Document Type

Dissertation

Degree

Doctor of Education

Major

Education, Educational Leadership & Policy Studies

Date of Defense

5-12-2009

Graduate Advisor

Kathleen Sullivan Brown,Ph.D.

Committee

Catherine Bear

Matthew Davis

Carole Murphy

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine whether a greater number of years of participation in the Professional Learning Communities Project positively impacts professional staff perceptions of job satisfaction, professional collaboration, and implementation of best practices as defined by the ¿Critical Issues for Team Consideration¿ (DuFour et al., 2006, pp. 100-101). A total of 223 participants completed the self-reporting survey out of a total 481 eligible teachers, school administrators and other staff members. Participants were divided into groups based on the number of years their respective schools had been involved in the PLC Project for a between-groups approach to the design. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted to determine any significant differences between groups with varying years of participation in the PLC Project for survey questions in each of the following areas: job satisfaction, professional collaboration, and implementation of best practices. Additionally, multivariate analysis (MANOVA) was conducted to analyze the questions as categories. After conducting the MANOVA, univariate analyses were conducted for each question in the clusters that were noted as significant (p<.05) on the MANOVA to identify the distinguishing variables that were individually affected by the years of experience in Professional Learning Communities. Finally, post hoc testing was conducted on the distinguishing variables that were deemed significant (p<.05) to identify the specific areas of significance between the different groups. While there were significant findings in this study, the findings for this study did not consistently support the hypotheses that schools with a greater number of years of participation in the project would report higher levels of job satisfaction, professional collaboration, and implementation of best practices than schools with fewer years of experience in the PLC Project.

OCLC Number

566298458

Included in

Education Commons

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