The Role of Mentorship in Teachers' Intent to Persist in P-12 Public Education

Soaring attrition rates among teachers in public education have led researchers to attempt to obtain more insight into teaching intent to persist in American, public P12 education. Mississippi schools are allowed to join the MDE Division of Educator Effectiveness. This single division focuses on enhancing specific areas: “Mentoring and Induction programs, Mississippi Professional Growth system, Mississippi Teacher Residency, and Recognition Programs.” (Steen, 2024). The purpose of the study was to determine if there exists a statistically significant relationship between Mississippi public education teachers’ mentorship experience, mentorship effectiveness, and intent to persist. Secondly, this study was expected to determine to what magnitude school administrators directly serve as mentors for teachers on their staff. The participants in this study included 77 certified public-school teachers in the state of Mississippi. Of the 77 teachers who responded to the survey 78.4% were female and 21.6% were male. The duration of time in the field of education for the sample was 4.2 years (SD = 1.163). Data were analyzed by reporting the proportion “yes” for all binary, dichotomous data; running a One-Way ANOVA to identify if individual teacher groups, representing educators with various years of experience, showed any statistically significant differences, and conducting a Simple Linear Regression model with mentorship predicting intent to persist to determine the power of the connection amid both constructs. The final results pertaining this study were that (1) 67.2% of participants did report mentorship was practiced in their schools with 17.6% of respondents reporting having more than one mentor and 52.7% reporting having their mentor formally assigned by the school or district; (2) Of the respondents participating in the study (N = 74) 85.1% did not have their principal/assistant principal to serve directly as their mentor; (3) There was no statistically significant differences in teacher groups as it related to perceived effectiveness. The null hypothesis could not be rejected rendering all groups statistically the same, and (4) Mentorship was not a statistically significant predictor of intent to persist. Intent to persist scores increased by .072 points for each point mentorship effectiveness increased. R2 was calculated at 0.124. Participants predicted that the intent to persist was equal to 30.938 + .072. Intent to persist scores increased by .072 points for each point mentorship effectiveness increased.