Dissertation Writing Help - Examining the Influence of Professional Learning Community Factors on Educators' Receptivity to Professional Development
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Professional development of teachers is believed to be one of the most powerful strategies for fetching about the magnitude of changes needed to address the most pressing challenges confronting education. As supported by research, "teacher professional development is critical to systemic educational reform and school improvement focused on enhancing learning outcomes for all children" (Bredeson, 2000, p.64). DuFour as well as Eaker (1998) assert that the best hope for significant school improvement lies in transforming schools into professional communities. To inform the emerging knowledge base for professional development, this study will examine the differences that exist among aspects of professional community, investigate the relationships among these aspects, and explore the degree to which each of the professional community aspects account for the participant's receptivity to the TeachNET inservice professional development program. Specifically, the professional community aspects that will be addressed in each of the study's questions will be those of professional community as a school conditions, context of teaching, school culture, reform climate and district-level professional community.
To assess each of the study's research questions, three main analyses will be conducted. First, a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) will examine the differences between the studies' variables and level of participation in the TeachNET project. The alpha will be set at .05. Next a Pearson product-moment associations will be conducted to determine bivariate relationship among the study's variables. Alphas of .05, .01, and .001 will be used to determine significance. Finally, a short series of regressions (i.e., stepwise regression) will be used to determine the amount of variance that collegiality, faculty innovativeness, district community, support for learning, professional commitment, school conditions, school culture and reform climate account for participant receptivity. The implication level will be set at.05.
The TeachNET Project seeks to assistance interdisciplinary teams of educators in connecting their content material to real world problems. Receptivity is defined by the educators' participation in various stages of a professional development program. The different levels of the professional development program are level I: orientation only; level II: orientation and workplace community learning experience; level III: orientation, workplace community learning experience, and summer institute; level IV: orientation, workplace community learning experience, summer institute and pilot-test contextual teaching and learning action plans; level V: orientation, workplace community learning experience, summer institute, pilot-test contextual teaching and learning action plan, and a reflective synthesis seminar. The in-service professional development services were presented in 24-month increments ranging from April 30, 1999- August 2001. For this study there is now a sample pool of 147 TeachNET educator who are potential participants for this proposed study.