Andrew Pendola

My main research motivation is to promote a healthy, equitible, and cohesive society through public education. Towards this aim, I focus on two highly interrelated research strands of (1) educator labor markets, and (2) school policy. As a former social studies teacher, my goal is to identify high-leverage, cost-neutral, and context independent strategies to support students and educators for the broad improvement of society.

 Principal and teacher shortages are a nationwide problem, and the most vulnerable schools consistently have a revolving door of personnel. This is an issue of equity. I specifically focus on identifying solutions to improve retention and turnover in educator labor markets, particularly for historically underserved and under-resourced schools and students. To do so, I look at (1) conditions leading to educator instability, (2) identity, behavior, and workplace dissatisfaction, and (3) adaptive and constructive responses to both that are cost-neutral and context independent so any school can implement. This has led to research on the structural behaviors within principal labor markets associated with turnover, such as issues of internal recruitment, rural isomorphism, gender, demographic shocks, wage tournaments, and satisfaction/opportunity dynamics surounding state policy mandates. To compliment this behavioral research, I also conduct work on identifying how psychological sources of dissatisfaction differentially affect behavioral antecedents to educator withdrawal and turnover, including value conflicts, image violations, and 'last straw' events. The above have led to a series of integrated strategies for improving educator satisfaction and retention through stragegic wage planning, in-domain recruitment, and voice pathways for educators. 

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As part of this agenda, I have been supported by the Spencer Foundation, the Center for Reinventing Public Education, the Americna Academy for the Advancement of Science, the Center for Rural Pennsylvania, and have recieved awards including the UCEA Jack A. Culbertson Early Career Award, the Milwaukee Public Policy Forum's Norman Gill Fellowship, the Auburn University College of Education's Outstanding Faculty Early Career award and the Outstanding Outreach award, the Penn State Donald J. Willower Outstanding Dissertation award, the Nicely Endowment Dissertation award, and David L. Clark graduate award. 

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I currently serve as the Administration of Supervision and Curriculum coordinator, the director of the Plains Research Consortium, as well as as a senior associate editor for the American Journal of Education, a representative for the Scholars Strategy Network, and on the advisory board of CivicPulse.