Discussion and Conclusion - Essay Example

?Chapter 6 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION Discussion The statistics for the scale responses and total motivational scale scores from the above results mayprovide a reliable ground for further qualitative assessment of working experience through in-depth interviews, but as well constitute a group of stand-alone results. It is important to note first that the relatedness score, due to the nature of most questionnaire items, can be reasonably interpreted as the degree of separation (in case of the higher scores) experienced by the study participants in the community. According to the statistics for community relatedness score, presented in Table 2, the general sample responses indicate, first, a degree of mistrust and alienation from the school community among the surveyed participants, as indicated by high mean scores obtained e.g. for “prefer not to interact with the community” (?=6.29). The high mean score of the number of the respondents were as a result of negative perception towards the community as well as the rewards associated with teaching in the community schools. The low motivation in the school communities makes many people to shy away and don’t want to interact or take part in any activity which might join them together. It may also have resulted due to the conflict which exists between that group of teachers and the community in question causing the disparity. As many people would like to identify themselves with certain aspects of the society, others seems to rebel and don’t want to be associated with certain aspects of the community hence limiting their interaction. The similar situation was the same with respondents who “would prefer not to interact with the community in the future” (?=6.13) items; and, second, more modest expectations of the improvement of community relatedness, as indicated by lower mean scores for items such as “could become closer if interacted a lot” (?=4.85). This indicates that very small number of respondents are willing to come closer to the community incase of interaction. As indicated by the low mean, a very small number have the feeling that increasing their interaction will bring them closer to the community unlike the majority of participants who didn’t want to come closer to the community bringing the disparity in the mean score across the Likert scale. This group of participant may be made up of the teachers who came from that community and can freely interact with the community if they became closer to them. At the same time, the scores may represent those individuals who have not identified themselves with the community and have not realized the benefits. Competence scores present an even more striking result related to the science teachers’ perception of both their own teaching performance and the one of the whole schools community. This is indicated by the mean value for “feeling pretty good at teaching science in urban schools” (?=2.09), close to “highly unlikely” response, with the noteworthy higher mean (?=5.85) for “feeling pretty good compared to other science teachers”. The above mean scores shows that many teachers feels pretty good in teaching science subjects unlike the small number which does not feel pretty good for the teaching of the subject At the same time, autonomy support score show less strong preferences of the survey participants, with total score as well as the separate item statistics appearing to be generally close to neutral estimates. An interesting insight in this regard can be provided by the observed modest but highly significant correlation between perceived autonomy support and negative community-related experience. The low score on the Autonomy support for the principal is as a result of negative attitude that teachers community have on the principal/administration. This might be as a result of a number of factors related to community involvement in running of the schools affairs as well as issues related to good governance and ethics. The results from ANOVA and one-sample t-tests indicated that I can not attribute the differences in intrinsic motivation and working experience to either demographic variables or teaching experience. Taking the initial choice of surveying persistent urban schoolteachers into account, this result can be interpreted as the similarity among them and motivations of various gender, ethnicity and teaching experience groups. The results from linear regression model estimations further confirm this conclusion, showing that, at least for the sample of experienced and persistent urban school science teachers, years of teaching experience may be irrelevant. As it is the case with descriptive statistics results, this can have certain administrative implications briefly discussed below. When assessing the ability to build generalizations upon these observations, an issue of sample representativeness remains crucial. On one hand, the prevalence of women and persons of White/Caucasian ethnicity among the study participants may reflect the existing inequality in the population; on the other, it may reflect the sample bias, possibly reducing the significance of group differences. Majority of the sampled population were the whites/Caucasians hence some disparities in figures were expected towards one side. Checking on the number of respondents, whites were very many hence the result could be easily influenced by their thinking hence bringing the bias. However, the applied method of clustered sampling which entails volunteers and the participants, inclusive for the whole population on the state level, allows for generalization of the obtained results for urban school environments of the states considered. This essential having included all the major sampled groups as well as the volunteers hence their information and data is taken into consideration. Additionally, the results from in-depth follow-up interviews with the study participants can further strengthen the validity of results due to triangulation as it also provides crucial information on the same. At the same time, it is important to acknowledge the applied sampling method as a limitation of the study influencing its generalizability. This limitation may be compensated in the future research by applying random choice of geographical clusters across the target population. Additionally, external validity of the study can be further demonstrated by applying similar statistical methods to assess geographic, as well as demographic, group differences. The research limitation of eligible participants to only those who have been persistent in urban school science teachers and through establishing a lower limit of teaching experience years affected the outcome to some ways. There was limited ability to quantitatively derive causal relationships between persistence in urban school settings and assessed intrinsic motivation. There was no connectivity to justify why some teachers have stayed longer in the urban schools in relation to the intrinsic motivation that they get in those schools. The method of selecting the eligibility affected the causal relationship since many people who had not met the criterion were left and this made it impossible in connecting them. At the same time, the possibility remains to apply qualitative research techniques to trace the causal relations sought through structured interviews or any other method which may be applicable. The implications of quantitative data analysis are relevant to teaching staff administration in urban schools. These implications include the necessity of further community building administrative efforts more than increased support for teachers’ autonomy. There should also be a possibility for school administration to provide choices and options specifically referring to the needs of science urban school teachers as a reference group. This should come with the motivation and working experience shared across various demographic and tenure subgroups. For the future quantitative research, additional possibilities for improving external validity of the study exist. They include, first, extending the eligibility for motivation study participation, which would enable applying quantitative methods of causal reasoning to the collected data. Secondly, improving the methods of geographical clustering in order to generalize results to the country level in urban schooling environment as the target population. This may involve sampling across geographical locations within the sampled area or country to come up with a result which can be generalized. On the other hand, from the interview analysis we can come to a different conclusion. The eight teachers are not inclined to leave their job in school for several reasons. Factors which support teachers in urban settings include living in the same community as their students which suggests a strong emotional connection and feeling of responsibility from the educator, financial issues and the fear of unstable income, and the personal life which was contributed by one participant. A long-term experience of teaching also contributed to the decision to continue teaching. It seems that having support/freedom of choice from the administration for teachers increased trust and performances of the eight science teachers. The more administration provides mutual support and freedom to the teachers, the more the teachers will be willing to perform and assist the administration and students at large. So, it might be a good to expand and emphasis on teacher’s freedom and support which will enhance their wellbeing in the school. When I asked teachers about their model of a science teacher, I was asking those teachers indirectly about their identities. Their answers emerged from their experience, culture, gender, and personal experiences. The model of a science teacher in urban settings was defined as knowledge, and ethics. But some teachers did not talk about the belongings to the community. The few came from the community and others from outside communities through they had the same feelings as even the teachers from the community were never spared and felt the same way. But, teachers did not say something unique about the “science teacher in urban settings”. It could be that their experience was limited to urban settings and they could not view other than what they have experienced since they have taken part in the school without realizing anything new that they could share. Teachers who came from the outside communities have to larger extent influenced their counterparts from the same community and had the same perception concerning their experience. Teachers in the urban school had no better reason of leaving the school and this made them to stay focus and committing themselves to their service. Teachers felt safe and secure in their schools. A number of factors might have contributed to the teachers staying in the urban schools despite the load they were undertaking. Security being one of the factors, there are perhaps a number of factors which teachers perceived making them to stay and commit themselves. Some teachers were approaching retirement, and they did not want to change their work life at the end of their career. Some teachers wanted to share with the students who were in need and were not positioned at leaving them alone. Students achievements may not be one of the key factors for the teachers stay in the school but it was reported as one of the things they valued in the school which made them to stay put. As much as many teachers wanted to stay within for longer periods, the few who perhaps wanted to leave had various satisfactory reasons. Some wanted to go for further studies in their education, settling for families for the female teachers and retiring from teaching. I could see that teachers felt secure and supported from the administration, colleagues, or neighborhood community. The support being given by the neighboring community is at ensuring that the student’s performances are increased without necessarily getting deeply involved. This supported may have caused those teachers to give back to students and remain to stay with them. Conclusion The study extended the current literature on motivation and teacher persistence with the largest sample on this topic. Although a majority of teachers did not report intrinsic motivation, the independent variables that were studied did not significantly affect majority of science teachers’ intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation could have affected variables in a number of ways as desires to teach would have made the teachers to go extra miles in teaching the students without demanding anything. Similarly, the urge to accomplish ones target as a teacher in terms of meeting their targets would put them on pressure which intern affects other variables such as security into compromise. This is as a result of more attention being given to the teachers who wants to accomplish their target at the expense of the security and safety. Lastly, search for relevant experience and recognition could have been a factor to influence other variables owing to the teacher’s longer stay in the schools hence they will be spending much of their time here and would not leave. The qualitative data showed that teachers are motivating to deal with the responsibilities of being in the urban areas to teach science with enough knowledge and experience. This has been the key factor which has ensured the teachers continuously thrive to produce their best as well as helping the students Implications To have more motivated science teachers in urban settings, the findings of this study could be implemented into practice in the following ways: Teacher education departments at the universities should include educational psychology classes with an emphasis on motivation. This will increase awareness among the teachers on various ways of motivating themselves in the course of teaching. Teacher colleges should provide opportunities to multicultural student teachers and offer them scholarships. This may increase teachers of different communities to go back and teach in their communities as result of shared experience about other communities. Experienced teachers should mentor new teachers, support them and provide them with hints they absorbed over the years in order to help newer teachers reduce their pressure. Also, there should be structured meetings for all teachers where they could share their problems and discuss possible solutions. Read More