Date on Master's Thesis/Doctoral Dissertation

5-2015

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph. D.

Department (Legacy)

Department of Early Childhood and Elementary Education

Degree Program

Curriculum and Instruction, PhD

Committee Chair

Landrum, Timothy

Committee Co-Chair (if applicable)

Lingo, Amy

Committee Member

Scott, Terrance

Committee Member

Possel, Patrick

Subject

Teachers--Training of; Performance--Quality control

Abstract

Researchers have identified a number of instructional strategies as evidence-based for improving the academic and behavioral outcomes of students. However, teachers often do not employ these practices or rarely implement them at recommended rates, perpetuating a research-to-practice gap. Further, research has demonstrated that traditional professional development is often insufficient to change teacher practice; therefore, researchers have explored a number of interventions to supplement teacher training. Performance feedback is one such method that has a growing base of empirical evidence. This study explored the effects of visual performance feedback (VPF) delivered in real-time using screen sharing technology on a discrete teacher practice (i.e., positive feedback) for four general education teachers in a middle school using a multiple baseline across teachers design. Additionally, I examined whether changes in teachers’ use of positive feedback had collateral effects on their use of negative feedback and on targeted students’ engagement levels and disruptive behavior. While training alone was insufficient to produce notable change in teacher practice, the addition of real-time VPF generally led to teachers increasing their use of positive feedback while maintaining stable and low rates of negative feedback. Student behavior did not appear to have a direct relationship with changes in teacher practice. Results of this study suggests that real-time VPF may be an effective intervention for teacher behavior change. Real-time VPF warrants further study, including additional replications and studies that incorporate more sophisticated designs with larger samples. While a number of effective practices have been identified that positively affect student outcomes, many of them have yet to be consistently translated into practice in applied settings. Therefore, continued studies of similar interventions that target lasting teacher behavior change (e.g., performance feedback, coaching) are critical to the improvement of practice.

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