program evaluation of a large county-based school district's teacher induction program

• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2047/D20209518

The school district being studied is one of the most highly populated in the country located in the southeastern United States. The metropolitan area encompasses the entire county including the urban center, suburban, and rural perimeter. Since 2010, the district has been operating a teacher induction program supporting both beginning teachers and experienced teachers new to the district. This study focuses on experienced teachers new to the district. In six years, no formal evaluation or feedback had been gathered from their teacher induction program with site based support revealing what led to the study's problem of practice. Once this was identified, a program evaluation was designed to gather information from program architects and current supervisors to inform the creation of a logic model identifying resources, activities, outputs, and outcomes. These intended outputs and outcomes led to the gathering of feedback from past and present inductees and site based administrators through data collection methods consisting of an online survey, two focus groups, and several interviews. Data was analyzed against expected outputs and outcomes of the logic model resulting in findings including the increasing of teacher effectiveness by providing a common level of support, improving communication by all stakeholders, and providing a differentiated adult learning experience for inductees by offering more choice in completing induction requirements. Discussion of the findings was conducted through the theoretical lens of the adult learning theory and applicable literature previously reviewed. The evaluation concludes with recommendations to improve induction effectiveness, explain research limitations and offer suggestions to other districts in position to design, implement, evaluate, or revise their own teacher induction program.