USING IMPROVEMENT SCIENCE TO ENHANCE PARAPROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT TO FOSTER SUPPORTIVE CLASSROOM ENVIRONMENTS AND IMPACT TEACHER RETENTION

Recruiting, hiring, and retaining qualified teachers continues to be a problem in the United States and in many other countries, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic. Globally, many teachers express dissatisfaction with pay, but other factors – including dissatisfaction with the level of support received, stress brought on by the workload, and struggles with challenging student behavior – have also contributed to high teacher turnover rates. To support student learning outcomes, administrators and policymakers must be aware of, and address, why teachers are leaving. This study used an improvement science approach to address the reasons why teachers left a suburban school district in Kentucky. The root cause analysis determined a primary reason was the lack of human support needed to assist the teachers daily. The first intervention was implemented to increase the self-efficacy of the paraprofessionals who directly work with students and the classroom teachers. The intervention also aimed to begin growing our own efforts by informing the paraprofessionals of routes to alternative certification. The second intervention utilized the components from the first intervention, but a math instructional strategies component was included. The study used improvement science as the methodology. Pre- and post-survey data were analyzed for quantitative results. Answers to open-ended questions were coded for qualitative results. In the study, paraprofessionals' self-efficacy had several small effects for the first intervention. For the second intervention, some large effects were evident regarding classroom support, which can impact teacher dissatisfaction. Also, several paraprofessionals were more interested in pursuing alternative teacher certification, potentially impacting the district’s teacher applicant pool in the long term.