What They Left Behind: A Case Study of Teachers\u27 Experiences with School Improvement at Evergreen Elementary School

With the enactment of the No Child Left Behind Act, an unprecedented amount of pressure has been placed upon schools to increase student achievement. During the 2009-2010 school year, Evergreen Elementary School was in Year Four of school improvement for failing to make Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) in both reading and math. Drawing on observational and interview data from upper elementary school teachers, this paper will explore how striving to make AYP impacted teachers including increased workloads and stress, and how these factors led to teachers leaving the school, with a focus on a single teacher’s experiences

Encouraging Reflective Practices in Doctoral Students through Research Journals

This study developed after I read numerous research journals created by my doctoral students. At times, students included considerable amounts of detail, reflecting on their research processes and their roles as researchers. At other times, the journals appeared to be a mere afterthought, seemingly completed in an evening to satisfy the requirement and get a grade. And, as with many things in the introductory qualitative research course, students expressed a need for more structured guidelines for their journals. In response, I developed a set of guidelines and prompts students could use to guide their journal entries. With this study, I discovered that the introduction of guidelines and prompts increased student reflexivity, the level of detail in their journal entries, and the length of their journals increased

Social Media Practices of School Administrators: The Time is Now

The educational disruption caused by COVID-19 increased awareness of the value of organizational resiliency/sustainability and the critical need for administrators to provide timely communication among all stakeholders. If preparation programs are to provide administrators with the skills and knowledge to effectively use social media as a communication tool, we must explore the practices and perceptions of school administrators’ use of social media to communicate with stakeholders and to identify their recommended social media communication practices. The Social Media as a Tool to Effectively Communicate with Stakeholders Survey and interviews were used for data collection. Findings are focused on comfort levels, perceived effectiveness, benefits, concerns, and recommended practices reported by the school administrators who participated in the study. While, social media was found to be an effective communication tool that can promote and support positive public relations, there were noted gaps in self-efficacy and best practices of the reporting administrators. Research literature, preparation programs, and practicing administrators will equally benefit from the outcomes of this study

Hey! I Know who that is! : How much Detail is too Much when Presenting Results?

One of the quandaries we sometimes face in qualitative research is how much detail we can include about participants while still protecting their identities. Over the last few years, I have noticed three main areas where this issue has warranted additional consideration. The first is when reporting back to research sites on study findings. Many of the local school districts, where doctoral candidates and faculty conduct their research, require researchers to submit their findings as a condition of granting IRB approval. When results are shared with people who possess knowledge of the setting, participants become more easily identifiable and researchers cannot guarantee that they will not be identified. The second area of concern is in dissertations. In my qualitative research class, students critique a qualitative dissertation and they often select ones that have been completed by former students. Even though the authors use pseudonyms and try to be vague about some details, my students can often identify the site and/or some of the participants from the studies. The last area of concern regards requests for additional information about participants’ backgrounds or the study setting from journal reviewers. Sometimes, to protect our participants’ identities, we need to omit or modify specifics. When reviewers ask for additional information, it may present a dilemma: to include the information and potentially put participants at risk for identification or to withdraw the paper and spend the time to find a new venue or discard it entirely. In this presentation, I will discuss the need to be more cautious when engaging in research that we know may be read by people with direct knowledge of our research sites and participants and how the informed consent process does not always take these issues into account

Doctoral Students\u27 Preferences for Course Content Delivery Methods

Over the last few years, I have heard student complaints about the amount of reading in their doctoral courses. Many times, I’ve questioned whether they do the readings for my course due to the numerous demands on their time. I decided to explore alternative ways for them to receive class content to see if they were more likely to listen to audio recordings or watch videos instead of reading. I provided doctoral students enrolled in introductory qualitative research classes with two ways to access course content: a text-based format (book chapter or journal articles) or an audio or video format. Each week, in groups of four, students selected which format they would use; two would choose to read and two would choose to listen to an audio recording or watch a video. The following week, the students would discuss the content in their groups. At the end of the semester, I asked students to share the pros and cons for each medium. Additionally, I listened to their discussions during class and documented their overall comments. Results indicate that some students prefer to read the content rather than listen to it; they explained that this is because they don’t retain the information as well if they don’t read it. Other preferred to watch videos because they could listen as they made dinner, folded laundry, or did other tasks that required minimal attention. This suggests that providing students with multiple formats for course content could be beneficial

Where\u27s my Template?

I work at an institution that offers two Ed.D. programs in the College of Education. Our doctoral students are required to take three research courses: two in quantitative research and one in qualitative research. For many, their introduction to research is in their first quantitative research class. Their quantitative courses present research as being very structured and formulaic, with faculty providing templates and outlines for them to follow. When they arrive at my qualitative research class, they are encouraged to reflect on their roles in the research process and to find methods of data collection and analysis that fit both their research questions, their strengths, and their paradigms. They often ask me for a template for writing up their data collection, data analysis, and results sections of papers, assuming that qualitative research studies fit into identical structures. In this presentation, I reflect on ways to encourage doctoral students to embrace the messiness of qualitative research as they learn to become qualitative researchers

Researching in your Own Backyard: Lessons Learned

Recently, I have been researching teachers who feel their administrators bullied them. Participants’ references to administrators that are current or former students at my university were one of the unforeseen consequences of the study. These administrators have not been my students, but I have needed to interact with them occasionally, and my participants’ words return at these times, affecting how I engage with the administrators. The research question guiding this study is: What strategies best allow for a separation of research and teaching when there is an overlap of my participants’ experiences with their administrators and my university students? My data sources for this autoethnographic study are the reflective journals and analytic notes I kept throughout my research on teacher bullying. This paper explores the coping mechanisms I employed to deal with the conflicting emotions I experience when I realize, mid-interview, that I have some knowledge of the bullying administrator a participant is describing, or when I must interact with one of the administrators. These include: keeping a reflexive journal, debriefing with a colleague, and attempting to compartmentalize research and other aspects of university life. I consider the varying degrees of success of these strategies, as well as future avenues to explore

Becoming Researchers: Doctoral Students’ Initial Journeys into Qualitative Research

Using archival data from 39 former doctoral students’ research journals, I sought to understand their experiences related to becoming researchers and learning how to do qualitative research. Each semester, I asked students to use their journals to reflect on their research processes including data collection and analysis, their researcher identities, and their lessons learned. Data were analyzed using NVivo to explore students’ experiences. Numerous entries in their journals centered on their fears regarding research in general and qualitative research in particular. Many students’ entries also focused on their growth as researchers over the course of the semester. In this presentation, I will discuss my findings related to students’ evolving perceptions of qualitative research, their shifts in perceptions of themselves as researchers, and recommendations for how we can assist doctoral students in becoming qualitative researchers

Teachers’ experiences with mistreatment by their administrators

This phenomenological study explores teachers’ experiences with mistreatment by their administrators. I draw on interview data collected from teachers in two southern states, using Blasè & Blasè’s (2006) levels of principal aggression to categorize teachers’ experiences with mistreatment. The teachers report a range of mistreatment by their principals, including public embarrassment, non-renewal of contracts without cause, and arrest on baseless claims of assault on a student

An Exploration of Teacher Dress Codes

Student dress codes have received considerable attention in recent years. However, little research has been conducted on teacher dress codes. Million (2004) surveyed principals and found that even if there was not a formal dress code in place for teachers, the principals expected them to dress professionally and believed that doing so demonstrated respect for the school and positively influenced student behavior. To better understand the district-level expectations for teacher attire, I examined 250 employee handbooks (5 from each of the 50 states) looking for information on the specificity of the dress code, what guidelines were in place, and whom was responsible for setting and enforcing the dress code on campuses. I also explored the data to see if there were patterns based on whether a state was right-to-work or union. Results showed a range of specificity in dress codes, with some being quite detailed while others were not mentioned. In right-to-work states, there appeared to be a greater concern with public perception of teachers, but nearly all dress codes place an emphasis on dressing “professionally” or “appropriately”. Interestingly, the majority of right-to-work states had guidelines specific to jeans while few of the union states did. These findings contribute to a discussion of teacher deprofessionalization and lack of autonomy