Conducting a Principal Professional Learning Community as a Retention Strategy
Abstract
Principals are leaving their schools at an alarming rate each year, and this turnover can have detrimental effects on school culture and student achievement. The aim of this study was to improve principal job satisfaction, in an effort to increase retention in the position at Vision Schools where there have been 14 principals in eight years for four different schools in their district. The six-week intervention was a multipronged intervention that involved creating and running a principal professional learning community, as well as peer mentoring, in the form of shadowing, to provide professional development for principals, and to increase the support for principals while reducing isolation. Six school principals from the same district participated in the intervention. This mixed methods study used open-ended survey questions, as well as the principal section of the Met Life Teacher: Challenges for School Leadership Survey, and the Managerial Skills Assessment Instrument (MSAI) to measure job satisfaction, leadership skills, and potential retention. Data showed that the participants felt a strong sense of community, a minimal positive impact on job satisfaction, and a decrease in leadership skills during this cycle of the intervention. Retention data is a lagging indicator, and exact data will not be available until the next school year. At the end of this study, 5 out of the 6 participants reported that they will return to their positions as principals at Vision schools.
Subject Area
Educational leadership|Continuing education|Educational administration
Recommended Citation
Deal, Amy Leigh, "Conducting a Principal Professional Learning Community as a Retention Strategy" (2023). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI30423757.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI30423757
