The purpose of this study was to explore the connection between a teacher's perceptions and attitudes of change and the impact of those perceptions and attitudes on the implementation of professional development strategies and techniques. This research also explored which factors motivate a teacher to change. A final consideration of this research is the issue of how the results of change are analyzed. The design of this study was a qualitative format with a phenomenological approach. The sample population consisted of twelve teachers from four states. The teacher sample was drawn from districts who were addressing the issue of No Child Left Behind in the form of professional development training that focused on the implementation of data collection technique to monitor student learning and improvement. Data was collected from interviews, observations and artifacts. The teachers identified the three key factors of student achievement, administrative support and colleague support as having a profound effect on; (1) motivating the participants' to initiate change, (2) the implementation of a change process and (3) the analysis of change results. While change is a personal experience based on many individual and collective factors, these three themes emerged as significant factors for the implementation of new knowledge and the change process. Through the teacher's descriptions of the complex professional change process, the significant findings of this study were the overall impact of student achievement, administrative support and colleague support. It is the balance and variation among these three factors that enhanced and/or impeded the implementation of new knowledge and may be central to understanding a critical influence on the attitudes and perceptions of change and their impact on the implementation of new knowledge.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:pacific.edu/oai:scholarlycommons.pacific.edu:uop_etds-3458 |
| Date | 01 January 2004 |
| Creators | Molina-Walters, Debi |
| Publisher | Scholarly Commons |
| Source Sets | University of the Pacific |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations |
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