Pre-Conceptions of Effective Teaching Practices and Desired Professional Qualities by Novice Teachers

CHAPTER 04: DATA ANALYSIS AND RESULTS

4.1 Introduction

This chapter's aim is to inspect, transform, and model all the collected data for the purpose of highlighting useful information, drawing conclusions, and supporting decision making for this research. The main purpose that this study is focusing on, is related to the concern that how the novice teachers are prepared for their teaching careers, how competent they feel to meet the needs of their students by carrying out successful lessons in their classrooms and to help their students reach academic success, and how confident they are to conduct successful teaching. Thus, this study will highlight two main knowledge aspects including the extent to which novice teachers perceived the teacher preparation program as sufficient, and the competencies that are perceived to be the most essential in each domain of the Professional Development Appraisal System (PDAS).

Therefore, in order to fulfill this purpose of the study, a mixed method research design has been followed in this research which has employed both the quantitative and qualitative research designs. In the first portion of this study, a quantitative approach is used to include the use of surveys for the purpose of collecting statistical data. Secondly, a qualitative approach is used to gather responses to the open ended survey questions of the study.

4.2 Reliability scores

Reliability Statistics

Cronbach's Alpha

N of Items

.968

51

Reliability scores were also calculated in order to carry out this survey. It yielded alpha coefficients of 0.968, and this score indicates that the survey instruments used are highly reliable and, the conclusions that will be drawn on the basis of this instrument will reflect accuracy.

4.3 Description of sample

As the study will use a survey instrument in order to collect the intended data, so the sample is also important which would be used to collect responses for the survey. A sample size of 56 participants has been used to carry out this research. The survey instrument will be sent through mail to first and second year teachers through their staff development offices in two public school districts in a large metropolitan area in Houston. Moreover, the completion time for this survey is about 20-25 minutes, and the participants of this study will mainly the novice teachers who are hired for the school years of 2010-2011 and 2011-2012. In addition to this, some of the teachers under the sample of this study are those who belong to university-based teacher preparation program and have taken part in internship programs and had experience of classroom teaching, whereas, some participants of this survey are those teachers who came from Alternative Certification Programs (ACP).

4.4 Organization of data analysis

This chapter will be focusing on two main parts including analysis of quantitative data, and analysis of qualitative data. Furthermore, the study is comprised of three main parts including part A, part B, and part C. The part A of this study will collect descriptive data for the surveyed population. Part B of the survey will consist of the ...