Kurt Blancafior 5/18/16 HCDE 313 Survey Study Report Goals/Context In this research study, | plan to explore the factors that affect the teaching experience, specifically pertaining to how teachers work with the curriculum that is assigned to them and how this assignment, or lack thereof, affects their teaching, The hopes of this study is to identify factors that make teaching difficult for them, so that the system guiding them may be adjusted to make the experience more efficient and enjoyable for them and their students. During previous phases of this research, | had performed field study sessions in which | observed the classroom activities of an elementary school teacher, and | had conducted interviews to explore the observations derived from these sessions, The field studies and interviews were informative, and they allowed me to draw some key conclusions from the teachers that | worked with. For example, the teachers reported to experience a lot of freedom when it comes to adjusting their curriculum, and they believed this freedom was necessary to address the diversity among their students. Additionally, they experienced a disconnect between themselves and the administrators, that guide their teaching, and most of them werent perfectly satistied with the level of mastery their students attain each year. Itis important to note however, that these conclusions were only drawn from the experiences of four teachers. Therefore, itis important to validate or build upon these findings by pooling together information from several more instructors, and a survey is a good tool to accomplish this with. By creating a survey, | hoped to gather more information in order to create quantitative data and correlations between the important factors identified in previous phases of this research project. More specifically, I wanted to test whether or not teachers in general experience a great deal of freedom, and if they take advantage of this autonomy in order to teach. | also wanted to confirm if teachers felt a lack of supporticonnection with their administrators. After gathering this information | can create more developed conclusions about the factors that affect the teaching experience, and hopefully identify ways in which it can be improved. Approach Desigt 19 Questions: ‘There were several key factors that | wanted to investigate that were derived through from the interviews. ‘These factors included: experienced autonomy, difficuty teaching, student concept mastery/learning satisfaction, and interaction with administrators. With the survey questions | wanted to target these core ideas, measure them, and discover any correlation between them. For example, | asked teachers to ratetheir perceived autonomy and student “mastery” on a scale of one (strongly disagree) to five (strongly agree). | also had teachers rank six core subjects in terms of teaching difficulty from one (most difficult) to six (least difficult) because | found that teachers in the interview had a hard time generalizing their overall teaching experience, so | wanted to focus on the subjects that they had the most difficuty with because this would most easily bring about problems they face when teaching. Finally, | created an open-ended question concerning their interaction with their administrators in order to gain a better picture of the communication between the two groups. | also added multiple choice questions in the beginning of the survey to capture demographic information (like teaching grade and years of teaching experience), as well as an open-typing question that allowed them to share their school and school district. This information will help to identify or rule out if any patterns are correlated with location, grade, or years of experience. Ideal Participants: At first, | wanted to focus this research on elementary school teachers teaching in standard classrooms. However, in my interview process | included a special education teacher, and | found that their perspective helps to add to the big picture concerning teachers and their assigned curriculum. Therefore, | created the survey for elementary teachers in general. | did however, rule out activity-related teachers, such as P.E., Music, or Library teachers because thelr experience may be distinctly different from classroom-based teachers in that, rather than teaching several different subjects, their job is to teach a specific subject Recruitment Process: | began by sending emails to schools in my local school district. | also reached out to schoolsin other states such as Oregon, Texas, New York, Wisconsin, California, etc. After finding a school of 2 random school district, | would send an email to their principal and to any other contacts shared on thair website that was listed as a “teacher,” asking if anyone at their school would be willing to complete the survey. This “Snowball” sampling encouraged potential respondents to recruit participants from their colleagues ‘as well, At first, | avoided contacting the school that | had worked with for the previous stages of this, research project in order to ensure that the results better represent the teaching experience in general rather than just a case study of a single school. However, in order to receive a sufficient amount of responses, | asked their teachers for any willing participants as well. In total, | had received 23 responses from schools around the greater Seattle area Survey Tool: | decided to create my survey using "Survey Monkey,” an online service that allows users to create surveys for free. This website allowed me to make questions of each required type, and even provided different ways to observe the data that was collected. | used this tool in order to gain experience with an unfamiliar data collecting tool so that | may have a better understanding of my options if | amto conduct research in the future.Ethics: ‘There were many ethical considerations to take into account when designing this survey. One of the most important reasons for this is that the survey asks teachers to share and explain their opinions towards their relationship with their administrators. This private information could threaten their job security if reported immesponsibly, and because of this | tried to make it clear that all of the questions were optional, and that the demographic questions only asked for information that could not be used to identify 2 teacher easily. Additionally, teachers were able to choose multiple options for the current grade level(s) that they were teaching to avoid excluding teachers of spit, special education, or other types of classrooms. Results Generalized Overview: Overall, teachers reported varying types of experiences concerning their teaching experience, The conclusions drawn from the interview sessions were not fully supported by the interview results, but their cases and experiences were shared by a minority of participants. However, the majority of responses were contradictory or neutral in comparison to the major ideas and assumptions derived from previous phases of this research, Difficulties Teaching Teachers were asked to identi their most difficut subject to teach, and what made this subject difficult for them. In observing their responses, there were four main reasons identified by the teachers. These reasons were: student diversity, new curriculum, lack of curriculum, and time restraints. Student Diversity Most frequently, when asked what was made their most difficult subject to teach “difficult,” teachers cited that this was due to the varying skil levels of their students. | translated this to mean student diversity, which would also factor in the responses that stated that the curriculum was “irrelevant” or “outdated.” By this definition, 10 out of 22 teachers found their subjects difficult to teach because the curriculum does not encompass students of all skill levels. One such respondent explained: “It's difficult to teach complex ideas when the students come from backgrounds where they don't have experience with the ideas presented.” New Curriculum:Interestingly, while some teachers felt that the curriculum for their subject of choice was “outdated,” other teachers had trouble because their curriculum was new. This could he an unavoidable consequence of implementing new curricula, but it may be inefficient to implement new material in the middle of the schoo! year where teachers would have to adjust to it as well Lack of Curriculum: In contrast to the earliest assumptions made in this research project, 4 out of 22 participants explained that they had difficulty teaching the subject because there was no set curriculum for it. Therefore, while 2 curriculum that does not capture the needs and preferences of every student is not ideal, a lack of curriculum could be even more troubling for teachers. Time Restraints It should also be emphasized that 7 out of 22 participants made references to time constraints when it came to teaching their most difficult subject. There were clear patterns that some teachers had trouble teaching subjects like science and art because of the time it takes to develop and set up activities for their students. Also tied to student diversity, some teachers explained that their subject was difficult to teach because it was time consuming to provide individual feedback and personalized learning, For example, one teacher said that they had trouble “t}rying to meet the needs of [their] diverse leamers. The writing skills that students [bring] with them are so varied and itis difficult to find time to meet their many needs.” Itwas also referenced that the lack of curriculum forced teachers to "make something up,” or a newly imposed curriculum caused a "lot of learning on the teachers end.” Therefore, it can be argued that all of these teaching difficulty factors are encompassed by the idea that they take up valuable time to prepare and implement.Agreement on Autonomy vs. Curriculum Adjustment: While many teachers agreed that they experience a great deal of autonomy, many of them don't report to act upon this. | am given the freedom to override material/lessons assigned to me by the school : ° . = ; » 2 3 ‘ 1 Gtrongly disagree) 5 Btronely agree) WOF RESPONSES AGREEMENT RATING jure 1. Teacher Autonomy When asked if they agreed or disagreed that they are given freedom to adjust their curriculum as they please, rated on a scale from one (strongly disagree) to five (stronaly agree), the data averaged out at 2 weighted score of 3.65, indicating that teachers mostly agreed to experience this freedom. Most teachers rated their autonomy a3," making up 10 out of the 23 total responses, Additionally, only one respondent stated to disagree with this statement, rating it a two out of five. This respondent was the only one that participated from their school, which could suggest that this is due to their location. However, their school ‘was in the same school district as the majority of participants, so this correlation may not be valid.For my most 11 (Create my own 5 Use the provided ‘urriculm) ‘ursiculum) ADJUSTMENT RATING icult subject, I tend to... “OF RESPONSES Figure 2. C1 iculum Adjustment Despite the agreement towards the fact that they are given the freedom to adjust their curriculum, not every teacher took advantage of this when facing challenges teaching. In fact, there seemed to be a greater correlation between their tendency to adjust the curriculum and the subjects they chose than any other factor. F or example, some teachers reported that they had to “create their own’ curriculum mostly due to the fact that no curriculum existed for the given subject. This situation occurred many times and it could be solved by developing and providing some sort of curriculum for teachers to build upon. While many teachers explained that handling student diversity was the most difficult part of teaching for them, many of these same respondents went on to say that they use the curriculum provided for them for their most difficult subjects. This may suggest that a curriculum adjustment is needed in these cases, but that teachers do not act upon their perceived autonomy Satisfactory Student Mastery: Teachers agreed to be fairly satisfied with the levels of mastery that their students attain each year. ‘Somewhat contradictory to the results from the interview sessions, the teachers on average agreed that they were satisfied with the progress that their students make by the end of each year. More specifically, 15 out of 23 participants agreed that they were satisfied their students’ knowledge, and even more so one participant "strongly agreed” with this idea. While this indicates that the current system works for many teachers, there are still ways it can be improved upon to make sure every classroom and every student has a successful year.‘School District Support vs. Administrator Interaction: Contradictory to the results from the interviews, many teachers reported to fee! supported by their schoo! districts and to have close relationships with their administrators. However, there were stil cases in which teachers were dissatisfied with the support that they received. | feel supported by the school district in my effort to help students reach educational standards w | | ° mp r 1 Gtrongly disagree) 5 = SUPPORT RATING WOF RESPONSES Figure 3. School rict Support Figure 3 shows that most teachers felt fairly supported by their school districts when it came to finding ways to get thair students up to date with educational standards. However, overall the weighted average of their reported support was only 3.17. There are an alarming number of negative responses that, disagreed with the statement, especially for an issue as important as this. While both respondents that strongly disagreed with this statement both came from the same school, there were responses from instructors of different school districts that also disagreed with this idea. These results suggest that the disconnect between administrators and teachers identified in the interview segments applies to teachers of other areas as well As expected, however, positive reports correlated strongly with perceived support from each teacher's respactive school districts. For example, many teachers that felt supported by their school district explained that they had the ability to "go to the administration with any concems [they] have.” One respondent stated: "I feel very supported by my administrators. There is a mutual respect and trust between us and the instructional decisions | make.” These responses come as a surprise considering myexpectations from the interviews, but they also show how important it is for there to be a close relationship between teachers and administrators. Other teachers, as | had expected, shared that there was litle interaction between themselves and the administration that guides their teaching. One teacher that reported having a fairly negative experience stated that the system which they are evaluated on is “abused and misused than how it was created to be used...” and that they “would like to work with teachers from other schools in the same grade hand to share ideas.” Conversely, one teacher with posttive reports explained that “t]he most beneficial part of [their] job is the bimonthly meetings with other self contained special education teachers. There [they are] able to see how other teachers are adapting the curriculum and making things work in their classroom.” Therefore, many agreed that what has helped them (or what they would like to have) is the ability to collaborate with teachers of their grade level to discuss the approaches they take in teaching certain subjects. Discussion/Reflection It was halpful to receive this responses to help develop results that better represent the average teacher's, experiences, but in combination with the conclusions from the interview much of the data is contradictory. For example, itis not agreed upon that student diversity accounts for the majority of difficulties teaching, or that there is a disconnect hetween teachers and their administrators. However, based on these results \we did learn more about the different factors that affect teaching. F or example, while it was referenced in the interviews, it was made more clear that time is a commodity for teachers. There were more reports that the lack of curriculum, rather than a poorly designed curriculum, caused difficulties due to the fact, that it was time consuming to create lessons on one’s own. Even when teachers referenced that student diversity made teaching harder, they stil explained that they used the provided curriculum, Itis important to note that about 70% of survey responses came from teachers from the school that | ‘worked with for previous stages of this research. This could create bias or misrepresentation of the general teaching experience, but the lack of agreement on identified concepts indicates otherwise Additionally, no schools from outside the state of Washington participated in this survey, but the responses from neighboring school districts did add to and support the results from local teachers. ‘Therefore, while one should be cautious in using this information to represent the average teacher's, experience, there were insightful observations about how to improve certain types of interaction. Implications for DesignOne of the most important factors of teaching identified through the surveys was time. Teachers are constantly busy trying to keep every student up to date with every subject. Any aspect of their job that is time consuming takes away from their ability to focus on other things that could allow them to take care of their students and teach more effectively. Therefore, whether they are adjusting the curriculum provided to them in order to address student diversity, designing their own lessons due to lack of provided material, or getting used to teaching newly implemented lessons, teachers face curriculur-related obstacles that make their teaching less efficient. While learning how to teach with newly implemented curricula simply requires time, and addressing the lack of curriculum can he solved by creating them for teachers, designing lessons to take into account student diversity is a much more difficult endeavor that has been identified even in the earlier stages of this research. Interestingly, there may be a way to address each of these problems at once. Many teachers emphasized that having the ability to collaborate with colleagues teaching the same grade level would help them to develop lessons that are a better fit for their students, Therefore, while designing their own curriculum, may require a lot of effort, having teachers design as teams organized according to grade level may help them to do so more effectively. Therefore, school districts are not stifing teachers with the curriculum that they provide, but perhaps they are not designing the curriculum that works best for every teacher. So if administrators were to instead support teachers by facilitating their communications with instructors of similar areas, then maybe these connections would help teachers to share what they've done to teach their students, in addition to learning from what others have doneReferences cited Danielson, Charlotte. "Charlotte Danielson on Rethinking Teacher Evaluation." Education Week. Edweek org, n.d. Web. 19 May 2016. Appendix 1. Planning materials Part 4: Survey Pre-work 4. What is the domain of your survey study? For my survey study, | am investigating how elementary school work with nationally/district, assigned curricula and how these requirements support and/or hinder their teaching, What is the high-level question you are trying to answer with this study? What aspects of the current curriculum administration system do teachers find helpfuldistracting and how does this correlate to their involvement with the organizations that guide their teaching? 3. Who are your ideal participants? What are the inclusion and exclusion criteria for people to participate in your study? Due to the nature of my previous studies, | am hoping to narrow my survey study to elementary school teachers within the state of Washington. if need be, | will extend my search to elementary teachers in the US in general, but | would lke to limit the age group/school type to K-8 at the most to exclude education that branches out and separates subjects into separate classes for students 4. How do you plan to recruit your participants? | plan on emailing principals of various schools for permission to distribute my survey to their staff. | will ask that any willing participant be connected to me via email so that | can send them a link to the finished survey 5. What is the overall logic of your questions (specific questions and their rationale should be recorded below)? The questions will be heavily inspired by my findings from both the field study and interview parts of my research project. Beginning questions will clarity demographics and be used to categorize teachers according to teaching experience and preferences. | then want to design the survey to assess the participants’ opinions towards educational requirements and their relationship with administrative organizations.6. How will you implement your survey (Web Q, Survey Monkey, another tool)? | will use Survey Monkey to create my survey because itis highly focused on its service, i's intuitive, and it is popularly used in the field to create surveys professionally, Part 2: Survey Protocol Develop your survey protocol by drafting your survey questions, the rationale for each question, and your plan for analyzing each question below. Your rationale should include how the survey question helps answer your high-level question (from item 2 above) and how the question embodies good question design. Your survey should consist of 10-12 questions. Q1: What grade level do you currently teach? Kindergarten, 1°% 24, 9%, 40, 59, 6%, 70, a (“Select muttile if applicable) Rationale: The different grade levels have proven to exhibit key differences when it comes to teaching. As students get older, they can gain more preferences towards/against certain subjects and this can make teaching both dificult and easier at times. Plan for Analysis: Comparative/correlative analysis: grade level vs. difficult subjects; grade level vs. student mastery, grade level vs. school district support Q2: How many years of teaching experience do you have? 0-2 years, 3-5 years, 6-8 years, 11 years, 12 years Rationale: It was found in the interviews that veteran teachers (teachers with over a decade of experience) prefer to have freedom/creativity when it came to teaching. This demographic information is, important because a novice vs. veteran teacher can have very different experiencesidesires. Plan for Analysis: Comparative/correlative analysis: teaching experiance vs. dificult subjects; teaching experience vs. curriculum adjustment; teaching experience vs. school district support; teaching experience vs, autonomy. Q3: What school/school district/state do you teach in? School: State: Rationale: Teaching practices and experiences can differ between schools, and i's important at this stage to widen the group of candidates so that the results don't end up being an overgeneralization based on the limited poo! of participants from past points of the research process. if an outlier appears in the dataset that is from a noticeably different area than the other participants, then this will indicate that location plays 2 large role in teacher experiences. Plan for Analysis: Comparative/correlative analysis: location vs. difficult subject; location vs. favorite subject; location vs. subject adjustment; location vs. year adjustment; location vs. administrative dynamic. Q4: What subject do you find the most difficult to teach? (Rank from 1-6 in order from most to least dificut) Reading__ Math. Science:_ Social Studies. Writing_ Art__ Rationale: It was referenced in the interviews that provided curricula varied between the subjects. ‘Therefore, we can narrow down what subjects certain teachers find more difficult to teach and any trends that may be the cause Plan for Analysis: Modal analysis, in addition to connecting to reasons in the following questions. Q5: Based on your answer from the previous question, what about your highest ranking subject is “aitficult?” Rationale: This question helps to build upon the previous one and draw out whether itis the curricula, student diversity, or something else that makes teaching hard. This clarification is necessary and can provided insight into many of the different results fram previous parts of the research process, Plan for Analysis: Comparative/correlative analysis: difficult subject vs. curriculum adjustment; difficuit subject vs. mastery satisfaction; difficult subject vs. school district support; difficult subject vs. autonomy, Q6: For my highest ranked subject, I tend to... Select One of the Following: 4 (Create my own curriculum)... 2... 3... 4. 5 (Use the provided curriculum) Rationale: This follow up question can help us to find a potential pattem between curriculum adjustment necessttieslinefficiencies. In combination with the next question, we can help to identify the greatest dificulties that teachers have when teaching certain subjects. Plan for Analysis: Comparative/correlative analysis: subject adjustment vs. difficult subject; subject adjustment vs, mastery level; subject adjustment vs. school district support; subject adjustment vs. autonomy, Q7: | am satisfied with the level of mastery my students attain each year (on average).1 (strongly disagree) ... 2 (somewhat disagree) ... 3 (neutra) ... 4 (somewhat agree) ... 5 (strongly agree) Rationale: With this question, | hope to validate the idea that teachers rarely feel that they've done enough for their students by the time they need to graduate. If responses are fairly negative then this will indicate a lack of satisfaction with their teaching framework. Plan for Analysis: Modal analysis in addition to comparative/correlation analy sis: mastery level vs. yearly adjustment; mastery level vs. school district support; mastery level vs. teaching experience; mastery level vs. grade level 8: | fee! supported by the school district in my effort to help students reach educational standards. 1 (strongly disagree) ... 2 (somewhat disagree) ... 3 (neutra) ... 4 (somewhat agree) ... 5 (strongly agree) Rationale: It was also brought about in the interview process that teachers often felt disconnected with the administration groups presiding over them, Therefore, I'd like to gauge the different teachers’ attitudes towards these groups and connect this with their perceived success in teaching Plan for Analysis: Modal analysis in addition to comparativelcorrelation analy sis: school district support vs. dificult subject; school district support vs. autonomy; school district support vs. administrator dynamic; school district support vs. location; school district support vs. teaching experience; school district support vs. grade level Q9: | am given the freedom to override material/lessons assigned to me to teach my students. 1 (strongly disagree) ... 2 (somewhat disagree) ... 3 (neutra) ... 4 (somewhat agree) ... 5 (strongly agree) Rationale: This question touches up on the autonomy that was emphasized by all of the teachers that Participated in this research so far. Questions 6 and 7 halp to reveal if they “have" the freedom to adjust their curriculum, but this question can clarify if this is intended or not by their administrators. Plan for Analysis: Modal analysis in addition to comparativelcorrelation analy sis: autonomy vs. teaching experience; autonomy vs. location; mastery level; autonomy vs. school district support; autonomy vs, administrator dynamics Q10: Please explain the dynamics between yourself and the administrators that guide your teaching. Rationale: There are varying levels of familiarty that may exist between teachers and thair school districts. Therefore, an open-ended question is required to encompass the different levels and efficiencies of communication between these groups, and will allow teachers to explain their answers to the previous questions.Plan for Analysis: Comparative/correlation analysis: administrator dynamic vs. location; administrator dynamic vs. teaching experience; administrator dynamic vs. school district support; administrator dynamic vs, autonomy; administrator dynamic vs. mastery level