The Influence of School Culture, School Goals, and Teacher Collaboration on Teachers' Attitudes toward Their Professional Development Plans

Abstract

The Professional Development Plan (PDP) is a specific professional development model situated within the teacher evaluation system being implemented in the Owen Public Schools (pseudonym). The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of school culture, school goals, and teacher collaboration on teachers' attitudes toward their Professional Development Plans. Data were also collected on teachers' perceptions of the steps of the PDP process to determine which steps had the greatest influence on teachers' attitudes toward their Professional Development Plans. The sample for this study was composed of 154 prekindergarten through high school teachers within one school district. Participants held a range of attitudes from very positive to very negative toward the Professional Development Plan. Significant correlations were found between teachers' attitudes toward the Professional Development Plan (TAPDP) and four out of the five factors of school culture. The factors of school culture--Collaborative Leadership, Teacher Collaboration, Professional Development and Unity of Purpose--were shown to be associated with teachers' attitudes toward the Professional Development Plan, although the relationships were not strong. Only the school culture factor Collegial Support was found not to be associated with teachers' attitudes toward the Professional Development Plan. Of the five school culture factors, only the factor Professional Development was a significant predictor of teachers' attitudes toward the Professional Development Plan. One aim of the research project was to discover the extent to which PDPs conducted individually and PDPs conducted collaboratively differed on teachers' attitudes toward the Professional Development Plan. The data showed a moderate effect size that suggested the variance in TAPDP scores was accounted for by whether a teacher collaborated with other teachers on a PDP or whether it was an individual effort. Another purpose of the research was to determine the extent to which PDPs aligned with school goals and PDPs not aligned with school goals differed on teachers' attitudes toward the Professional Development Plan. The data indicated a very large effect size and highlighted that a very large portion of the variance in TAPDP scores was accounted for by whether a teacher aligned the PDP with a school goal or whether the PDP had little or no alignment with a school goal. With regard to the steps of the PDP process, each of the four steps correlated positively with teachers' attitudes toward the Professional Development Plan. The strength of the relationship between TAPDP and Writing a Goal Statement was moderate, while strong relationships were evident for Describing Strategies/Activities for Reaching PDP Goals, Collecting Evidence of Progress on PDP and Reflecting on Evidence and Results of the PDP. Furthermore, when the steps of the PDP process were examined for their combined ability to predict TAPDP, two steps emerged as predictors. The two steps with the most influence on TAPDP were Describing Strategies/Activities for Reaching PDP Goals and Reflecting on Evidence and Results of PDP. Lastly, all of the demographic variables were found to be statistically nonsignificant for describing differences in TAPDP scores suggesting that years of teaching, educator role, gender, level of educational attainment and teaching level did not influence teachers' attitudes toward the Professional Development Plan. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone [phone]. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]