The purpose of this study was to monitor the change of certain teachers in the use of an innovation as a function of their participation in an institutionally supported staff development program. Five middle school teachers from rural schools participated in this project. This group was administered the SoCQ (Stages of Concern Questionnaire) and the LoU (Level of Use) interview on three different dates over an eight month period. These instruments were designed and tested by the Research and Development Center for Teacher Education at the University of Texas in Austin (Hall, et al., 1979). In addition to these two data collecting instruments, clinical interviews and classroom observations were administered and integrated into data analysis. The researcher was looking at how data changed during the course of this study. The results of this study indicated that in order for teachers to effectively implement telecommunications in the classroom they must be provided with support. The major issues that surround the implementation and use of telecommunications in the classroom were summarized from the teacher profiles. These categories consisted of planning and training, informational and technical support, administrative support, integration of telecommunication into the curriculum, teacher collaboration and mentoring. Leaders in the field of telecommunications and those making decisions about the innovation will need to look at teacher training and support, long-range district planning, curricula where the innovation is incorporated, and effective assessment tools at all levels of implementation. The group of teachers represented here had gone through intensive staff development training outside of their school systems. They were experienced educators and had been using computers for some years. The results of this exploratory and descriptive study may offer researchers, teachers, and educational administrators perspectives and information useful in implementing telecommunications in curricular reform, especially valuable at a time when technology instruction in many schools is undergoing this reform and teachers are being recognized as the primary agents implementing curricular changes and developing effective schools.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UMASS/oai:scholarworks.umass.edu:dissertations-9011 |
| Date | 01 January 1994 |
| Creators | Campbell, Diana |
| Publisher | ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst |
| Source Sets | University of Massachusetts, Amherst |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Source | Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest |
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