A comparative analysis of the perceptions of special education teachers in the
San Antonio Independent School District (SAISD) regarding the importance, comfort,
and frequency levels of educative activities to further develop their teaching skills was
conducted by the researcher in order to apply findings to the development of future
professional learning opportunities for this group of educators and to the role of human
resource development (HRD) with regard to adult learning and organizational processes.
Responses were elicited from a selection of educative activities listed on a questionnaire
instrument that was distributed to a non-proportional, stratified random sampling from
the district?s total population of special education teachers in the fall of 2006.
Multivariate analyses of variance resulted in no significant differences in the
importance, comfort, and frequency levels of educative activities as rated by special
education teachers regardless of teaching level or years of teaching experience. The
primary conclusions drawn from this study were: (a) mean responses were homogenous
at the group level regardless of the educative activity; (b) there were no significant perceptual differences found with regard to the rating of educative activities by
importance, comfort, and frequency; and (c) there was a need for more research in this
area to further investigate or substantiate findings due to the exploratory nature of the
study?s design.
Recommendations include:
1. Large scale research comprised of similar teacher samplings and research
design to add to existing studies regarding the perception and selection of
educative activities by special education teachers to further develop teaching
skills.
2. Large scale research comprised of similar teacher samplings and research
design to explore special education teacher perceptions regarding adult
learning and the role of human resource development and other district
department professionals in order to add to existing research when designing
professional learning opportunities for this teacher group.
3. Review of the questionnaire instrument since no significant differences were
found. Items listed should include activities that are distinctly different from
each other. In addition, educative activities may need to be added or
subtracted depending on new findings from research.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2010-05-7973 |
| Date | 2010 May 1900 |
| Creators | Arocha-Gill, Theresa A. |
| Contributors | Tolson, Homer, Egan, Toby |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Dissertation, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
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