Study of Teachers Attitudes on School Reform

¶ … Teachers Attitudes on School Reform

School reform has become a hot-button political issue in recent years, particularly given the enactment of the 'No Child Left Behind' legislation of the current Bush Administration. But what do teachers, the professionals 'in the field' think of such legislation? To qualitatively determine current teacher attitudes towards recent educational reforms, that is, to deploying narrative, open-ended and one might say subjective determinates of teacher attitude towards the recent legislation, an educational researcher must first determine what would a representative teacher sampling of teachers comprise? One way to create a representative sampling would be to select teachers of a variety of grades, socio-demographic groups, races, ethnicities, and genders. Also such a study would ideally be comprised of teachers of wide geographic range of school districts and from urban as well as rural areas.

Given that recent legislation largely affects the public school system, however, it might be wise to limit the study's sampling to public school teachers directly affected by the legislation. Another possible limitation might be to limit the study to either primary, middle, or secondary school teachers -- elementary school teachers would be the most likely candidates, given that current shifts in legislation have focused on the earlier grades and basic skills.

Current shifts in policy would have to be broken down and focused upon when soliciting teacher attitudes and responses through the use of open-ended questionnaires. For example in the arena of increased school testing, teachers might be asked how they have changed their approaches and lesson plans to reflect the new legislation. Have the teachers felt pressure from parents and administer to 'teach to the test' to ensure that students succeed? Then, the study could ask overall how the teachers believed increased standardized testing had helped or hindered them in their pedagogical approaches, and if student learning had improved as a result of recent reforms.

Asking open-ended questions with a focus on specific classroom techniques would curtail one of the frequent criticisms of qualitative research, namely that open-ended research is vague and subjective, and stresses feeling and impressionable attitudes in the subjects being studied. Asking teachers to describe concrete changes in the classroom for ill or for better would mitigate this potential criticism. Also, the different experiences of teachers in different areas of the country, as the implementation of reforms might vary considerably from state to state and district to district, would be another interesting facet of the research -- provided the sampling be sufficiently diverse.