How Day School Teachers Perceive Their Working Conditions: A National Study

ABSTRACT

Induction and mentoring are widely considered in the United States and in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries as a basic universal and critical intervention for a successful launch of new teachers. Based on an expanded set of survey data, this article focuses on how Jewish day schools offer professional support and learning opportunities from the head of school, the administration, colleagues, parents, and the school community and how useful teachers perceive these resources to be. This study reveals that less than half of all teachers in the schools surveyed report participating in formal induction programs and believe their schools take the learning needs of new teachers seriously. Schools would do well to attend to this aspect of teacher support and consider the systems and structures that do (or do not) exist to help orient, support, and develop new teachers.

KEYWORDS:

• Administration/principal/head of school support
• beginning teachers
• Jewish day school
• professional development
• professional learning community
• school environment
• teacher survey

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the editor and anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. Dr. Tamir, the project director, extends special thanks to the heads of Jewish New Teacher Project (Nina Bruder and Amy Ament), Jewish Theological Seminary (Shira Epstein) and Stern College (Miriam Hirsch), for their help in data collection at their respective programs.

Funding

This work was funded in part by a grant from the Jim Joseph Foundation and the Mandel Foundation to the Longitudinal Study of Day School Teachers at the Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education, Brandeis University.

Notes

¹ For more details about the DeLeT Longitudinal Study of Day School Teachers, go to http://www.brandeis.edu/mandel/research/delettracking.html.

² Given the lack of comprehensive research in this field, our aim is to provide a broad and general description of the field. In the future a more detailed examinations of particular data groupings is planned.

³ Program graduates who left teaching responded to a similarly worded question, but were asked to refer to their last year in teaching.

⁴ One statement that involves teachers’ perspectives on administrators is grouped with the following section.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded in part by a grant from the Jim Joseph Foundation and the Mandel Foundation to the Longitudinal Study of Day School Teachers at the Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education, Brandeis University.

Notes on contributors

Eran Tamir

Eran Tamir is a Senior Lecturer at Tel Aviv University School of Education (Department of Educational Policy and Administration) and an Affiliated Scholar at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University.

Nili Pearlmutter

Nili Pearlmutter is a former faculty at the DeLeT Program and an Educational Specialist at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University. She is currently an Educational Specialist at the Lowell Public School District. [email protected]

Sharon Feiman-Nemser

Sharon Feiman-Nemser is the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Professor of Jewish Education and Senior Scholar at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University. [email protected]