Teacher concerns and elementary student outcomes in a school-based preventive intervention
Citation & Export
Hide
Simple citation
Parker, Sarah J.
Teacher concerns and elementary student outcomes in a school-based preventive intervention. Retrieved from
https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/T3BK1CNH
Export
Description
TitleTeacher concerns and elementary student outcomes in a school-based preventive intervention
Date Created2008
Other Date2008-10 (degree)
Extentx, 167 pages
DescriptionTeachers' feelings about, attitudes towards, and perceptions of their ability to implement a particular program (called concerns by Hall, George, & Rutherford, 1977) are often assumed to influence program delivery and, thereby, student outcomes. In this study, a conceptual model of implementation (Greenberg, Domitrovich, Graczyk, and Zins, 2005) helped elucidate how teacher concerns might influence student outcomes in a social-emotional learning (SEL) program. Specifically, this process could occur through the dosage, timing, and quality of program delivery, through teachers' psychological "readiness" to implement the program, and through the environment they establish in their classrooms, which may or may not support program principles. Three main hypotheses were generated for study: that teacher concerns would change over time, that student outcomes would vary with different profiles of teacher concerns, and that certain teacher concern types could have cumulative effects on students over two years of program implementation.
Over the course of two years, approximately 100 teachers in a disadvantaged, urban, and ethnic minority school district in central New Jersey completed the Stages of Concern Questionnaire (SoCQ) describing their attitudes about the program, and student and teacher ratings of student behavior were gathered. Approximately 2,300 second-, third-, and fourth-grade students participated. Cluster analyses of teachers' responses to the SoCQ yielded four distinct concerns profiles in each year. Analyses regarding developmental patterns of teacher concerns and their relationships to student outcomes yielded mixed results that did not clearly support or detract from the proposed relationships among these variables.
This study illustrated the importance of measuring a wide variety of implementation details when examining questions of this kind, using objective ratings instead of (or in addition to) student- and teacher-rated measures of behavior change, and employing multilevel modeling techniques (as opposed to traditional analyses of variance) when analyzing data nested within classrooms and schools. In addition, analyses suggested organizational effects on teacher concerns, certain profiles of teacher concerns that may be unique to disadvantaged districts, and varying rates of change among different aspects of student behavior as SEL skills are being acquired.
NotePh.D.
NoteIncludes bibliographical references (p. 159-164).
Genretheses, ETD doctoral
LanguageEnglish
CollectionGraduate School - New Brunswick Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Organization NameNjNbRU
RightsThe author owns the copyright to this work.