Teachers--Attitudes

The developmental research schools, or laboratory schools, of the state of Florida became single-school public school districts in 1991. This allowed the four Florida laboratory schools to receive full-time equivalency funding from the state, but also required the schools to have state-mandated programs in place. Laboratory school teachers have varying roles that include teacher, researcher, writer, and presenter. These roles have caused discussion about appropriate performance appraisal methods for laboratory school teachers. In Florida, public school districts must have a human resources and management development plan that addresses evaluation and supervision of teaching personnel. With the passage of the Florida Clinical Education requirements for teachers who supervise developing teachers, it became necessary for the developmental research schools to demonstrate a commitment to an established system of measuring teacher growth. Teacher involvement is an integral part of building a sound supervision and evaluation system, so this study looked at the attitudes of the laboratory school teachers toward administrative practices in supervision and evaluation. The sample included one hundred fourteen instructors from the four Florida developmental research schools. The teachers taught grades kindergarten through eight. Seventy-six percent of those in the sample had advanced degrees, and seventy-five percent had over five years of teaching experience. A survey questionnaire was used to collect data from the teachers. The survey included questions on individual teacher demographics as well as assessment of the teachers' attitudes and perceptions of formal and informal evaluation practices. Descriptive statistics and t-tests results compared the average perception of formal evaluation as an accurate measure of teaching effectiveness for the different teacher groupings. Results indicated that eight of the nine null hypotheses were rejected. Null hypothesis 3, predicting no difference in teachers' perceptions of formal evaluation as an accurate indicator of teaching effectiveness between teachers who had developed a personal professional development plan and teachers who had not, was not rejected. Being able to create individual professional development plans increased teacher confidence and enthusiasm. Teachers viewed self-evaluation forms such as portfolios and checklists as accurate means of assessing teacher effectiveness. Recommendations for further study include: enlarging the sample size to include laboratory school teachers in other states and countries, adding non-laboratory school teachers to the study; and encouraging teachers to become involved trying to include alternative assessment methods such as portfolios and professional development plans as part of the district teacher supervision and evaluation plan.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how teachers change from being disseminators of information in teacher-centered classrooms and become constructive classroom change agents using a more facilitative teaching style in a learner-centered classroom. The study identified the forces that lead to change and examined what this change means for teachers. It included teachers who have made positive improvements by changing or broadening their instructional practices. This qualitative study examines one important reform program in a district of over 217,000 students. Twenty teachers were interviewed and observed who had participated in a two-year training program, TEAMS (Teachers Exploring and Mastering Strategies), that was based on the Models of Teaching Program developed by Bruce Joyce, Marsha Weil, and Beverly Showers. In numerous schools, six valued teachers were selected by their principal to train with the principal in workshops, meet in study groups, and work with a university coach for the purpose of infusing new facilitative strategies into their teaching repertoires. Teachers in this study showed a positive response to long-term intermittent training with study groups conducted monthly. This approach provided an environment for the development of learning communities, which was enhanced by the requirement that teachers observe each other as they practice the new strategies. Teachers responded positively to working with a coach who gave teachers strong support for using the newly learned strategies. Having the coach observe the teaching of new strategies, as well as being in each other's classrooms, compelled teachers to implement the strategies which helped them overcome the discomfort factor. Results of this study confirmed that teachers implement strategies that have the greatest impact on student achievement. Teachers' attitudes and beliefs about teaching changed and became more positive as they saw students become more engaged in learning. Although teachers did move to become more facilitative and depend less on teacher-directed instruction and rote memory for students, these strategies were not abandoned. Teachers in this study reported feeling more professional and had a heightened sense of efficacy as teachers, and they were more inclined to seek additional training that would increase their facilitative skills.

The purpose of this study was to determine if 4MAT training had an impact on teachers' attitudes towards students' behaviors associated with creativity. Specifically, this study analyzed the relationship between the dependent variable of attitude toward creativity, and the independent variables of levels of training, grade level, years of teaching experience, and subject area. A sample of 459 subjects consisted of an experimental (N = 310) and control group (N = 149). The experimental group received either Fundamental 4MAT training or both Fundamental and Intermediate training, while the control group received no intervention. The Ideal Child Checklist (ICC), developed by Torrance (1975), was used as a pre- and posttest measure to determine change in attitude following treatment. Responses on the ICC were tallied to create a single score on the instrument. Statistical methods used to analyze the data consisted of (a) a t-test to compare 4MAT with controls by calculating the difference between pre- and posttest scores, (b) a one-way analysis of covariance to compare level of training, and (c) a two-way analysis of covariance to compare levels of training with independent demographic variables. Five hypotheses were developed to determine if 4MAT training had an impact on attitudes and the aforementioned variables. All hypotheses were tested at the.05 level of significance. Based on the findings of this study, none of the demographic variables had a significant relationship to change in attitude towards creativity, beyond what could normally be expected by chance. However, the 4MAT group had a statistically significant higher attitude score than the control group, t(147) = 6.29, p <.001, and there was a statistically significant difference between groups for control and levels of training, F(2, 307) = 35.46, p <.001.

The Palm Beach County School District, FL, (District) has introduced collegial peer coaching as one element of staff development in making training more effective for school improvement in making training more effective for school improvement practices. The purpose of this research was to ascertain the effects of collegial peer coaching on teachers' perception of self-efficacy. Developing skills to improve student achievement is the goal of inservice training for teachers. Teacher efficacy requires practice and refinement in order for teachers to gain executive control over newly-learned strategies. No empirical evidence exists regarding the effects of collegial peer coaching on teacher behaviors. The Teacher Locus of Control Scale was administered in a two-group study to determine whether teachers' sense of self-efficacy was impacted significantly by involvement in collegial peer coaching, years of teaching experience, teaching grade level, or by geographic location (work site) in the District. The treatment group subjects (collegial peer coaches, n = 102) and control group subjects (teachers not involved in collegial peer coaching, n=102) were surveyed in a pre- and posttest application to test the hypotheses. Results of the study indicate that teachers' sense of self-efficacy is impacted significantly by collegial peer coaching and by geographic location within the District (p <.05). A significant interaction effect was found between collegial peer coaching status and teaching grade level (p <.05).

The eighties will be known as a decade of reform, a time when several key reports highlighted serious deficiencies in education and alerted the public to the possibility of a crisis in this country. It has been suggested that for education to improve, teachers must become more aware. What is needed, many believed, is for teachers to become more reflective. Reflection, in the context of teaching, refers to teachers thinking systematically about their work, evaluating what happens in the classroom and eventually making changes to improve teaching and learning. Although the literature was replete with theory on how a practitioner can approach the act of reflection, there was no practical model which could be directly applied to the classroom situation. The purpose of the study was to provide teachers with a practical model for daily reflection in the classroom. A model was designed using reflection, decision making and problem solving theory. The model was tested using a two-phased pilot study, followed by experimental use by 60 teachers in grades K-12. Participants used the Teacher Reflection Model for 10 school days and filled out and returned a questionnaire. The questionnaire provided Likert-type attitude statements that were rated by the respondents on a scale of from 1 through 5, according to their agreement or disagreement with the statement. The attitude statements were designed to measure the practicality of the model. The average of the scores of the attitude statements became the Attitude Index for the teacher and provided a measure of practicality for the Teacher Reflection Model. Several subgroups within the sample of 60 teachers were compared using a t-test to analyze whether there was a significant difference in their average Attitude Index. Linear correlation tests were run to evaluate the relationships between the computed Attitude Index, the years of teaching for the respondents and the average time needed to fill out the Daily Reflection Form. Results of the study indicate that the Teacher Reflection Model is a practical instrument to assist teachers to reflect and that the questionnaire was a reliable instrument to evaluate the model. Several recommendations for improving the model are included in the study.

This single site qualitative case study of a large high school was conducted during the course of one school year. The study focused on how secondary level teachers of the four core content areas, language arts, science, social studies and mathematics, responded to a program of whole school change. In addition to teachers, the administration and support staff were interviewed. The primary sources of data were the results of one hour interviews, document analysis and researcher non-participant observations. The purpose of this study was to identify and understand teachers' various responses to a program of whole school change. The major concepts underlying the study were the meaning of change, the need for schools to change, the change process, the role of people involved in the change process and the proliferation of various programs of whole school change. The research findings highlighted the importance of: recognizing only one whole school change initiative as the primary focus, being knowledgeable of the whole school change initiative, constantly working on personalizing the school's vision, facing external and internal change forces, handling challenges and dealing with the rate of change. The conclusions of the study are that from attempted implementation of multiple school change initiatives perhaps only one change initiative will rise to prominence, teacher involvement and buy-in are important components of successful whole school change, educators face both internal and external factors while implementing whole school change and the principal plays a crucial role in successful whole school change.

This study sought to accomplish three things:
1) to develop a model which would use semantic differential
techniques to measure the intensity of teacher attitudes toward public school supervisory concepts; 2) to
determine if teachers' attitudes differ significantly
in the subgroups of the study's population when analysis
of variance is applied to the data supplied by the model
instrument; and 3) to determine which rotation, orthogonal
or oblique, more closely approximates the simple
structure when factor analysis is applied to the data.
Analysis of the data was based on the responses
of 217 public school teachers who were enrolled in graduate
courses located at the University of Central
Florida and Florida Atlantic University. Each subject
responded to eighteen bipolar scales, evaluating seven supervisory concepts. Analysis of the data was accomplished
by three computer programs, Kaiser's "Little
Jiffy, Mark IV," to measure sampling adequacy, reliability,
and degree of empirical confirmation of the
model; analysis of variance to determine whether the
subgroups were statistically significant and evaluate
the relationship between the variables in the groups; and
factor analysis applied to the data which incorporated
two methods of rotation, orthogonal and oblique, to
determine which rotation more closely approximates the
simple structure. Findings: The findings may be summarized as follows:
1. Teachers' responses clustered into four
principal factors, here presented in rank order of
extraction--evaluation, potency, activity, and stability.
The evaluation factor accounted for over 55 percent of
the common variance.
2. The concept instrument, bipolar scales, and
semantic differential techniques can be combined to
differentiate teacher attitudes concerning specific concepts.
3. A comparison of the mean variable scores
for concept instruments revealed that responses by this
study's teachers rated the positions of principal, director and superintendent very low.
4. Data comparing such groups as university
attending, school districts of employment, and age groups
by analysis of variance techniques revealed statistical
differences that were substantive when evaluating the concepts
of dean, principal, director and superintendent.
5. Teaching level and male/female teacher group
accounted for statistical differences that did not prove
to be substantive over all concepts.
6. A comparison of the quartimax rotated factor
matrix and the oblique pattern matrix revealed that
clusters of variables are more clearly defined on the
pattern matrix. Near zero loadings are minimized and
high loadings are maximized. However, on several of the
concept data runs the differences were not clearly
defined. Conclusions: 1. The model developed for measuring teacher
attitudes was reliable and demonstrated a high degree
of empirical confirmation.
2. Supervisory job does appear to be a factor
influencing teachers' attitudinal responses on the
bipolar variables.
3. University of attendance, school district
of employment, and age group are factors which produce significant differences in teacher attitudes.
4. Factor analysis involving either orthogonal
or oblique should be selected based on the objectives
of the research project. Both methods may be utilized,
results compared, and the solution which provides the
best answer for the study involved should be selected.