All Theses, Dissertations, and Capstone Projects

Year of Award

2024

Degree

Doctor of Education (EdD)

College

College of Education & Allied Health

Degree Program

Collaborative High Impact Instruction

Department

Education and Special Education

First Advisor

Joanne Fish

Second Advisor

Jamie Doronkin

Third Advisor

Catherine Schroy

Keywords

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), anxiety, teachers, teacher shortage, educator preparation programs

Abstract

This research study examined factors contributing to the teacher shortage crisis in the United States. This study addresses the current “mass exodus” of teachers from the teaching profession in the United States. It specifically examined the perspectives of those who have chosen to leave the profession as well as teacher candidates who have experienced adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and anxiety while growing up. This contributed important information to the field and attempted to fill a gap in research and literature exploring this issue. There are likely many factors contributing to this crisis, but anxiety and exposure to ACEs may be leading factors. During this study, three educator preparation programs were examined and surveyed, focusing on the steps to prepare teacher candidates to manage anxiety and ACE exposure. The researcher will also survey teacher candidates and those who have left the teaching profession in the past year. This study incorporated the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-Short Form (CTQ-SF) and the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale 21 (DASS21), as well as a survey created by the researcher to collect qualitative data about individuals’ perspectives about educator preparation programs, the teaching profession, childhood trauma, and anxiety. This study was a mixed methods study using qualitative and quantitative data (Burkholder et al., 2020).

Document Type

Open Access Thesis

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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