The goal of this study is to identify and examine teachers' concerns regarding their use of the new adopted mathematics textbook. In Texas, middle school mathematics teachers are often given a great deal of flexibility in the decision to use or not to use textbooks in their classrooms. This provides an opportunity for discussion about the concerns of teachers regarding the use of the newly adopted textbook. This study focused on investigating the concerns of teachers in relation to the adoption of the new textbooks for their districts based their years of experience in teaching the same class and their involvement on using the same textbook. In addition, this study identified the source of support in implementing the new curriculum materials. The study utilized the Concern Based Adoption Model (CBAM) as its theoretical framework. A non-experimental, cross-sectional survey design, incorporating a researcher-developed Stages of Concern Questionnaire (SoCQ), was used to address the research questions. A qualitative analysis was used to explore the teachers needs related to the use of the new adopted textbook and to provide additional insights into the teachers' concerns. The answers of 147 middle school mathematic teachers were analyzed in addition to teachers' interviews. Overall, the study found that teachers' highest concerns are focused mainly on the management of their work and that they are still in the early stages of implementing the new textbook. Teaching experience proved to be an important factor in explaining teachers' concerns in the implementation. Teachers feel isolated and unsupported in their use of the new curriculum materials and they expressed the need for support from their schools and from textbook publishers, as well as the need for more time and training to become familiar with the new textbook's content. They also wanted evidence that the new textbook supports student learning. Recommendations from the study include the need for the schools and the textbook publishing companies to work with middle grade school mathematics teachers to enable them to implement the new curriculum materials (textbooks) in the classrooms.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2011-08-9752 |
| Date | 2011 August 1900 |
| Creators | El-Saleh, Ilham Kamel |
| Contributors | Li, Yeping, Kulm, Gerald |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | thesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
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