Date

6-2022

Department

School of Education

Degree

Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership (EdD)

Chair

Angela Smith

Keywords

teacher retention, teacher attrition, persistence, grit

Disciplines

Education | Educational Leadership

Abstract

The purpose of this quantitative study was to determine the level of grit that best predict years in teaching. The study sought to answer the research question, How accurately can years of teaching experience be predicted from the linear combination of grit score (meaning the consistency of interest and perseverance of effort), age, gender, level of education, grade level taught, and subjects taught? Teachers (N = 468) of preschool-12th grade in a large suburban Atlanta school district responded to survey questions from the Grit-S Scale questionnaire along with demographic questions. Multiple linear regression was conducted to analyze the data. The model was found to be statistically significant. The model’s effect size was large (R2 = .54), indicating that approximately 54% of the variance of criterion variable can be explained by the linear combination of predictor variables. The null hypothesis was rejected, and it was concluded that there was a statistically significant predictive relationship between the years of teaching experience and the linear combination of grit, age, gender, level of education, grade level taught, and subjects taught. Further analysis of the coefficients revealed that age, grit, and education were statistically significant in predicting teaching experience. Future research is needed to consider how the concept of grit manifests in different populations, how grit is tested and measured using different instrumentations, and to determine the extent to which grit predicts retention.

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