the solid earth (i.e., rocks, minerals, plate tectonics, mountain building, and
earthquakes), oceans, shorelines, the atmosphere, and life–past and present. Sheltered Earth and
Space Science was a class designed for students learning English. While Jordyn had a credential
in earth sciences, she lacked the pedagogical knowledge to teach English Learners. Jordyn
indicated that she did not have any experience teaching English learners, saying, “No, not at all.”
When describing her experience teaching her English learners she said, “Some days I struggle,
and I feel ... some days you just feel like you didn’t do a good job. That’s how I feel some days, I
feel a little bit jaded.” Jordyn said, “Sometimes when we’re doing notes or something, and the
kids have questions about certain things, I’m like, ‘I don’t know. I’m not sure.’” Jordyn did not
believe she was able to support her students in the ways they needed to be supported. She did not
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believe she was consistently “doing a good job,” and did not always believe she was well
positioned to help her students when they had questions. Jordyn was not assigned to a class that
aligned with her knowledge and abilities. She did not have the expertise to teach Sheltered Earth
Space and she struggled because of it. Because SCUHSD assigned Jordyn classes she did
perceive herself as being prepared to teach, she was exhibiting a lower level of self-efficacy.
This led her to be less adventures with her teaching methods, less apt to seek out methods for
instructional improvement, and less likely to experiment with instructional strategies (Bray-Clark
& Bates, 2003).
Another example of a lack of teacher preparedness was Harper, a new middle school
Spanish Language teacher. Harper wanted to teach high school but was assigned to teach middle
school after her interview with SCUHSD. When speaking about her level preference, she said:
[I prefer] the maturity level of the students [in high school], and I think the flexibility
in—like the varied levels. At the middle school they can’t really offer more than one or
two [different levels of Spanish classes] because of the age, but being at the high school
you’re able to teach a greater variety of levels. Personally, the level 1, I don’t like it.
Here Harper clearly indicated that she would prefer to be working at the high school level, that
she preferred high school students, because of their maturity, over middle school students. She
also struggled with the pedagogical skills needed to meet the needs of the middle school learner.
For example, when asked about some her struggles working with middle school students, she
said,
I think it’s partly because I’m a native speaker, so because I didn’t learn the language
from zero it’s really hard for me to see it as these kids, they don’t know anything so I
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have to remember constantly that they only know whatever I’ve told them. Sometimes I
forget that, and I think it’s a lot more show and a lot more act and show.
Harper believed she lacked the pedagogical skills necessary to work with burgeoning Spanish
learners. She found their experience to be so different from hers that she had difficulty
recognizing where they were in the language acquisition process. These differences interfered
with her ability to consistently provide them with the instructional support that they needed. She
indicated that she regularly forgot that they only knew what she had taught them and that the
instructional strategies she needed to deploy were different than those she naturally defaulted to.
Because SCUHSD assigned her classes that she was unprepared to teach, Harper did not
perceive herself as being able to meet the needs of her students. Her lack of self-efficacy made
her believe that she was unable to accomplish this specific teaching task given the context
(Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998).
An additional example of teachers being unprepared to teach classes they were assigned
is Camryn. Camryn was originally hired to teach Marketing and Business Math. However, before
the school year began she was assigned to teach Robotics, a class that she had no familiarity
with. When asked about the class, Camryn said, “Yeah so I teach robotics now and it’s super out
of my element... so I just took it on, but quickly realized that’s not something I want to teach
long term.” Here Camryn indicates that she was assigned a class without any experience with the
course, a class that she admits she is unprepared for and looks forward to not having to teach the
class in the future. She lacks the knowledge and expertise to teach the course, as indicated by the
use of the superlative “super” to describe her apparent discomfort. Speaking again about her
class schedule, she said “I took the classes that I’m teaching [when I was in high school], I
worked in marketing for a long time, so the content I felt comfortable with, aside from robotics.”
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Again, Camryn reiterated that she is not comfortable with the Robotics class, despite being
assigned to teach the course. To add to her lack of preparedness to teach the course, Camryn
expressed that the site lacked the appropriate materials needed for the class. For example,
Camryn shared that
I was short an entire class set of robots for robotics so I had a whole class with no
robots. So this is already a subject I don’t know very well, I’m not comfortable with and
then I have 4 months that I have to fill with no robots. It took four months to get the
robots in.
To summarize, Camryn not only lacked the pedagogical and content expertise to teach the class,
the site inhibited her even further by not properly supplying the materials needed to successfully
teach the class. The lack of proper classroom materials, like the robots needed to teach a robotics
course, inhibited Camyn’s self-concept, leading her believed that she was not able to teach the
classes she was assigned (Carter Andrews, Bartell, & Richmond, 2016). Like many of the new
teachers to SCUHSD, Camryn did not believe she was prepared to teach the classes she
was assigned.
Theme 3: New Teachers Were Often Not Prepared to Work with Difficult Students
The third theme that emerged was that new teachers did not perceive themselves to be
fully prepared to work with difficult students, leading to difficulties with classroom
management. First year teachers often face difficulty with classroom management. Classroom
management is one of the many causes cited for teacher stress and one of the causes cited when
teachers leave the profession. Difficulties with classroom management is routinely cited as one
of the top three reasons why teachers choose to leave the profession (Gonzalez et al., 2008). Of
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the 11 participants in this study, 8, or 73% indicated that they were unprepared to deal with
difficult students and classroom management issues.
Originally hired as a long-term substitute for a teacher on maternity leave, Cooper was
assigned Math 1 College Prep and Math 2 Honors before eventually signing a full-time contract
with SCUHSD. Cooper shared that he preferred high school over middle school because he
believed that high schoolers were better behaved than middle school students. He said, the “High
school level I really like because not only are they a little more mature so it’s a little easier to
manage.” While Cooper signaled that he felt that high school students would be easier to work
with, his experiences seem to indicate otherwise. Throughout his interview Cooper repeatedly
discusses his struggles with classroom management and the challenges he faced with difficult
students. For example, when discussing the struggles faced at start of the school year, he said
“general classroom behavior, which first semester was very hard...” And when making reference
to his Math 1 College Prep class, “it took me a while to get that class under control.” When
asked whether he felt prepared to deal with classroom management issues, Cooper responded,
Yes and no. Yes in that I have general strategies, but actually employing them in the
classroom because of technology restrictions, because of restrictions like when I have to
use the document camera, when I have to use something up at the board and I can’t go
and use proximity, I can’t go and use certain techniques....
While he begins the statement in the affirmative then goes on to provide several different reasons
why he struggles with classroom management. While Cooper was aware of classroom
management strategies, like proximity, he lacked the capacity to use them to control his classes.
According to Delceva-Dizdarevik (2014), teachers often lack classroom management skills due
to a deficit of classroom management education during their early years of teaching. SCUHSD
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did not provide Cooper with the support he believed he needed. Therefore, he did not perceive
himself as being prepared to deal with difficult classroom management challenges.
Another example of a new teacher feeling unprepared to deal with difficult students and
struggling with classroom management was Cassidy, a new Functional Life Skills (FLS) high
school teacher to SCUHSD. According to SCUHSD,
FLS is for students who require functional academic, social, vocational, and independent
living skills, which are necessary in preparation for a successful adult life. FLS is a non-
diploma bound program. FLS is centered on a functional skills curriculum with
specialized supplemental programs to support the students’ potential in a safe, supportive
environment.
FLS was a highly specialized special education classroom, one of the most restrictive education
environments on a school’s campus. Cassidy reported having a difficult time with a student she
feels was targeting her, the instructional aides, and other students in the class with violent
behavior. She not only didn’t feel prepared to deal with the student’s behavior, she also did not
feel supported by the site administrators. According to Cassidy, the student had become a danger
to her and others and she was “asking for more support and not feeling like it was coming in. I
felt like whenever I brought something up, I was kind of being looked at as [ignoramus] but I’m
truly being chased around my room.” While she and her staff had been Crisis Prevention Institute
(CPI) trained to deal with aggressive students, she nor her staff were prepared to restrain this
student during his outbursts. When describing the situation, Cassidy said “The average [age of
the instructional aide] is 50 and they’ve got somebody who’s my height and is a large kid and
he’s escalating and chasing me around the room and you’re expecting somebody who’s 60 to
restrain him?” Indeed, an FLS class is a highly specialized educational environment requiring
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specialized training by the teachers; however, when this difficult classroom management
situation arose, Cassidy was not able to remedy the situation on her own nor did she believe she
had adequate support from the district. She was not prepared to deal this difficult classroom
management issue, and nor was the rest of her assigned support staff.
An additional example of teachers not being adequately prepared to deal with difficult
students and, therefore, struggling with classroom management issues was Taylor. Taylor was
assigned two rigorous classes at the high school level: Advanced Placement World History and
Advanced Placement Psychology. When asked about her reaction to her class schedule,
especially given that she was a new teacher, Taylor replied “You kind of go into teaching AP
thinking you’re going to get a certain level. And then, now, everybody is in AP. So I was kind
of tailoring it towards like an AP student body.” She had preconceived notions regarding the
students she would be teaching based on the classes she was assigned: smart, polite, well
behaved. However, based on her comment, it would appear that her students didn’t support that
expectation. Like other new teachers to SCUHSD, Taylor had a difficult time with classroom
management. When a bullying incident took place early in the year, Taylor was unprepared to
deal with the student’s behavior:
At beginning of the year I had a bullying incident in my class where a girl was sneaking
under her desk, taking pictures of another girl... And I wish I there was more I could have
done. It caught me so off guard... I didn’t know what to do.
When reflecting on the incident, Taylor responded that she was
Probably just being shocked that this was actually happening. At this level...You know, I
just have to be more on it than I thought I would have to be with a group of students who
are supposed to be AP kids.
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Taylor believed that because her students were taking AP classes that they would be well
behaved. According to Mundschenk et al. (2011), “Classroom teachers do not control student
behavior; they guide students to promote learning” (p.102). Taylor did not perceive herself as
being prepared to guide the students toward learning and SCUHSD provided little support to
guide her. Like many other teachers new to SCUHSD, she was unprepared for the challenging
classroom management issues she faced.
Theme 4: New Teachers Were Unprepared to Deal with Parents
The fourth them to emerge from the interviews was that new SCUHSD teachers were
often unprepared to deal with parents, some of whom could be demanding or pushy often leading
to difficult parent interactions. While parental interactions are a part of every educator’s job,
being prepared to deal with demanding parents can prove to be difficult. Many new teachers lack
the training necessary to develop relationships with parents, making parent communications
difficult (Lasky, 2000). Of the 11 participants in this study, 7, or 64% of the teachers cited being
unprepared to deal with difficult or pushy parents.
Like many SCUHSD teachers, James struggled with parental interactions. When asked
what he had heard about SCUHSD parents before he applied to teach there, James responded,
“Extreme parent involvement. I didn’t realize how crazy grades are… I’ve heard horror stories
about grade challenges or parents writing about teachers in newspapers... I was very aware of
this community, but not by experience yet.” According to James, SCUHSD parents had a
reputation for being demanding, pushy even. He believed that the parents were overly involved
in their students’ education and would be willing to push back against teachers when they felt
their students were not being treated fairly. When asked about a difficult experience, James
spoke of a parental interaction that ended with the mother of a student emailing James’ principal
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to tell him that she believed James was “unqualified and unprofessional.” James was not
prepared to adequately deal with the parent from the outset, as he describes the initial
conversation with the parent as “I don’t know what was said, but the initial conversation or email
she sent to me would be, “Why are you doing this? My kid says this,” blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah. Kid never talked to me, nothing.” Rather than being amenable and thoughtful regarding
how to support the student, James appeared flippant, unprepared to deal with a parent’s question
and became defensive from the start. Rather than seeking accord and looking to work with the
parent, James said
She must know I’m a first year and thinks she can just steamroll me. I felt it necessary to
be strong and not succumb because I don’t want to be that teacher that goes, “Oh, okay.
Yeah. We’ll do whatever you want.”
Ultimately the situation was diffused with the help of his department chair and assistant
principal. When reflecting on the situation, James said he was “Learning how to respond
communicatively, respectfully, calmly, is something I work on.” However, he still remained
defensive, saying “I guess mistakes aren’t allowed, according to some parents.” While James
was new to the profession, he struggled with parental interactions and probably could have
resolved this interaction without it escalating. James’ experience suggested that SCUHSD did
not offer him the proper onboarding supports for the parent-teacher interactions he would
experience as new teacher in the district. Therefore, he did not perceive himself as prepared to
deal with this difficult parental interaction and this is consistent with Lasky’s (2000) fill the rest
of this in!.
Another example of teachers being unprepared for difficult parental interactions is
Camryn. Camryn, who did her student teaching at a different, less affluent high school in
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Southern California before being hired to teach marketing, business math, and robotics in
SCUHSD, said this of her initial experiences with SCUHSD parents: “Comparing it to being
[there] before this, where you had no parent interaction, it was definitely a big change. It was a
definitely a big change.” Because of Camryn’s experiences in a different school district, she was
not prepared for parent interaction she received as a first-year teacher. For example, after giving
her first exam in her marketing class. she received an email from a mother saying “this is
ridiculous, your class is an elective it’s supposed to be easy, my kid said it’s hard… other kids
said your test was hard, I want to see the test.” Camryn sent what she thought was a thoughtful
email in response to the parent and was surprised when the parent sent a curt response: “Please
send me a copy [of the exam] over email.” Camryn replied, “I don’t email out copies of the test,
I’d love to go over it with you in person.” Based on her response, Camryn was expecting
something more cordial in response to her email. According to Camryn, she “Never heard from
her again and it kind of was eye opening...that they solely care about grades.” Camryn made the
assumptions that grades were the parents’ only priority, and shared that in her opinion, “the
grade and the amount of homework, not what they’re learning, what they’re doing” was what
took precedence. Positive parent teacher relationships play and important role in student
achievement (Minke, Sheridan, & Ryoo, 2014). Camryn did not receive the proper onboarding
supports to help establish these positive relationships from the outset, thus inhibiting her ability
to communicate with difficult parents and better support student learning.
Like the previous two teachers, Harper also struggled with difficult parental interactions.
What started as a discipline issue with a parent who was unhappy with the steps that had been
taken to correct her son’s behavior quickly escalated, leaving Harper unprepared and unable to
respond effectively. According to Harper, when she scheduled the meeting, “[she] had asked the
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assistant principal to be there, just because she had already spoken to the parent and as a new
teacher it’s a little intimidating sometimes.” Here Harper indicates that she was already timid
about the parent meeting before it took place, as she invited an assistant principal to be in the
meeting with her. When the parent arrived early, before the assistant principal, the meeting
quickly got out of hand. Harper said:
She was very angry and she basically accused me of all kinds of things and told me I was
wrong. It was very intimidating. I think I first I tried to argue my point of view, or my
side, or my reasoning, and I realized quickly that it didn’t matter and she was there with a
purpose and a set mind. All she wanted was to tell me what she felt, and I think all she
really wanted from me was to say, "You’re right, I’m wrong, and I’m sorry.” At some
point I decided to just stop talking and let her say whatever she needed to say.
When the parent arrived and she didn’t have the support of her administrator, Harper was
unprepared to deal with the parent. Harper did not possess the ability or the confidence to
confront the parent, to deem the meeting unproductive and call the meeting off. She quickly gave
in and let the parent take over the conversation, leaving her feeling “as if I was a coward.” By
using the word “coward.” Harper insinuated that not only was she unprepared to deal with
difficult parents, but also afraid. She, like many of the new SCUHSD, lacked the ability to deal
with difficult parents, especially pushy and demanding ones.
Many new SCUHSD teachers were not prepared to be effective because the district’s
onboarding and ongoing supports did not support their ability to be 100% prepared to be
effective in the district. Four themes were identified related to this finding: First, the district did
not set new teachers up for success because new teachers were not assigned classes that were
consistent with their content knowledge and skills. Second, new teachers were often not prepared
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to teach the classes they were assigned. Third, new teachers did not perceive themselves to be
fully prepared to work with difficult students, leading to difficulties with classroom management.
And finally, new teachers were unprepared to deal with demanding or pushy parents, leading to
difficult interactions with parents.
Finding Two: New Teachers Did Not Perceive Many of the Ongoing Supports as Beneficial
The second research questions for this study was what are new teachers’ perceptions of
the ongoing support provided by SCUHSD to ensure they would be 100% effective? All of the
participants in this study were provided ongoing supports through SCUHSD's three-tier supports
for new teachers: The California Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment (BTSA) induction
program, district led professional development (PD), and the administrative evaluation cycle
using The California Standards for the Teaching Profession (CTSP) as their measurement of
effective teaching. The first theme for the second find demonstrates that of the three-tiered
ongoing supports offered by SCUHSD, the BTSA Mentor program is the most impactful. The
second theme that emerged is that according to the new SCUHSD, the district-developed PD was
perceived as largely ineffective by the new teachers. The last theme that emerged that emerged
from the second finding is that new SCUHSD had varied impressions regarding the effectiveness
of their participation in the administrative evaluation cycle.
Theme 1: The Important Impact of BTSA Support Mentors
Of the three ongoing supports offered to new SCUHSD teachers (BTSA, District-
provided professional development, and the administrative observation cycle), teacher felt that
an aspect of BTSA, the BTSA Mentor Program, offered them the most support as a new
SCUHSD teacher. According to California’s BTSA Website (2019), “Provide an effective
transition into the teaching career for first-year and second-year teachers in California,” and
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“Improve the educational performance of students through improved training, information, and
assistance for participating teachers.” In order to support the vision of BTSA, SCUHSD has
selected several tenured district teachers to serve as BTSA Mentors. As the SCUHSD BTSA
Website states (2018),
BTSA mentors are exemplary veteran teachers who are matched with a caseload of
Participating Teachers (PT) in order to support PT growth and development in the
teaching profession… [They are] able and ready to assist in any area that might smooth
the transition for the PT to SDUHSD and his/her particular site.
Therefore, they serve an integral role in support the new teachers as they begin their careers with
SCUHSD. In fact, of the 11 participants, 100% spoke favorably about the role their BTSA
Mentor played in supporting them during their first year teaching for SCUHSD.
For William, a first-year high school Drawing and Design and Sculpture teacher, the
BSTA Mentor has offered a wealth of assistance, from classroom management support, to lesson
planning, to even encouraging metacognitive reflection. The BTSA Mentor has supported him in
myriad ways and, according to William, "they have been very helpful." When considering the
ways in which the BTSA Mentor has supported him, he said they have helped
Me get through the IEP [process], tell me who to contact and all that kinda stuff... what
my options are as far as, you know, going to administration, going to parents and what
we’d recommend for that...The procedural and technical stuff.
Here William shares many different ways that the BTSA Mentor has supported him, from
navigating how to be an effective participant in IEP process, to working through discipline
issues, to offering support with the minutia of being a classroom teacher. While these issues are
undoubtedly discussed in credential programs, William indicated the helpfulness of having a
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Mentor there on site to support him with these ongoing activities. William continued, “that
strength and the main thing [the BTSA Mentor] does is it forces me to reflect.” The importance
of metacognition for teachers has been well documented (Amschler & McKenzie, 2010, Fantilli
& McDougall, 2009; Shoffner et al., 2010) and this was afforded to William because of his
relationship with his BTSA mentor.
Another teacher demonstrating the effective aspects of SCUHSD’s BTSA Mentor
program was Nicole, a special education teacher split between a middle and high school.
According to Nicole, the monthly BTSA meetings, which were held after school and covered a
variety of topics and included different activities, “having different people come in and give
really good resources to use and that kind of stuff has been really beneficial that I’ve actually
implemented and enjoyed.” While Nicole enjoys the BTSA meetings, “I really have really
enjoyed having someone, especially who is knowledgeable about Special Ed, as a support
person.” For Nicole, having a BTSA Mentor familiar with special education has been very
beneficial to help her navigate IEP, difficult students, and the case-load she acquired after being
hired late in the semester. For Nicole, the BSTS Mentor “has been a huge, huge, huge help and
someone I can definitely trust and talk to when I don’t know what to do or I’m in a situation or
that kind of stuff.” Finding a veteran teacher, someone she can speak to with the confidence of
knowing that she has also taught special education, undoubtedly experienced many of the same
challenges that she is currently facing, has been an important and effective part of the ongoing
supports that SCUHSD offered Nicole as she began her teaching career. As suggested by
Bullough (2012), Nicole was benefiting from the many well documented effects of having a
teaching mentor.
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An additional SCUHSD teacher who praised the effectiveness of the BTSA Mentor
program was Avery, a new middle school math teacher. Before Avery began her BTSA
induction, she had a negative impression:
Before I even started it the last year that I was student teaching that people called it
BTSA shit-sa. It was like, “Oh my God, it’s the worst. You’re going to hate it, it’s totally
pointless, it’s meaningless.” I heard nothing but negative things about it, so I
was expecting this very challenging, very rigorous, almost like grad school all over again
experience.
When reflecting on the work assigned in BTSA, Avery was not pleased: “I already did this in
my credential program. Do I really need to do it again? I don’t feel like I need to do this again.
Am I learning anything new?” Avery found the work redundant, purposeless. For Avery, the
BSTA Mentor had been paramount in navigating the minutia of the first year of teaching. For
example, she said,
I just email her at random. I know I can email her at random at say, “Hey, how do I post
grades? What do I do with this kid? Do you have any suggestions for me about this
consequence?” She would answer any sort of random question I have.
As Avery stated, she used her for menial but important questions, ones that are necessary
for day-to-day life as teacher: taking roll, classroom management, etc. While these seem like
simple tasks, they can be difficult to navigate without the proper assistance. As Avery said, “It’s
just nice to have someone who’s there to specifically help you out during this crazy year… She
also used to work here, so she has a lot of insight.” For Avery, having someone to assist her with
the procedural and institutional knowledge was one of the most helpful aspects on her first-year
teaching. The research on the benefits of mentors on teaching goes way back (Odell & Ferraro,
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1992). SCUHSD’s mentor program was providing positive benefits for new teachers, like Avery,
by providing them with a guide, a sage, someone to help navigate their first year teaching.
Theme 2: District Developed Professional Development Appears to be Ineffective
In order to support new teachers, SCUHSD offered numerous professional
development (PD) opportunities throughout the school year. These trainings were developed
and executed by the district, with many developed and run by SCUHSD Teachers on Special
Assignment (ToSAs). The PD ranged from all day trainings to targeted afternoon workshops,
each developed with a specific theme or area of support in mind. The PD opportunities were not
just for new SCUHSD teachers, they were required of all certificated staff members. For
SCUHSD, PD was a part of the three-tiered ongoing supports offered to new teachers, including
BSTA and the formal evaluation process. While the all certificated district staff members,
including new teachers, were required to attend at least three PD workshops each school year,
new SCUHSD teachers found them to be mostly an ineffective means of ongoing support. Of the
11 participants in this study, 7, or 64% spoke unfavorably about district developed PD.
For James, a new SCUHSD science teacher, professional development was particularly
important for his first year of teaching. California had recently adopted the Next Generation
Science Standards (NGSS), transforming the way science teachers taught and modified student
curriculum in many different ways. Therefore, district provided PD would help James deliver the
new science curriculum using up to date pedagogy. However, for James, the experience was not
beneficial, particularly because, in his opinion, the veteran teachers didn’t seem interested in
making the meetings productive:
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it’s really tough having veteran, tenured teachers [there] that don’t give a crap and don’t
want to participate and want to complain and ruin all that time. That’s really frustrating.
That really brings down any sort of progress or collaboration. It’s really frustrating.
Because James was new, he was looking forward more to the PD than the older, more
experienced teachers. For James, the attitude of the veteran teachers made the PD unhelpful,
almost unbearable. James continued,
I just feel like there’s a lot of openness, which is great. It also doesn’t allow us to move
forward, and there’s a lot of chefs in the kitchen with different opinions who have seen it
this way before and after or don’t want to do it at all. It’s hard when you have 10 billion
opinions.
According to James, the structure of the PDs allowed too many voices, particularly to the
dissenters, which was preventing them from being beneficial, in his opinion. The discord in the
PD left James to seek additional information on NGSS and important time, according to him, to
work with course-alike teachers: “We miss out on the time of actually the collaboration, the
feedback, what worked for me, what didn’t work for me. We get caught up in all this other
stuff.” For James, it was the multitude of discordant voices that cause the PD to be an ineffective
means of ongoing support for new teachers. According to Celik, “Teachers should give utmost
attention to their [professional] development in order to help their students achieve better.
Furthermore, education system should provide teachers opportunities for [professional]
development” (p. 135). For James, who desired professional development in order to learn more
about NGSS and to better prepare himself for the subject he was assigned to teach, SCUHSD’s
PD did not meet his needs. As an ongoing support, SCUHSD’s PD did not support James in the
ways he needed.
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Another example of a new SCUHSD teacher who perceived the district provided PD to
be an ineffective means of ongoing support is Harper. Harper, a middle school Spanish teacher,
felt that some of the PD was beneficial: “I think there are some—there were a few that I felt were
very well planned and then some of the activities were very useful and I could see the use and
the purpose and apply it.” As indicated by her use of “some,” Harper did not believe all the PD
to be ineffective, finding parts of beneficial. However, Harper went on to say,
But then there were some activities that I felt either were repetitive from other
professional development days in the same year that it was like, “Okay, we already talked
about this, we already did this so why are we doing it again?”
For Harper, the redundancy of topics was an issue and she would have rather been working on
new strategies of pedagogical techniques to assist her in the classroom. Harper went on to say,
Maybe the timing is a little awkward sometimes, sometimes there’s just too much time
for one activity that you feel like the whole day could’ve been done in a lot less time, and
it’s just trying to stretch out- because I don’t know, maybe we have to be there a certain
amount of time or something, but the activities don’t feel it the way that they should.
Here Harper indicates that she was frustrated by the amount of time used at each PD to cover a
particular topic, perhaps pointing towards the efficiency of the workshops. It seems that for
Harper the district provided PD did not make good use of her time and felt redundant, therefore
making it an ineffective ongoing support for new teachers.
New SCUHSD special education teacher, Nicole, was additional example of a teacher for
whom the district provided PD was not an effective means of ongoing support. Like Harper,
Nicole found some of the PD “a little redundant.” Nicole was seeking something more specific to
her SPED needs: “I think sometimes it would be nice to have a little bit more especially through
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the Special Education as far as the system and different things that have changed. Cause things
change so frequently in Special Ed.” Nicole was hoping the district PD would keep her up to date
on current SPED issues, specifically “Changes happening in SPED, making sure all, everything
for the safe program that we use is all in compliance and everything that we need to know.” Here
Nicole is indicating a desire for SCUHSD PD to support her knowledge regarding legislative
changes that impact her day to day teaching. Again, Nicole reiterated her desire for PD to be
focused on SPED, “‘Cause things change so frequently in Special Ed. Even though you get e-
mails about them, it’s nice that someone kind of presents something to you or even like a
PowerPoint of new changes that’s happened over the past month.” According to Nicole, the
SCHUSD district-developed PD was not meeting her needs as a new SPED teacher and she was
seeking something more specific to her day to day needs beyond what is presented by the
district’s ToSAs. Therefore, Nicole did not consider district PD to be an effective means of
ongoing support for her as a new teacher. According to Hunzicker, “When professional
development is supportive, job-embedded, instructionally focused, collaborative and ongoing,
teachers are more likely to consider it relevant and authentic, which is more likely to result in
teacher learning and improved teaching practice” (p.178). For Nicole, however, she did not
consider SCUHSD’s PD to be an example of an ongoing support that benefited her teaching
practice.
Theme 3: New SCUHSD Teachers Had Varied Impressions Regarding the Effectiveness
the Administrative Evaluation Cycle
As a part of the three-tiered ongoing supports for new SCUHSD, each new teacher
participates in the administrative evaluation cycle using The California Standards for the
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Teaching Profession (CTSP) as their measurement of effective teaching. The CTSP standards
for evaluation are
Engaging and supporting all students in learning, creating and maintaining effective
environments for student learning, understanding an organizing subject matter for student
learning, planning instruction and designing learning experiences for all students,
assessing students for learning, and developing as a professional educator. (CSTP,
2009, p. 3)
SCUHSD administrators,
2
were instructed to evaluate temporary teachers at least five times
throughout the school year. These evaluations include three “drop-ins”—informal evaluations
that were unannounced and lasted between 20 and 40 minutes. These drop-ins were followed
by an evaluation debrief meeting, which included a written evaluation and formal meeting
between the administrator and the new teacher. In addition to the drop ins, new teachers also
scheduled two to three formal evaluations. These formal evaluations included a pre-meeting,
where the new teacher shared their lesson plans with the administrator in advance, and a post-
evaluation debrief, which again included a written evaluation and a formal meeting between
the administrator and the new teacher. According to SCUHSD, these evaluations were used to
assist the teacher in becoming 100% effective teachers in the district. The evaluations were also
used as a part of the determination as to whether or not the teacher would be retained and
recommended for probationary or tenure status. For the new teachers who participated in this
study, the administrative evaluation cycle received mixed results regarding its effectiveness as an
ongoing support for new SCUHSD teachers. Of the 11 participants, 6 spoke favorably about the

2
In SCUHSD, evaluations are conducted by site assistant principals and principals.

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administrative evaluation cycle, indicating they benefited from the experience, while 5 were
ambivalent about the experience. Therefore, the new teachers had varied impressions of the
effectiveness of the evaluation cycle.
New SCUHSD high school social science teacher, Holden, spoke in positive terms
regarding his experience with the administrative evaluation cycle. Holden said that over the
course of the 2015-2016 school year that he had been evaluated or observed by high school’s
administration multiple times. When asked how many times he was observed or evaluated,
Holden said, “Four total from the principal, one from an assistant principal that was not my
evaluator, and then the three official.” While Holden believed he had been evaluated multiple
times, his assigned administrator did not meet the suggested evaluation totals for new teachers.
When asked about his perceived benefits of participating in the administrative evaluation cycle,
Holden mainly spoke in broad terms about its benefits. He said,
This is the first time I've gone through an official evaluation cycle. To me, I've
appreciated this structure. I think sitting for the post-eval after having gone through three
formal observations, two of which are unannounced, one of them I got to pick, I got
to pick the second one, it was really interesting to be able to look back and go, okay, in
the first one here were some things that were happening, particularly because I was new
to campus.
Here Holden did not mention any specific benefits beyond appreciating the structure of the
evaluation cycle. He went on to say,
I felt like my efforts to get acclimated with this culture and this climate were known. It
helped so much to know that they saw that. It immediately removes any kind of anxiety
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that the teacher can have. It just made it much more fun, but also easy to have a
conversation about anything, even challenges in the classroom.
While participation in the evaluation cycle is supposed to benefit the teacher’s subject matter
expertise, improve classroom instruction, develop pedagogy, and assist the teacher in becoming
100% effective, Holden had nothing specific to say about the experience beyond it allowed him
to have a conversation about challenges in the classroom. Like many school districts, SCUHSD
uses a generic, non-subject specific feedback form which often leaves out feedback for subject
specific instruction (Hill & Grossman, 2013). That may account for Holden’s feedback for the
evaluation process not including anything specific to pedagogy or instruction.
Unlike James, Camyrn had more specific feedback for experience participating in the
administrative evaluation cycle. For Camyrn, who was observed at least six times during the
2015-2016 school year, both formally and drop-ins, she mentioned specific benefits she gleaned
from her administrative evaluations and she was able to provide examples. For example, she said
her administrator was able to focus on
What students were doing when I was doing something else, or what students were
not engaged, or he even gave me ideas like “you know I noticed the last five minutes the
kids are checked out, what if every day you had an exit ticket and here’s an example of
one.” He even gave me like a specific business example. Or he said, “I want you to try
this project but do this.” Like very specific stuff and I tried everything he said and it was
awesome, the kids liked it.
Even though she believed she benefited from the evaluation experience, her examples of ways
that it assisted her in becoming 100% effective were not all that specific. Camyrn received
support with the minutia of teaching, assistance with day-to-day activities, like classroom
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management and assignment development. While these certainly were beneficial for her as a
teacher, they did not necessarily assist her in the global goal of being effective according to the
definition put forward in this study. If SCUHSD is going to support Camryn in becoming a
100% effective teacher, it will be necessary for her to be encouraged to learn and practice new
pedagogical skills (Gultekin & Acar, 2014). However, the administrative evaluation cycle that
she participated in did not provide this type of feedback, thus inhibiting her from becoming
100% effective as a teacher.
Another example of a new SCUHSD teacher with a banal impression of the evaluation
cycle was Jordyn. At the time of the interview, Jordyn had been evaluated three times: two drop-
ins and one formal evaluation. This was her immediate response to the experience: “They were
actually very positive. It’s nice to hear from somebody powerful, like the principal, that you’re
doing a good job. It’s just reassuring, good to hear. He had praise for me.” While Jordyn said that
the experience was positive, her answer, like others in this study, is devoid of specific examples
about how she benefited. For Jordyn, she was happy to be praised, to hear that she was doing a
good job from someone “powerful,” like the principal. She went on to say,
He had a few things that I can improve on, and he's totally right on those things,
management, commanding the classroom a little bit more. He was very constructive
about it, it wasn't a putdown in any way. It was just more encouraging than anything,
talking a little bit about my future here, and where I can go as a teacher. That was really
good to hear.
Here Jordyn said that she received some specific feedback but did not indicate whether she used
any of the feedback in subsequent lessons or class periods. Instead, she seemed focused on
receiving positive feedback as a way to make her feel better about her teaching. According to
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Hunt, Gurvtich, and Lund (2016), “If the primary goal of teacher evaluation is to help teachers
become more effective, the evaluation system must provide teachers with objective, content-
specific feedback to inform practice and guide them to improve their teaching effectiveness.”
Like James, Jordyn did not receive content-specific feedback regarding her effectiveness as a
teacher. Instead, like many new SCUHSD teachers, she received some pleasantries about her
progress but nothing that would act as an ongoing support for her goal of becoming 100%
effective.
The second finding to emerge from this study was new SCUHSD teachers did not
perceive all of the ongoing supports for new teachers to be effective in assisting them in
becoming 100% effective teachers in the district. All of the participants in this study were
provided ongoing supports through SCUHSD's three-tier supports for new teachers: The
California Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment (BTSA) induction program, district led
professional development (PD), and the administrative evaluation cycle using The California
Standards for the Teaching Profession (CTSP) as their measurement of effective teaching. Of the
three ongoing supports, the new SCUHSD believed the BTSA mentor program best prepared
them to be 100% effective in the district. District-developed PD and participation in the
administrative evaluation cycle did not prove to be a beneficial ongoing support for the
participants.
Conclusion
The purpose of this study was to examine the perceived effectiveness of the onboarding
and ongoing supports offered new teachers hired to work for Southern California Union High
School District. Two findings emerged from an analysis of the data. The first finding related to
the approach taken by the district to onboard teachers: New teachers did not experience the
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district’s onboarding process as setting them up to be 100% effective by the end of the first year.
From this first finding four themes emerged. The first was that the district did not set new
teachers up for success because new teachers were not assigned classes that were consistent with
their content knowledge and skills. Second, new teachers did not believe they were prepared to
teach the classes they were assigned. Third, new teachers did not perceive themselves to be fully
prepared to work with difficult students, leading to difficulties with classroom management. And
finally, new teachers were unprepared to deal with demanding or pushy parents, leading to
difficult interactions with parents. The second finding was that new SCUHSD teachers did not
perceive many of the ongoing supports as beneficial. Three themes emerged from this finding.
The first theme is that of the three ongoing supports offered to new SCUHSD teachers (BTSA,
District-provided professional development, and the administrative observation cycle), teachers
the BTSA Mentor Program, offered them the most support as a new SCUHSD teacher. Second,
while the district offered district-led professional development, few probationary teachers
believed it was a good ongoing support to help them become an effective teacher. And third,
teachers had mixed impressions regarding the effectiveness of their participation in the
administrative evaluation cycle. Chapter Five will discuss implications and recommendations
based on these findings.

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CHAPTER FIVE: DISCUSSION, IMPLICATIONS, RECOMMENDATIONS
The underlying problem addressed in this study was new teachers’ perceptions regarding
both onboard and ongoing supports offered by the district in relation to their preparedness to be
effective in their classrooms and schools by the end of their first year. There has been a great
deal of research done regarding the challenges faced by new teachers (Djonko-Moore, 2016;
Donaldson, 2009; Kelly, 2004; Stosich, 2016). These challenges have led to high levels of
teacher attrition (Ingersoll & Merill, 2012). Because of the high levels of teacher attrition, school
districts are continually forced to hire younger, less experienced teachers in order to staff their
schools (Borman & Dowling, 2008). In order to mitigate this issue, school districts need to do to
ensure that their teachers are adequately prepared to work in their districts. Teachers need to be
prepared to face the challenges posed by their respective school districts and ready to provide
high quality instruction to each of their students. With teacher attrition a problem nationwide, all
school districts should work to ensure that they are supporting their new teachers to prepare them
for success. This study sought to explore whether new teachers in a suburban, low minority, high
performing schools perceived themselves to be prepared and supported to be 100% effective
teachers in the district.
The purpose of this study was to examine the perceived effectiveness of the onboarding
and ongoing supports offered new teachers hired to work for Southern California Union High
School District. The research questions guiding this study were:
1. What are new teachers’ perceptions of SCUHSD’s onboarding process to ensure they
would be 100% effective?
2. What are new teachers’ perceptions of the ongoing support provided by SCUHSD to
ensure they would be 100% effective?
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SCUHSD was made up of five middle schools, four high schools, and one alternative
high school. The district served nearly 12,000 students in an affluent community of Southern
California. The district had repeatedly demonstrated success by nearly all accepted
measurements: including CAASPP scores, cohort graduation rates, college acceptance, SAT and
AP scores, and other measures. The study sites included three SCHUSD high schools and one
SCUHSD middle school. The stakeholder group for this study was new teachers hired to work in
SCUHSD for the 2016-2017 school year. Each new teacher taking part in this study was
participating in SCUHSD offered ongoing supports using a three-tier model: 1. BTSA induction,
2. District-developed professional development, and 3. the administrative evaluation cycle using
The California Standards for the Teaching Profession (CTSP) as their measurement of effective
teaching.
This qualitative study was based on semi-structured interviews with 11 SCUHSD
probationary teachers who were new to the teaching profession. One on one interviews were
conducted with participants to gather data about their experiences working as a new teacher with
Southern California Union High School district. The interviews took place at the school sites of
the participants. Once data collection was complete, inductive data analysis and coding occurred
in an effort to elicit patterns and motifs. The analysis of those patters and motifs brought forward
two findings and they are discussed below.
Summary of Findings
An analysis of the date revealed two findings. The first research question for this study
was: What are new teachers’ perceptions of SCUHSD’s onboarding process to ensure they
would be 100% effective? In response to the first research question, the first finding emerged and
it was related to new teachers’ experiences with the approach taken by the district to onboard
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teachers. New teachers communicated that SCUHSD appeared to be focused more on developing
its master schedule than on identifying the best match between new teachers and the content and
students they were going to be teaching. This finding surfaced four themes related to teachers
and their ability to be 100% effective:
a. Teachers were hired based on their teaching credential and assigned to teach classes
that were not necessarily consistent with their specific content knowledge and skills.
In many cases, their expertise and knowledge were not taken into consideration,
leading to difficulties with subject matter knowledge and pedagogy. SCUHSD
appeared to put the needs of their sites’ master schedules above all else.
b. SCUHSD spent little time inquiring regarding teacher preparedness to instruct the
classes they were scheduled. Therefore, new teachers were often unprepared to teach
the classes they were assigned. Because teachers assigned class schedules based on
the needs of the master schedule as opposed to the teachers’ knowledge and expertise,
teachers often lacked the content knowledge or subject matter expertise to teach the
classes they were assigned.
c. New teachers did not perceive themselves to be fully prepared to work
with “difficult” students, leading to difficulties with classroom management.
d. SCUHSD teachers were often unprepared to deal with parents, some of whom could
be demanding or pushy, often leading to difficult parent interactions. For many
different reasons, parents are more involved in SCUHSD than in other school
districts. Many new SCUHSD teachers were not prepared to deal with what
they perceived to be problematic or assertive parents, leading to difficult interactions
exchanges and interactions.
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The second research question for this study was: What are new teachers’ perceptions of
the ongoing support provided by SCUHSD to ensure they would be 100%
effective? In relation to this research question a second finding emerged related to new teachers’
perceptions of the way the district provided them with ongoing support, and their ability to
develop the skills needed to be effective with their students and the parent community. This
finding surfaced two themes related to teachers and their ability to be 100% effective:
a. Of the three ongoing supports offered to new SCUHSD teachers (BTSA, District-
provided professional development, and the administrative evaluation teachers
believed that an aspect of BTSA, the BTSA Mentor Program, offered them the most
support as a new SCUHSD teacher.
b. In order to support new teachers, SCUHSD offered numerous professional
development (PD) opportunities throughout the school year; however, new SCUHSD
teachers found them to be mostly an ineffective means of ongoing support.
c. While all new teachers were required to participate in the administrative evaluation
cycle, the new teachers had varied impressions regarding the effectiveness of their
participation.
Implications and Recommendations for Practice, Policy, and Research
Implications and Recommendations for Practice
The findings suggest that the onboarding and ongoing support measures used by
SCUHSD often made it difficult for new teachers to be 100% effective. The district’s
onboarding, including the interviewing and hiring process, did not seem to prioritize teachers’
content knowledge and pedagogical abilities. Instead, SCUHSD seemed to be more focused on
the needs of each school site’s master schedule. Teachers appeared to be hired based on school
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needs, not their knowledge and abilities. This led to myriad difficulties for new teachers,
including challenges with pedagogical and content knowledge expertise, classroom management,
and parental interactions. In addition to the challenges with onboarding, the district’s new
teachers had mixed responses regarding SCUHSD’s three-tiered ongoing support measures: 1.
BTSA induction, 2. District-developed professional development, and 3. The administrative
evaluation cycle using The California Standards for the Teaching Profession (CTSP) as their
measurement of effective teaching. Of the three, an offshoot of BTSA induction, the BSTA
mentor program, garnered the most praise, while the administration evaluation cycle offered
nominal support. The district-developed PD garnered little support, with most teachers seeing it
as ineffective and redundant. Implications and recommendations for these issues fell into three
categories: adjusting the hiring process, revamping teacher onboarding, and improving ongoing
supports.
Adjusting the hiring process. This study revealed that SCUHSD’s onboarding was
focused more on the development of the master schedule than it was on addressing the
knowledge and expertise of new teachers. New teachers were often asked not whether or not they
were prepared to teach particular classes; instead, they were often assigned classes to teach based
on the needs of the master schedules. SCUHSD has long prided itself on developing and
implementing “student centered master schedules,” meaning master schedules developed by
putting the needs of the students first, not the teachers. While this practice should certainly
continue, more time should be spent deducing whether or not new teachers are adequately
prepared to teach the classes they are assigned. As it stands, potential SCUHSD new teachers’
applications are reviewed by site administrators, including the principal and the assistant
principals after the teachers have applied to Edjoin.org. These applications include a cover letter,
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letters of recommendation, verification of credential, college transcripts, and brief responses to a
few scenario based questions. If selected to interview, the applicant participates in a 15 to 20-
minute structured interview with little room for follow up. Applicants are then selected by sites
based on the number of full time teachers the site needs, hired, and assigned to the master
schedule. Beyond the interview, this process allows little to no input regarding placement on the
master schedule beyond this interview question: “Are you willing to teach Advanced Placement
or Honors classes?” This line of question delivers little information beyond a yes or no answer.
Because of this, district lacks sufficient knowledge about the new teacher's abilities and skills in
order to make good decisions regarding their placement on the master schedule. The lack of
sufficient knowledge regarding placement on the master schedule created difficulties for new
teachers, as they were often unprepared to teach the classes they were assigned. To address these
issues, SCUHSD and other school districts should create a more comprehensive interview
process for new teachers. When hiring site administrators, new employees are subjected to an
application review and three interviews. Each interview has a different focus and allows the
district to gather copious information about an applicant’s knowledge and abilities. This process
is much different than the method currently used to hire new teachers. Therefore, SCUHSD
should consider modifying its new teacher hiring process to include additional ways to assess a
new teacher’s knowledge and abilities, perhaps including additional, more focused interviews or
questions during the existing interview process. This enhanced process may help to ensure that
new teachers are better positioned to teach the classes they are assigned.
Revamping teacher onboarding. New SCUHSD teachers currently participate in one
day of onboarding training prior to the start of the school year. This day-long event covers a
variety of topic, including meeting their administrative teams, a brief overview of district
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policies and guidelines, an explanation of the BTSA induction program, signing up for their local
teacher’s union, and a variety of other topics. This single day of onboarding support does not
adequately prepare teachers for the realities of working in an affluent, high income, suburban
school district. As the interviews demonstrated, new teachers were often unprepared to address
difficult students, leading to challenging classroom management issues. Also, teachers were
often unprepared to deal with difficult or pushy parents, leading to problematic interactions with
parents. To address these issues, which was prevalent across the interviews, SCUHSD should
consider additional onboarding trainings to offer additional support for new teachers. These
trainings can be both academic and demonstrative, educating new teachers about the culture and
community of SCUHSD, and then allowing them to role-play common scenarios, increasing
their agency and capacity to deal with difficult students and parents. These trainings would better
support new teachers at the outset of their careers with SCUHSD, providing them necessary
knowledge and expertise to be 100% effective teachers.
Improving ongoing supports. While new SCUHSD teachers praised aspects of BTSA
induction program, specifically the BSTA mentors, as a beneficial ongoing support offered by
the district, they were not as enthusiastic about the district developed PD or the administrative
evaluation cycle. Nearly all 11 interviewees spoke glowingly about the BSTA mentor program.
They were enthusiastic about the support the mentors offered and appreciated having the mentor
guide them through their first year of teaching and working for SCUHSD. Therefore, SCUHSD
should continue with the BSTAS mentor program, perhaps even extending it beyond the new
teachers’ first year to offer increased, ongoing support. Research has demonstrated the benefit of
mentors for new teachers (Bullough, 2012; McCann & Johannessen, 2009).
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While the district’s BTSA mentor program was beneficial to the new teachers, they had
little praise for the district developed PD and they viewed the administrative evaluation cycle as
essentially innocuous. Many viewed the PD as redundant, unnecessary, and not useful,
unnecessarily removing new teachers from the classroom several times a year. In order to
address this issue, SCUHSD should consider developed targeted PD for teachers as opposed to
district-wide, mandatory PD. This would allow new teachers autonomy over what they are
learning, again providing them with agency over what they are learning. This would also allow
them to participate in PD that is focused on the perceived gaps in their own knowledge and
expertise. Perhaps, too, participation in PD could be part of the administrative evaluation process
as another means to support new teachers. If, for example, a new teacher was struggling to
integrate technology into a lesson, the administrator could recommend the new teacher attend a
PD about technology in order to enhance their skills and ability.
SCUHSD should also spend some time reassessing the current administrative evaluation
cycle for new teachers. While the current model uses The California Standards for the Teaching
Profession (CTSP) as the basis for assessment, few teachers found the experience to beneficial to
their ability to be 100% effective teachers in the district. While some interviewees went through
the whole model up to five times, some did not—this inconsistency could be the reason for some
of the unfavorable ratings and could be an area for future research. Research has demonstrated
that administrative evaluation can benefit new teachers (Eyal & Roth, 2011); therefore,
SCUHSD should consider what it can do to make the process more beneficial to the new
teachers. Like many school districts, SCUHSD is look for administrators who are instructional
leaders from a variety of academic backgrounds. This process should continue as research has
demonstrated the value of subject specific evaluations (Hill & Grossman, 2013).
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Implications and Recommendations for Policy
Revamp master schedule development. This study revealed that SCUHSD hired with
the master schedule in mind, not the knowledge and expertise of the new teachers. This lead to
significant challenges for the new teachers, as they were often unprepared to teach the content or
the students they were assigned. The lack of content knowledge expertise led to many teachers
spending many hours working outside the school day to develop lessons, grade assignments, and
in some cases review and learn the class content so that they could be prepared to teach the class.
Based on the findings, SCUHSD should spend additional time evaluating new teacher
preparedness. Some teachers in the study were not prepared of the rigor of AP classes, the
challenges of working with below grade level learners, or even the level of school they were
assigned (middle school vs. high school). SCUHSD should adopt new policies pertaining to
hiring and onboarding new teachers and the policies should include a more robust approach to
the hiring process. They policies should be derived by the HR Division/Department. The policies
should include a new hiring process that includes either a more robust interview and maybe
document review process to look at the content preparation and skill preparation more carefully.
Expand the onboarding meetings. SCUHSD used to spend several days before the
school year began orientating their new teachers. Due to budget constraints, this practice ended.
This orientation included specific workshops and activities that for new teachers that were
unique to working in a high performing, high-income suburban school district. There were
targeted lessons for classroom management, lesson plan development, difficult parent
interactions, and other issues that a new teacher might face. These workshops were developed
and run by BTSA mentors, which also helped establish a rapport with the new teachers. Because
the findings demonstrated that new SCUHSD teachers often struggled with classroom
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management and interactions with difficult parents, SCUHSD must provide additional
onboarding meetings to address these concerns. With the help of Human Resources, SCUHSD
must update policy to address the steps the district should be taking to better onboard their
teachers. Perhaps then ongoing interventions could take place within the BTSA program, with
monthly BTSA workshops developed to address, support, and resolve some of these issues raised
by this study. Research has demonstrated the long term benefits of new teacher induction
programs, like BTSA, and SCUHSD should continue to develop its induction program as an
onboarding and ongoing support for new teachers (Ronfedlt & McQueen, 2017).
Expanding the mentor program. Nearly all of the new SCUHSD teachers praised the
BTSA mentor program. Many appreciated the support and valued the relationship that was
established between mentor and mentee. It was the mentor who in many cases supported the new
teacher with questions regarding day-to-day operations in the life of a teacher: how to take roll,
how to write a referral, what the code to the copy machine was, or other daily tasks. The mentors
also assisted with other issues, like classroom management techniques, suggestions regarding
work/life balance, or acting as a soundboard for the frustrations of a new teacher. Based on the
findings, SCUHSD should seek to expand the mentor program beyond the first year for new
teachers. This would offer additional supports for temporary teachers as they continue to burgeon
into 100% effective teachers. SCUHSD should also revisit its policy on BTSA and induction to
develop policy on how to support new teachers more intentionally.
Implications and Recommendations for Further Research
This study explored whether new teachers in a suburban, low minority, high performing
schools perceived themselves to be prepared and supported to be 100% effective teachers in the
district in their first year. The findings suggest that SCUHSD could take additional measures to
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89
assist its new teachers during the onboarding process and modify and enhance some of their
ongoing supports to help their news teachers in being 100% effective teachers in the district. An
area for further research would be to examine whether new teachers in urban, high minority, low
performing schools perceived themselves to be prepared and supported to be 100% effective
teachers.
Additional areas for further research specific to SCUHSD include whether an expanded
or revamped interview process will better identify new teachers that 100% prepared to be
effective teachers in the district. SCUHSD is currently in the process of reviewing and revising
their hiring, including the interview portion of the process. An evaluation on the effectiveness of
a new, more in-depth hiring process may support SCUHSD in hiring new teachers with the
knowledge, skills, and expertise to be 100% effective in the district.
Conclusion
In the United States, teacher attrition is at a problematic high (Ingersoll& Merill, 2012).
Accordingly, schools are continually forced to hire younger, less experienced teachers in order to
staff their schools (Borman & Dowling, 2008). This study found that many new SCUHSD
teachers did not perceive themselves to be provided with the support to become100% effective
teachers in the district. More specifically, the district’s onboarding and ongoing supports
measures did not sufficiently prepare the teachers to be 100% effective. If the district were to
enhance and further develop its onboarding and ongoing supports for new teachers, it will
continue to be a high performing district, offering quality education to each of its students.

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APPENDIX A : Interview Protocol
1. What was it about SDUHSD that made it attractive to you as a place to work?
a. What made is place that you wanted to work?
2. At which site do you work?
a. Which classes are you assigned to teach? AP, honors, college prep.?
b. Did you have a say in the classes you were assigned?
c. Are there other classes you were interested in teaching? Why?
3. Walk me through the hiring process that you experienced.
a. How many interviews did participate in?
b. How soon before the school year were you hired?
c. Given the option, would have chosen middle/high school? Why?
d. Where did you hope to be placed? Why? What is it about that level that attracted
you?
e. When were you given your class schedule?
f. How much time did you have to prepare your classroom?
4. Tell me about your experiences before the school began.
a. What information were you provided about the campus? Your students? Your
duties? Who provided you with that information?
b. Provide a specific example of information you wish you had been given before
the school year began.
5. Tell me about a positive interaction with a student’s parent(s). What made it positive?
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a. Tell me about a negative interaction with a student’s parent(s). What made it
negative? How did you respond? Did you feel prepared to deal with this situation?
Why?
6. With a semester now complete, provide some specific examples of things you wish you
had known at the start of the year that would have been helpful.
7. Think about the IEPs and 504 meetings you have attended. Tell me about one.
a. Did you feel like you were prepared to be an active member of the IEP/504 team?
Why or why not?
8. Think about recent day that you would describe as typical. Tell me about it.
9. Have you participated in or attended any extracurricular activities (like dances or club
meetings) or attended any athletic events? If so, which ones?
a. Why did you decide to participate?
b. What did you get out of the experience?
c. What would be an example of how it has contributed to your experiences at your
school site?
10. Let’s talk about BTSA. What are your thoughts about the district’s BTSA program?
a. Think about your work in the classroom. Is there something you can point to that
you have learned as a result of BTSA?
b. How about outside the classroom?
c. Tell me what specifically you believe you are getting from the process and how
you are getting those things?
11. I want to talk a little about the evaluation process. How many times has an administrator
observed you outside the evaluation process, like simply stopping by for a bit?
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a. How many times were you formally observed last semester?
b. Think about a recent observation cycle. What happened?
i. What was your conversation like before the observation?
ii. What was the conversation about after? Tell me about it. What were you
told? What did you say?
12. Now that you have attended a couple days of district professional development, what are
your thoughts? Have you utilized any of the techniques/lessons/ideas in your own classes?
a. If yes, think back to when you used it and walk me through the lesson, the class.
What did you do?
b. Why did you decided to enact what you had learned?
c. Did you believe that it was time to reflect on your own practice as a teacher?
13. Did you believe you are prepared to work in this district?
a. Tell me about a specific instance that demonstrates that demonstrates that?
14. Tell me about a specific instance where you did not believe you were able to respond to
something effectively or as well as you would have liked.
a. Why do you think you did not think you were prepared?
15. Tell me about a specific instance where you believe you were able to respond to a
difficult situation effectively.
a. What prepared you to respond in the way that you did?
16. What were some of the challenges that you faced during this past semester?
a. In what way, if any, do you believe the district could have better prepared you to
respond to that challenge?
17. How does SDUHSD define what it means to be an effective teacher?
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a. What makes you an effective teacher?
18. Is there something you would have asked had you been conducting this interview?
a. Anything I didn’t ask that would help me better understand your experience this
year?
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APPENDIX B: Informed Consent/Information Sheet

INFORMATION/FACTS SHEET FOR EXEMPT NON-MEDICAL RESEARCH

A Study of New Teacher Experiences in San Dieguito Union High School District

You are invited to participate in a research study. Research studies include only people
who voluntarily choose to take part. This document explains information about this study.
You should ask questions about anything that is unclear to you.

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
The purpose of this study is to examine the experiences of new teachers in San Dieguito
Union High District in order to understand what the district could do to improve its
induction program.

PARTICIPANT INVOLVEMENT
If you agree to take part in this study, you will be asked to participate in a 30 to 60 minute
audio-taped interview. You do not have to answer any questions you don’t want to; if you
don’t want to be taped, handwritten notes will be taken.

PAYMENT/COMPENSATION FOR PARTICIPATION
You will not be compensated for your participation.

ALTERNATIVES TO PARTICIPATION
Your alternative is to not participate. Your relationship with your employer will not be
affected whether you participate or not in this study.

CONFIDENTIALITY
There will be no identifiable information obtained in connection with this study. Your
name, address or other identifiable information will not be collected.

Any identifiable information obtained in connection with this study will remain
confidential. Your responses will be coded with a false name (pseudonym) and maintained
separately. The audio recording will be transcribed by www.rev.com. The audio
recordings will be destroyed once they have been transcribed.

The members of the research team and the University of Southern California’s Human
Subjects Protection Program (HSPP) may access the data. The HSPP reviews and monitors
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INVESTIGATOR CONTACT INFORMATION
Principal Investigator
Robert Caughey
SUPPORTS FOR NEW TEACHERS

101
Rossier School of Education
Tel: (858) 752-4211
Email: rcaughey@usc.edu

IRB CONTACT INFORMATION
University Park Institutional Review Board (UPIRB), 3720 South Flower Street #301, Los
Angeles, CA 90089-0702, (213) 821-5272 or upirb@usc.edu
SUPPORTS FOR NEW TEACHERS

102
APPENDIX C: Recruitment Letter

Hello!
As a new teacher to Southern California Union High School District (SCUHSD), you are
formally invited to participate in data gathering activity about your experiences in the district and
the impact these experiences are having on your personal and professional life. Your
participation consists of being a part of an interview in which you will be asked about your
experiences as a new teacher to SCUHSD. The purpose of the study is to continuously improve
the experiences of our new teachers and to find ways that the district can best meet the needs of
its new employees. You are eligible to participate in the study because you are teacher new to
SCUHSD.

Your participation is voluntary and the alternative is not to participate. If you choose to
participate, you will be provide with information about the study and participate in a half hour
one-on-one interview.

If you have any additional questions regarding this research study, please do not hesitate to
contact me via telephone (858) 752-4211 or email: rcaughey@usc.edu

Abstract (if available)

Abstract Research suggests that new teachers are leaving the profession at an alarming rate. Because of this, schools are continually forced to hire younger, less experienced teachers in order to staff their schools. In order to ensure schools continue to perform at high levels, districts need to ensure that the new teachers are effective by the end of their first year. The underlying problem addressed in this study was new teachers’ perceptions regarding both onboarding and ongoing supports offered by school districts in relation to their preparedness to be effective in their classrooms and schools by the end of their first year. The study was based on 11 middle and high school teachers, all of whom were new to the teaching profession. The findings revealed that the new teachers did not perceive the onboarding and ongoing supports from the district to be beneficial to them becoming effective teachers in the district.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Caughey, Robert (author)

Core Title How can I help you? A study of onboarding and ongoing supports for new teachers

School Rossier School of Education

Degree Doctor of Education

Degree Program Organizational Change and Leadership (On Line)

Publication Date 08/01/2018

Defense Date 08/01/2018

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag BTSA,education,effective teaching,hiring,new teachers,OAI-PMH Harvest,onboarding and ongoing supports,teacher mentors,teacher preparedness,teacher support

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Slayton, Julie (committee chair), Datta, Monique (committee member), MacCalla , Nicole (committee member)

Creator Email caugheysd@hotmail.com,rcaughey@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-44797

Unique identifier UC11670947

Identifier etd-CaugheyRob-6593.pdf (filename),usctheses-c89-44797 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-CaugheyRob-6593.pdf

Dmrecord 44797

Document Type Dissertation

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Caughey, Robert

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA