How Deep are the Roots? A Qualitative Case Study of a Grow Your Own Teacher Residency Program Exploring Program Factors Related to Teacher Job Embeddedness

Despite decades of effort from districts, teacher educators, and states to create multiple pathways into teaching through alternative certification programs, shortages of highly qualified teachers have persisted. Grow your own programs have grown exponentially as pathways for recruitment, but little empirical data exists surrounding the role of these programs in teacher retention. This qualitative exploratory case study explored the ways that a grow your own teacher education program influenced job embeddedness in teacher residents through perceptions of program graduates and stakeholders. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews, publicly available websites, videos, and district and university documents. Job Embeddedness Theory was utilized as the lens for thematic analysis of the data corpus to identify perceptions of fit, links, and sacrifice amongst program participants and stakeholders. This study found several programmatic factors associated with teacher job embeddedness, including depth and breadth of field placement; mentor teacher; targeted recruitment; consistent & supportive administration; incentives and obligation; as well as collaboration. Findings from this study also function as empirical evidence regarding the role of grow your own teacher education programs as a tool of teacher retention while extending Job Embeddedness Theory beyond a tool of measurement for intent-to-stay through the identification of ways in which stakeholders can design preservice teacher experiences that retain teachers, especially in hard-to-staff schools.

Embargo status: Restricted until 01/2027. To request the author grant access, click on the PDF link to the left.