A review of the literature revealed that there are many variables that
influence teachers' instructional practices. These influential variables fall into
three categories: those related to the teacher, which are referred to in this
study as teacher role characteristics; those related to the inservice education
activities of teachers, referred to as staff development variables; and those
related to the teachers' individual teaching situations, referred to as school
climate variables. It was hypothesized that there may be variables that are
related to the use of manipulatives for mathematics instruction by primary
grade teachers. Nineteen independent variables in the three categories were
studied.
In order to investigate the hypotheses, a population of teachers was
located in eight school districts outside of but within a sixty-mile radius of
Corvallis, Oregon, and a sample was drawn from those teachers having some
specialized training in the use of manipulatives beyond their initial teacher
certification college coursework. One hundred eighty teachers were mailed a
survey instrument, designed and field-tested by the researcher, whose
purpose was to determine amount of manipulatives use. Following the
completion of this survey, there were 145 participating teachers who were
then sent a questionnaire, designed and field-tested by the researcher, which
Pearson correlations were calculated for the variables based on
continuous data and one-way analysis of variance was computed for the
variables based on categorical data. Multiple regression analysis was then
performed on the three independent variables that were statistically
significant at the .05 level.
A teacher's attitude toward the usefulness of manipulatives training,
his/her current teaching beliefs (child-centeredness), and perceived attitude
of students' parents were all highly correlated with manipulatives use. In the
final regression model, each of these three variables made a unique
contribution for explaining the variance in teachers' use of manipulatives.
Other variables that may also have some relationship to the use of
manipulatives included: quality of manipulatives training, follow-up from
initial manipulatives training, and perceived response from students. / Graduation date: 1991
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ORGSU/oai:ir.library.oregonstate.edu:1957/37448 |
| Date | 25 May 1990 |
| Creators | Smith, Karen Clark |
| Contributors | Brewer, Jo Ann |
| Source Sets | Oregon State University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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