The Consequences of Principal and Teacher Turnover for School Social Resources
Family Environments, School Resources, and Educational Outcomes
ISBN: 978-1-78441-628-7, eISBN: 978-1-78441-627-0
Publication date: 28 June 2016
Abstract
Staff turnover may have important consequences for the development of collective social resources based on trust, shared norms, and support among school professionals. We outline the theoretical role-specific consequences of principal and teacher turnover for features of principal leadership and teacher community, and we test these ideas in repeated teacher survey data from a sample of 73 Los Angeles elementary schools. We find evidence that principal turnover fundamentally disrupts but does not systematically decrease relational qualities of principal leadership; negative changes for initially high social resource schools offset positive changes for initially low social resource schools, suggesting that relational instability “resets” the resources that develop in the relationships between leadership and teachers. Greater consistency in measures of teacher community in the face of teacher turnover implies that the social resources inhering in the relationships among teachers are more robust to instability.
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Acknowledgements
Acknowledgments
Research on this chapter was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (award no. ESI-0554566) to the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison; by predoctoral fellowships to Paul Hanselman, Jeffrey Grigg, and Sarah Bruch from the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education (grant no. R305C050055); and a grant by the U.S. Department of Education (grant no. R305B120013) to the University of California, Irvine. Findings and conclusions are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the supporting agencies.
Citation
Hanselman, P., Grigg, J., K. Bruch, S. and Gamoran, A. (2016), "The Consequences of Principal and Teacher Turnover for School Social Resources", Family Environments, School Resources, and Educational Outcomes (Research in the Sociology of Education, Vol. 19), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 49-89. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-353920150000019004
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2016 Emerald Group Publishing Limited