Factors affecting teacher preactive content decision making

Abstract

The problem of this study was to determine which factors were most important in influencing teacher preactive content decisions. The influencing factors used in this study were District Policy, , Teacher Belief, Student Achievement, Professional Opinion, and Community Pressure. The study was conducted during the 1987-88 school year. The population consisted of middle school classroom teachers in the State of Montana. To collect data, a simulation instrument was utilized. The instrument consisted of a series of fifty simulations each of which represented a possible context in which a preactive content decision might be made. The information used to make each preactive content decision in each simulation was a numerical rating given to each of the five influencing factors. The statistical method used to analyze the data was Judgment Analysis (JAN) which yielded policy groupings of participants and standard beta weights for each of the five influencing factors for each participant. Participants were also divided into demographic categories of size of district, years of experience, years of education, and subject area taught on the basis of a short demographic survey. The JAN analysis indicated that there were three policy groupings of participants. These three policy groupings showed up in every demographic category. Policy group one used a multi-factor approach. In other words, participants in Policy 1 based their content change decisions on the influencing factors of Student Achievement, Teacher Belief, and District Policy. Policy group two used a single-factor approach. In other words, they based their decisions on Student Achievement. Policy group three used a dual-factor approach basing their decisions on Student Achievement and Teacher Belief. The most important factor in this study was Student Achievement followed by Teacher Belief and District Policy. Professional Opinion and Community Pressure were not important influencing factors.