Meridian Middle School Computer Technologies Journal
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Science
Teachers' Interest in Online, Self-Directed Professional Development Opportunities
David A. Slykhuis
Winter 2004 Issue
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Online
www.ncsu.edu/meridian/win2004/internetpd/
Abstract
This study addresses the question: If science teachers in North Carolina could see various technologies or methodologies modeled in the classroom via video clips on the Internet, what would they want to see?
Data was collected from 144 surveys of middle and high school teachers across the state. The teachers provided demographic information and answered 20 Likert-style questions about their level of interest on methodologies that could be modeled on the Internet.
The collected data was then analyzed to find which method received the most favorable responses. The numbers were compared both on the basis of the percentage of respondents who answered favorably and on the mean score for each question. Correlation tables were made to determine trends with the demographic information and the responses given. The strongest trend that was discovered was a .77 correlation between the mean scores for middle school teachers and high school teachers on the survey questions. This indicates both groups of teachers had similar opinions.
The survey shows that science teachers in North Carolina are more interested in seeing inquiry-based methodologies than seeing the latest technology modeled in the classroom. These results provide a clear direction for the continuation of this project to aid science teachers in their own classrooms.
Review of Literature
For the last decade there has been a strong reform movement in education, including science education. This reform has focused on teaching methodologies, national or regional standards, and the incorporation of the two through professional development. An additional, and thus far unrealized, aid in accomplishing these objectives could be for teachers to observe modeling of these methodologies via the Internet.
In
science education, reform has centered around two aspects of teaching. The
first is to ensure that teachers are familiar with the latest content, research,
and techniques of practicing scientists (Anderson, 1993). The second is providing
veteran teachers experience with learning cycle/student centered teaching
practices (Radford, 1998). In the article, "SCI-LINK: An Innovative Project
Linking Research Scientists and Science Teachers," Dr. Norman D. Anderson
(1993) describes a project based at the University of Minnesota and North
Carolina State University. The primary focus of this project was to have practicing
science teachers collaborate with research scientists during a two-week summer
session. During the session, teachers produced curricular material fashioned
during their on-site collaborations that they could take with them and use
in their classrooms. The project met with widespread, positive feedback from
the teachers and virtually all of them reported using the materials they developed
the following year.
Project LIFE in Louisiana, while trying to help teachers change their methodology, identified an obvious need for inquiry based/student centered practices (Radford, 1998). Most teachers were not practicing inquiry based/student centered learning because they had not been taught how to teach that way. Once again the primary method for training these teachers was through summer sessions. These teachers attended a three-week summer session which focused on practicing hands-on science and understanding how to implement the learning cycle. The results of the study indicated that after the teachers introduced this type of teaching model, along with the LIFE curricula, the attitudes and perceptions of the teachers improved and the attitudes and achievement of the students improved as well (Radford, 1998).
Standards led reform, present in 49 of 50 states, was recently described in a report issued by the Regional Educational Laboratory Network (Laboratories, 2000). This report summarized the success of the reform movements and money that has been spent on this effort. They found that not only are student standards being enacted throughout the country, but some states are also enacting teacher performance standards. A common characteristic of successful reform programs included professional development in which the teachers felt ownership. One state, Florida, developed an online resource center for teachers, with the understanding that teachers were so pressed for time that this could be an easily available resource. This resource center focused on providing prepared units or lessons for teachers that were tied directly to the state standards. This could also be a resource which incorporated access to modeling of teaching strategies.
Kentucky has been on the leading edge of education reform for the past decade and has committed a substantial amount of money to developing quality professional development with the understanding that educational reform will only occur with teacher learning (Borko, Elliott, & Uchiyama, 1999). Kentucky points out that changes in practice are unlikely to occur without guidance and learning from colleagues (Borko et al., 1999). One roadblock to implementation of successful professional development in Kentucky was geography. Many of the schools in need of updating their standards and methods were located some distance from the University system which made travel difficult. Another obstacle was the minimal amount of time teachers were willing to spend on professional development. Again it seems that Kentucky is on the verge of using the Internet to overcome the problems of geography while being able to deliver meaningful experiences modeled after successful classrooms on a timetable that would be the most convenient for the teachers.
Parke and Coble (1997) conducted a study to examine how schools and teachers could answer the challenge to change the way science has been traditionally taught. They uncovered some negative attitudes from teachers about current professional development models. Teachers tire of having having change mandated and issues handed down to them from thier administrations. When teachers do not have a stake in the change process, they tend to take new ideas and change them to fit their old teaching habits. On the positive side, teachers want to feel connected to each other, to peer support, and to the process of professional development, such as self-selecting the topics. They also feel it is important that professional development focus on reforms in education and helps to support life-long learning (Parke & Coble, 1997). If science teachers had access to materials on the Internet, they could foster this sense of life-long learning while connecting with other successful teachers. This process would be solely teacher initiated and would allow teachers to explore new methods on their own terms.
Many times teachers leave professional development activities excited about a new topic or plan but then struggle with the implementation of this idea in their classroom. Some of the reasons for this could be found in a study by Sanchez and Valcarcel (1999) that examined what teachers actually do and think about when planning for instruction. Although this study took place in Spain, the findings are largely applicable in the United States as well. When planning what to teach, most teachers consult their text, look at the general concepts, then search for material and activities to convey these concepts to the students. Content and objectives vastly outweighed the methodology or student interest as priorities in planning. Teachers compacted all of their planning into about two to three hours a week, and incorporated virtually no active learning nor aspects of the learning cycle. Over 60% of the teachers felt that they needed to improve their planning for instruction and over 35% gave specific examples of things that would help them, such as obtaining up to date knowledge in the subject areas, and learning new teaching and assessment strategies (Sanchez & Valcarcel, 1999). One way to address these needs is Internet access to models of the latest teaching methods and developments in science education.
Educational reform and professional development are moving forward together (Borko et al., 1999; Laboratories, 2000; Parke & Coble, 1997; Radford, 1998). Involving teachers in discovering what is needed to help them improve their practices can facilitate education reform. Some of the barriers and drawbacks of traditional professional development such as geography (Borko et al., 1999), top-down initiatives (Parke & Coble, 1997), two to three week summer sessions that are not available for all teachers (Anderson, 1993; Radford, 1998), and cost (Laboratories, 2000), can be at least partially alleviated by making these opportunities available to all science teachers over the Internet. It has also been shown that teachers learn the best in their own classrooms, at their own pace, and that the best source of ideas are experienced teachers (Van Zant, Raszka, & Kutzner, 2001). All three of those models for successful teacher learning, which is the goal of professional development, can be easily realized through the medium of the Internet. Professional development opportunities via the Internet are certainly not a panacea for all that ails science teaching. However, a model that utilizes the Internet, aimed at transforming traditional science classrooms into learner centered science classrooms, can be another tool to give students the best science education experience possible.
Methodology
Pre-service science teachers are given the tools and methods to survive the first year of teaching in their undergraduate programs. Once in the field, these novice teachers continue to learn about science teaching from expert role models. There is little time, however, during the school day to observe “live” teaching practices and there may be few examplese of new tools and methodologies that can be observed in the schools. Oone way to circumvent the problem is to view the exemplary teachers practicing new methodologies using up-to-date video tools delivered via the Internet. But first, the question must be answered, ”What do in-service teachers view as the important aspects of teaching science which should be modeled by expert teachers for review by the science teaching profession?”
To answer this question, a survey was developed to send out to middle and high schools throughout North Carolina. The survey was developed in three stages. First, initial ideas and beginning points were taken from earlier work done on the Science Junction (http://www.ncsu.edu/sciencejunction), a cyber-community for teachers, students and science researchers. Second, the idea of the project along with some suggestions taken from Science Junction was presented to a focus group of middle school teachers. They provided additional ideas for what could be modeled and refined earlier ideas. The ideas garnered from the focus group were then used to create a draft of the survey. In the third phase, this draft of the survey was presented to a group of high school teachers. The teachers reviewed the survey for clarity additional content as well as ideas to help increase the return rate. Final revisions were then made to the survey and it was prepared for mailing.
An
effort was made to mail the survey to a sample that would be representative
of the population of high schools and middle schools in North Carolina. From
the complete lists of middle and high schools in North Carolina, 250 middle
schools and 250 high schools were randomly selected. The high school survey
was sent to the Science Department Chairperson, and the middle school survey
was sent to the Principal of the building. In each case there was an accompanying
cover letter explaining the research and survey and asking that at least one
teacher in the building complete and return the enclosed survey. The only
differences between the high school and middle school survey are questions
in the demographics section. The main body of each survey is identical.
The first section of the survey contains questions about the background and demographics of the teacher and the school. The main body of the survey lists twenty items that could be presented on video via the Internet to assist teachers in their preparation and professional growth. Teachers are asked to indicate their interest in each topic by rating it on a 1 to 5 scale, with 1 indicating that this practice is not something that they would want to observe, and 5 indicating that this practice is something that they would be very interested in observing. The last section of the survey includes an open-ended question that asks the respondents for any additional suggestions of topics as well as single scaled question asking for their opinion on how useful they feel this completed project will be to them.
Incentives were used to raise the return rate of the survey. Every teacher who returned a survey had their name entered into a drawing for one of six color printers. The six Lexmark Z32 printers were given out at the completion of the survey.
When the surveys were returned the results were analyzed to find which items teachers responded to most favorably. Mean scores were computed for each of the 21 questions for the high school teachers and middle school teachers. The scores were then examined to determine which items were higher in selection scores. The results were also analyzed to see if there were correlations between the high school and middle school responses.
Hopefully, these results will provide a clear direction for what aspects of science teaching in-service teachers want to see modeled on video delivered via the Internet to help them improve their own teaching. The next step in this project will be to collect video samples of the most desired aspects of teaching science, as shown by the survey, and begin to compile a library of such activities and behaviors that can then be posted on the world wide web to be accessed by teachers throughout North Carolina and the world.
Sample
Of the 500 surveys that were sent to middle and high schools across North Carolina, 144 were completed and returned. This was a slightly disappointing return rate of 29%. It was hoped that by offering color printers as rewards that the return rate would be closer to 40%. One of the reasons for this might have been the quick turn around time that was required for this survey.
Of the 144 surveys returned, 56 were from middle schools and 88 were from high schools. Some respondents did not complete all of the demographic information. The respondents were asked to categorize their school in several areas for sake of comparison. Their answers indicated that, while more responses indicated that they were from small schools, there was a reasonable spread across all three categories. (See Table 1). The middle school respondents were predominately from small schools, while the high school respondents tended to be in large schools.
Table 1
Size of Schools
| Number of Students | All Responses | Middle School | High School |
| 0-400 | 44 (.31) | 26 (.46) | 18 (.21) |
| 401-800 | 29 (.20) | 19 (.34) | 10 (.11) |
| 801-1200 | 31 (.22) | 10 (.18) | 21 (.24) |
| 1201+ | 39 (.27) | 1 (.02) | 38 (.44) |
| Total | 143 | 56 | 87 |
Percentage of responses in each category shown in parenthesis.
Teachers indicated that they were mostly from rural schools (See Table 2.) This trend was the same for both the middle and high school teachers.
Table 2
Location of School
| Location of School | All Responses | Middle School | High School |
| Rural | 77 (.56) | 36 (.70) | 41 (.48) |
| Suburban | 32 (.23) | 7 (.14) | 25 (.29) |
| Urban | 27 (.20) | 8 (.16) | 19 (.22) |
| Total | 136 | 51 | 85 |
Percentages of responses in each category shown in parenthesis.
The teachers were also asked for their number of years of experience. As a group they averaged 13.9 years of experience with a minimum of 1 and a maximum of 39. (See Table 3). The two groups were remarkably similar in the years of experience. The middle school teachers averaged 14.0 years of experience and the high school teachers averaged 13.9 years.
Table 3
Experience of Teachers
| All Responses | Middle School | High School |
| Mean Years of
Experience |
13.9 | 14.0 | 13.9 |
| Min. Years of Experience |
1.0 | 1.0 | 1.0 |
| Max. Years of Experience |
39.0 | 32.0 | 39.0 |
Of the 100 counties in North Carolina, surveys were returned from 60 of them. The figures below show the numbers of surveys sent to each county and the number of surveys returned from each county. Because some schools copied the survey and sent back multiple copies, it is actually possible to have more surveys returned from a county than were sent to that county. The figures below depict middle school surveys sent and returned and high school surveys sent and returned.
Figure 1- Map showing the number of surveys sent to High Schools in each county.
Figure 2- Map showing the number of surveys returned from High Schools in
each county.
Figure 3- Map showing the number of surveys sent to Middle Schools in each
county.
Figure 4- Map showing the number of surveys returned from Middle Schools in
each county.
Results
Of the 20 Likert-style questions about what teachers would like to see modeled on video via the Internet, only 4 questions had an average of greater than 4. The two top responses, questions 18 and 20, had mean scores of 4.16. Question 18 stated, “A teacher doing an inquiry based lesson.” and question 20 was, “A teacher doing an inquiry based lesson with traditionally low achieving students.” The next two highest scoring responses were question 7 with a 4.13 mean and question 8 with a 4.14 mean. Question 8 was, “A teacher using the WWW in class as something other than a resource.” Question 7 was, “A teacher doing inquiry science in a class that includes students with special needs.” A p-value was calculated between the top, 4.16, and bottom, 4.13, score in this upper cluster. This p-value is .40, which shows that there is not a significant difference between these mean scores. A p-value was calculated between the bottom score in the upper cluster, 4.13, and the next highest score, 3.96. This was calculated as a one-sided p-value, checking only to see if the upper score is higher, and the p-value is .045 which shows that this upper cluster is set apart. This indicated the upper cluster, which primarily deals with the application of inquiry-based teaching, is what science teachers in North Carolina are most interested in seeing modeled on the Internet via video. All the rest of the questions had averages between 3.42 and 3.81. (See Table 4). Since all the questions had means above 3, there was not anything that the teachers summarily rejected, but the inquiry-based teaching questions elicited the highest responses. Table 4 indicates the total number of responses to each question; this does not always total 144 because some teachers skipped individual questions and two teachers failed to fill out the backside of the survey. For a complete list of the questions see Appendix 1.
Table 4
Responses to questions, all respondents