Date

8-9-2024

Department

School of Education

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy in Education (PhD)

Chair

Ellen Ruth Ziegler

Keywords

educational leadership, organizational trust, high-performance teams

Disciplines

Education | Educational Leadership

Abstract

The purpose of this multiple case study was to understand organizational distrust that led to a lack of innovative educational support for elementary school teachers at five elementary schools in the Knight School System. The theory guiding this study is Homans’s social exchange theory as it applies to organizational trust. The central research question explored how public elementary school teachers’ organizational trust perceptions affect innovative educational practices. This multiple case study explored 10 teachers’ experiences in three elementary schools within Georgia. Data were collected from individual interviews, focus group interviews, and journal prompts. This study used qualitative data analysis methods to understand how elementary school teachers' perceived organizational trust influenced their ability to implement innovative curricula, pedagogy, and digital practices. This involved theorizing and integrating the data to understand teachers' lived experiences regarding organizational trust. Data analysis revealed themes from interviews, focus groups, and journal entries and was based on the work of Yin. Two themes and nine subthemes emerged. These themes corresponded to the theoretical framework of the study. This study did not confirm that elementary school administrators were the barrier to innovation. The barrier revealed by participants’ negative organizational trust experiences occurring on grade-level teams, as that was where most of their time was invested in social exchanges.

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