[[alternative]]An Investigative Research of Role Expectation and Role Performance of the Elementary School Resource room Teacher

Abstract

[[abstract]]The aim of this research is to explore and discuss both the school staff's role expectation of the resource room teachers, and the latter's own assessments of their role expectations and performances, including consideration of hindrance factors. First the researcher use a form of questionnaire-The Elementary School Resource Room Teacher Role Function Scale to investigate the above-mentioned attitudes to role expectations and performances. Then, the researcher uses The Resource Room Teacher's Interview Outline (again, a kind of questionnaire which is in a semi-structured interview form) in order to understand and analyze the difficulties and problems that the resource room teachers face as they perform their roles in their daily teaching jobs. The main findings of this study will be discusses and elaborated upon as follows: 1.The study shows that there exist differences among the school staff's role expectations of the resource room teachers. The expectation in the category of consultation of the performances of the administrators and classroom teachers is higher than that of the performance of the resource room teachers; whereas the expectation in administration operation of the administrators is higher than that of the classroom teachers and the resource room teachers. The outcome reveals that communication between the resource room teachers and the school staff needs some push, especially in the consultation role performance area. 2.On discussing the resource room teachers' role performance, we may find that a higher performance level exists in the areas of teaching and assessment, whereas, there is a lower performance level in the consultation role. Owing to this, we may understand that the resource room teachers' skill lie mainly in teaching and assessment, and that they are not so adequate in fulfilling their consultation role. 3.In the analysis of four different personal background of resource room teachers, we find that role expectations of the female teachers are higher than that of the male teachers. The resource room teachers between 41 and 50 years old are superior to those whose ages are below 30 in role performances: i.e. in terms of assessment, teaching, consultation, and public relationships. The resource room teachers who have taken 20 credits in special education have better role performances than those who have not taken 20 special education credits. 4.There is a remarkable gap between the resource room teachers' role expectation and performance. The role expectation is significantly larger than the role performance in five job functions of the role resource teachers. In the 27 items, there are 24 items in role performance being lower. than role expectation. This indicates that the resource room teachers fail to achieve their goals, in the sense that their actual performances do not match their role expectations. 5.The major factors that cause this are as follows: A) Too many teaching hours; B) Lack of professional training of the resource room teachers; C) Classroom teachers being too busy in class affairs; D) Lack of parental cooperation; E)Lack of support from the administrators. This study not only discusses the findings of the research but also reaches conclusions which provide the resource room teachers, the educational administration authorities, and the teacher training units with suggestions.