Date of Award

8-2007

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Program

Educational Administration

Department

Educational Leadership, Counseling, and Foundations

Major Professor

Causey-Konate, Tammie

Second Advisor

Savoie, Joseph

Third Advisor

Thoresen, Amy Claire

Abstract

The challenges of school accountability call for new models of school leadership. Teacher leaders are needed to create, implement, and sustain reform efforts. This study investigated whether a specific model of professional development, National Board Certification (NBC), can create sustained change aimed at improved school leadership. The research question which guided this study was: Does the National Board Certification professional development model contribute to school leadership in Louisiana? The state of Louisiana currently has approximately 1,000 teachers with National Board Certification (NBPTS, 2006f). These NBC teachers and approximately 3,000 non-NBC teachers received the online School Leadership Survey, which included survey items taken from a previous study of NBC teachers by Sykes, et al. (2006). A total of 449 NBC teachers and 911 non-NBC teachers responded. The survey included 32 checklist items which explored teacher leadership activities and perceptions in five main areas: types of leadership activities, sense of responsibility to the profession, influence in school-wide policy development, career satisfaction, and future commitment to the teaching profession. A quantitative research design was applied. The research followed an ex post facto, cross-sectional survey model in an attempt to identify a relationship between the independent variable, National Board Certification, and the dependent variable, school leadership, by comparing the leadership activities of NBC and non-NBC teachers. Univariate analysis was used to examine and report the results of the School Leadership Survey. Additionally, the data were used to calculate independent t-tests, factor analysis, chi square tests, and regression analysis.The results of this study revealed that, overall, National Board Certification teachers are leaders in their schools and beyond. When compared to their non-NBC peers, NBC teachers were more likely to be involved in leadership activities at the school, district, and state level. Further, the NBC teachers reported a greater sense of responsibility to the profession, greater career satisfaction, and a deeper commitment to stay in the teaching profession than non-NBC teachers. Using a distributed leadership conceptual framework as a lens to guide the interpretation, the data collected gave evidence that the benefits of National Board Certification are far greater than previously suspected.

Rights

The University of New Orleans and its agents retain the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible this dissertation or thesis in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. The author retains all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis or dissertation.

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