This qualitative case study of two primary teachers during their first year of
using a new provincial art curriculum was concerned with the effect of a special
relationship between the two teachers on their implementation efforts. The
relationship was part of an implementation strategy devised by arts consultants in
the school board office; one teacher in every school was designated a “Catalyst
Teacher” with a loosely defined role of acting as an on-site “cheerleader” (or
catalyst) for the implementation activities of colleagues.
This use of a non-specialist member of a staff is related to peer-centred
improvement and change efforts discussed in recent literature under such terms as
“peer coaching,” “cooperative professional development,” and “collaborative
consultation.” It has been shown that a collegial approach to change efforts tends to
contribute to the successful implementation of change.
Through a series of semistructured interviews with the two teachers
individually and together, and supplemented by observations of their art teaching
and by interviews and informal conversations with Ministry of Education personnel,
the local art consultant, and the school principal, a picture was produced of the
meanings constructed by the two teachers about the new curriculum, their roles as
teachers and colleagues, the place of art in their total programs, and the effect of the
Catalyst Teacher Program on their own implementation efforts. At the end of the
interview series, the teachers considered their own progress with the help of Hall
and associates’ Levels of Use scale (1975). Looking through the lens of a symbolic interactionist approach to studying
this working relationship, I was able to focus on the interdependence of all the
elements in the cyclical process of data gathering, sorting, coding, reflecting, and
analyzing. The qualitative causal network described by Corbett and Rossman
(1989) provided a framework within which the case data could be analyzed and
compared to Corbett and Rossman’s findings.
The progress of the participants in this study showed the positive effect of the
implementation strategy in use in their board. These two teachers’ special qualities
of collegiality contributed to their early success, suggesting that conditions of
teacher empowerment and collegiality need to precede other specific change efforts.
Conditions of distancing between grade-level units within the school, that may have
contributed to differences in implementation progress, point to a need to reconsider
the wide scale of most implementation efforts.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/7508 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | MacDonnell, Carol Raye |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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