Date of Award

5-2008

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Legacy Department

Educational Leadership

Committee Chair/Advisor

Fisk, William

Committee Member

Fleming , David

Committee Member

Green , Robert

Committee Member

Havice , William

Abstract

Every day teachers enter and leave the field of education. The number of teachers leaving the field in the first five years of teaching has doubled in the last ten yers. It is important to examine the constructs that allow some teachers to remain in the field, while others leave to pursue different careers. A review of the literature showed that there was understanding of the positive and negative constructs in education, but there was limited resarch on the application of these constructs to the teachers' careers. To understand why some teachers remain in the field and others leave, this phenomenology has a) examined the process that a teacher goes through from starting as a beginning teacher to becoming a veteran one, b) noted the similarities in the process that each teacher experienced,c) related the findings in the literature, and d) looked at how teachers' experiences helped them to grow and learn. The major characteristic that a teacher must possess to go from a novice teacher to a veteran one is adaptation. Adaptation skills are needed to allow the teacher to remain in the school environment. A teacher must possess adaptation skills to consider himself or herself a successful part of the teaching environment and to emerge from a novice to a veteran teacher.

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