This experimental study grew out of the ideas gleaned from a review of literature which indicated that the attitudinal role of the classroom teacher serves as a model for students. A justification of the need to modify behaviors toward the hearing-impaired became apparent. The significance of effective workshop procedures could result in notable implications for school district planning and implementation of an in-service education plan. An experimental study was conducted to determine if teacher attitudes toward the hearing-impaired can be modified using two types of in-service workshops, passive versus active participation. Three groups of randomly selected regular classroom teachers at the elementary level from a West coast suburban school district were used for this investigation (Ṉ=86). One group served as a control, a second group participated in active involvement workshops regarding the hearing-impaired student, and the third group attended passive involvement workshops regarding the hearing impaired student. Immediately following the workshops, participants were administered two scales designed to measure attitudes toward the hearing-impaired. The research hypothesis for the study was that not all subpopulation means of the scores of teachers for both scales will be equal. (H₁: not all's are equal.) The statistical hypothesis stated that all subpopulation means of the scores of teachers for both scales will be equal. The results, after submitting the data to SPSS Subprogram, ONEWAY (Nie et al., 1975), with alpha set at .05 yielded no statistically significant differences among the groups. The statistical hypothesis was not rejected. The results of this study imply the need for school districts to pre-test teachers' attitudes in determining a need for specific in-service courses. School districts should consider requiring in-service courses for teachers whose pre-test scores indicate negative attitudes. Another implication to consider for effective in-service education is the duration of the workshop. The workshops designed for this study were one hour in length and did not result in effective modification of attitudes toward the hearing-impaired. This investigation suggests that research is needed to establish the relationship between effective in-service training and positive attitude development.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:pdx.edu/oai:pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu:open_access_etds-1320 |
| Date | 01 January 1983 |
| Creators | McClain, Anita Bell |
| Publisher | PDXScholar |
| Source Sets | Portland State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Dissertations and Theses |
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