Date of Conferral

2019

Degree

Doctor of Education (Ed.D.)

School

Education

Advisor

Howard Moskowitz

Abstract

Teachers in a southwestern elementary school were struggling to support students who were not meeting proficiency standards in reading. The purpose of this study was to explore teachers' perceptions and experiences of how administrator behaviors and efforts influenced instructional practices and strategies in the classroom. Marzano's leadership evaluation model served as the conceptual framework that guided this study. The research questions focused on teachers' perceptions of how building administrators offered guidance about teaching and instructional activities and how building administrators influenced teaching and instructional activities to improve student performance. A basic qualitative design was used to capture the insights of 7 teachers who taught on the selected campus during the 2015-2016 school year and any number of school years before, after, or both before and after the 2015-2016 school year through semi structured interviews; a purposeful sampling process was used to select the participants. Emergent themes were identified through open coding, and the findings were developed and checked for trustworthiness through member checking and rich descriptions. The findings revealed that teachers believe that instructional guidance, administrator support, and data tracking positively influence student performance. A professional development project was created to provide administrators with strategies and approaches to support and guide classroom teachers more effectively. This study has implications for positive social change, in that the findings may be applied in creating a structure to provide administrators with strategies to improve school leadership behaviors.

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