Retaining Teachers in Challenging Schools Article Appraisal - Essay Example

Critical Appraisal Critical Appraisal of a Research Article This paper will discuss the critical appraisal of the case study done by Bobbie Greenlee and John J. Brown, Jr. (the Department of educational leadership and policy standards of the University of South Florida) on “Retaining Teachers in Challenging Schools”. This paper seeks to find out the strengths and weaknesses of the article in the sense of whether it is well written and brings out all the issues related to the research on retaining teachers in challenging schools; the article should be flawless given that it is a research report. It is supposed to take a look at the relevance of the title of the article, whether its summary and abstract are relevant to the point and give enough information on the subject at hand or not, as well as a look at its introduction. Additionally, this paper will take a look at the literature review of the matter the article dwells on (Haberman 2005, p. 28). The Title The title of the article is brief and to the point. Similarly, it is informative of the issue at hand, which is how to retain or keep teachers in challenging schools. Teachers consider the schools to be challenging due to the kind of student behaviors they experience, the difficulty in handling such students and the pressure to deliver results in terms of ensuring that the students perform well and so on, and so forth. When a title is given to a research article or research paper, authors must ensure that it is clear (Olson 2003, p 30). This is for the reason that readers should have the ability to explain what the article is all about without any problem, whatsoever. The wording of the article should be as few as possible; brevity is the target of the endeavor. It is only natural to say that John Brown and Bobbie Greenlee have succeeded in the endeavor. They have effectively given the idea of what the article is all about in the shortest way possible. The terms ‘Retaining’ , ‘Teachers’, ‘Challenging’, and ‘Schools’, all fit this description pretty well (Peske 2006, p. 14). The Abstract/Summary The summary of a research article should be clear and to the point just as the title does. The abstract should not be ambiguous in any way, or else the reader will be thrown off the subject matter. Additionally, the article’s summary should aim at brevity, while at the same time ensuring that the summary conveys as much as possible to the reader. The author of the article should ensure that superfluous words are not part of the summary because this is the point from which the readers need to understand more about the article (Don, 2004). The reader should not take time off reading the research article to go and find out about the meaning of a word; difficult words have no part in the summary/abstract. From this point, Bobbie and John can be said to have succeeded in ‘summarizing’ the research article. In the summary, they highlight the difficulties faced by the heads of schools in: firstly, finding the right teachers for their schools, and secondly, being able to implement measures to keep them in the school to ensure students performance with the resources they have been given. Retaining teachers is not an easy job, as the authors discuss; there have to be some forms of motivation to keep them in the school. The motivations are forms of incentives on the job (Laczko-Kerr 2002, p. 81). Introduction The introduction should cover the thesis statement of the article. John and Bobbie begin their introduction by stating the points that school heads need to know about the techniques of retaining the best teachers in their schools. This is important, especially for the school heads having a problem on making teachers stay because the schools they run have ‘challenges’. As John and Bobbie report, this kind of teachers need to know what other, successful school leaders, have done in the past to succeed. In some sense, they are trying to make the reader understand the subject at hand by giving the background elements and basic of retaining teachers in such conditions as the article is supposed to talk about (Denzin 2009, p. 27). The introduction brings out the importance of the need to understand the background of the subject before bombarding the reader with the findings of the research and so on. It gives the acts that have made it a necessity to recruit qualified teachers like the No Child Left behind Act (NCLB). We are told of the places the problem is most rampant in and reasons why it is difficult for them (Ingersoll 2000, p. 75). Research Method The authors have already stated that, this is a case study from the introduction they have provided for the article. Nevertheless, the methodology used in the study should be evaluated too. This will provide more insight in the subject the article is talking about. The methodology used must be appropriate to the topic at hand. In this case, the authors indicate that the convenience sampling method was used in selecting the teachers who participated in the project. Using this method, teachers who participated in the project were enrolled at the University of Florida for educational leadership program (Raymond 2001, p. 141). They were invited to finish a survey online. This method was good because the process protected the anonymity of the participated students. This method was aimed at testing and finding out about the kind of schools teachers in the United States preferred to teach in. The most of the teachers, 77 out of the 97, were females. The rest were males. Such factors as the race and the type of schools were also put into consideration, as well as age. Additionally, questionnaires were also used in the collection of information from the teachers, the respondents in this case. While the method is a good one, it should have been better to get an equal number of the respondents from both genders (Ingersoll 1999, p. 40). Participants The article has given a clear description of the type of the participants used in the study. The gender of the participants is given, the distribution is also described, their races in terms of their origins - African, Hispanic, and so on. We are also told where the teachers teach; whether they are from elementary schools, high schools and so on. There were a total of 97 respondents in the survey. 79.38% of them were females while 20.62% were males. Participation in this survey was voluntary which makes the integrity standards very high. Additionally, ethical issues are easy to tackle when conducting surveys with volunteers (Denzin 2009, p. 88). They do it out of their own volition. It would be diverse if they were forced to participate or were paid to participate in the survey. The article also gives a description of the academic levels of the participants of the teaching survey in challenging schools. This gives the reader a clearer analysis of the type of respondents being dealt with. Apart from the age, gender and the academic levels of the participants of the survey, the article highlights that the survey also noted the perceptions of the teachers as the primary source of data for the survey. Findings suggest that a large number of the teachers would love to teach in the schools where there are disadvantaged children or students. However, this has its conditions that have to be met for the teachers to stay (Ingersoll 2003, p. 49). Data Collection and Data Analysis Any type of research conducted is always aimed at making sure that there is data or information drawn from it, otherwise it is meaningless to do the survey in the first place. The data received from the research has to be analyzed carefully in order to draw important information from it. Some more data is presented in the form of tables and so on. Of the surveyed teachers, 57% indicate that they prefer salary increment above everything else as incentives. To them these monetary incentives of which 16% prefer tuition reimbursements, 34% prefer salary bonuses, 5% would go for performance payments, while a paltry 2% would go for enhanced retirement benefits (Denzin 2009, p. 25). These are the kinds of monetary incentives that would make these teachers go to the jobs in the high poverty and minority groups. This information was displayed in the form of a table in the article. This way of data presentation of the findings of a research survey makes it easy for readers to see the results in the clearest way. There was also a table that showed the key behaviors that would make the teachers stay in the jobs. These are the places where a large number of disadvantaged students study. There is a large categorization of these behaviors, so that no key reason is left out. Among other sources of data, data collection was done online, using interviews and questionnaires. While analyzing these data, it is important that conclusions are made using evidence provided by the data and not simply making subjective conclusions. Bias must be avoided because this is a research that needs no personal opinion of the writer or the author (Haberman 2005, p. 29). Ethical Approval and Issues The authors managed to assure the readers that the research was ethical all along. In addition to this, the participants have to be assured of privacy and anonymity: these issues are important and key to every other research study. There are recent guidelines that research done has to adhere to. These are to ensure that the research remains credible and avoids unnecessary critique from the public for no reason at all. Among the ethical issues the research article complies with is the need to use acceptable language in cases where the opposite would draw an up roar. Comparisons are made in the most appropriate of ways. Tables are used to make the distinctions clear enough (Wenger 1998, p. 169). This would not be the case if data was presented in a manner that offended the readers and some of them would criticize it, some would even take the authors to court if ethics was not taken care of in their research article (Fetler 1999, p. 91). The reason why privacy is important to any research is that it is not good to reveal the identities of the participants because it would make it difficult for them to cope in an environment where people know the kind of the response they gave in a certain survey. Findings and Discussion From the findings, as indicated above in the methodology, it is clear enough that teachers only work in challenging schools if they can receive incentives, otherwise they would not. The article has succeeded in indicating which types of incentives these teachers prefer to use. This brings a better result of the needs of these teachers in such kinds of schools. The incentives act as the compensation to the difficult jobs they do in the schools (Denzin 2009, p. 57). Conclusion The article had no clear conclusion. Instead, it had a form of ‘discussion’ to show this part of research articles. Nevertheless, the discussion gives the different types of myths that go around teaching and teachers in challenging schools. It is a good way to make a conclusion to a research article because it shoots down the fallacies in this profession. Finally, it makes the reader come to terms of the realities in this type of education sector (Creswell 2003, p. 97). Answers to the Additional Questions There are three types of research paradigms. Quantitative research where the researcher seeks to answer the hypothesis question, data is represented in structured and valid statistical values and it is more explanatory, descriptive and predictable. There is qualitative data where the researcher explains contextual phenomena in their natural environment and is more exploratory, descriptive. Here the opinion of thee researcher is indicated. The last paradigm is the mixed paradigm. This one captures aspects of both the quantitative and qualitative paradigms. (Croswell 2003, p. 84) In this research, the researcher utilizes the quantitative paradigm. This can be exemplified by their use of statistical a representations of the Hillsborough County School District Renaissance Program compensation only approach. This represents data on how many schools are in the program, percentage of students eligible for the reduced or free lunch program and the percentage additional base pa y to retain and attract teachers. Quantitative data is also manifest in the percentage representation of findings of teachers who preferred teaching in schools of disadvantages students given the autonomy, resources to create curriculum innovations. This indicates that the researcher was using a structured method of collection validated data and his opinion on the research issue is not involved (Truell 1999, p. 48). Conceptual framework requires the researcher to identify an appropriate theory or concept to form the base for his research work. He adapts part of or the entire theory body and this forms his research problem. The research seeks to prove the validity of this theory using his study target and requires original thinking (Don 2004). Theoretical frameworks use a collection of theories and concepts that guide your research and help you answer your questions. At the end of the research, the research hypothesis is tested against the findings and the theory is tested appropriately for validity. Any adjustments to the theory are made, or suggestions thereof. (Don 2004, p. 29) This research uses a theoretical framework. The researcher uses known information on what leads to teacher migration from hardship schools as reported in America. They seek to test the correctness of the factors that lead to this problem such as poor working conditions and special schools in low income communities. The validity of the concept that the teachers in these schools had no field experience, no major or minor in the subjects they were teaching and the likelihood that they had failed in the teacher certification examinations is also under test. These are some of the guiding tools for the research (Florida Department of Education 2005, p. 3). The purposes of this study are a combination of exploration, explanation and description. The researcher ventures out to seek answers to the problem of “teacher - flight” from disadvantaged schools and communities. This is explorative since he conducts the research to find answers and uses quantifiable data to answer his questions. It is also explanatory and descriptive as he gives reasons why the problem exists. He gives examples of regions where teachers are migrating; he looks into Texas. Teachers are moving away due to poor working conditions, lack of incentives for innovation and very low-income communities that cannot support their special children and the teachers have no autonomy to revise the syllabus to suit these kids. There are backed up by numerical and graphical evidence of how the remedies to these cases would change the communities and teaching practice in the region (Alliance for Excellent Education 2008, p. 19). References Alliance for Excellent Education (2008). What keeps good teachers in the classroom? Washington, DC. Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. D. (Eds). (2000). Handbook of qualitative research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Fetler, M. (1999). High school staff characteristics and mathematics test results. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 7(9). Retrieved from http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v7n9.html Florida Department of Education (2005). Florida principal leadership standards. Retrieved from http://www.fldoe.org/profdev/fpls.asp Haberman, M. (2005). Raising teacher salaries: The funds are there. Education, 125(3), 327- 342. Hanushek, E. A., Kain, J. F., & Rivkin, S. G. (2004). Why public schools lose teachers. The Journal of Human Resources, 39(2), 326-354. Ingersoll, R. M. (1999). The problem of under-qualified teachers in American secondary schools. Educational Researcher, 28(2), 26-37. Ingersoll, R. M. (2000). Turnover among mathematics and science teachers in the U.S. Paper prepared for the National Commission on Mathematics and Science Teaching for the Twenty-first Century. Retrieved from http://www.ed.gov/inits/Math/glenn/compapers.html. Ingersoll, R. M. (2003). The teacher shortage: Myth or reality? Educational Horizons, 81(3), 146-152. Laczko-Kerr, I., & Berliner, D.C. (2002). The effectiveness of "Teach for America" and other under-certified teachers on student academic achievement: A case of harmful public policy. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 10(37). Retrieved from http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v10n37/. Mayer, D. P., Mullens, J. E., & Moore, M. T. (2000). Monitoring school quality: An indicators report (NCES 2001-030). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved from http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2001/2001030.pdf Olson, L. (2003). The Great Divide. Quality counts 2003. 9-16. Washington, DC: Education Week. Peske, H. G., & Haycock, K. (2006). Teaching inequality: How poor and minority students are shortchanged on teacher quality. A report and recommendations by the Education Trust. Washington, D.C.: The Education Trust. Retrieved from http://www2.edtrust.org/NR/rdonlyres/010DBD9F-CED8-4D2B-9E0D91B446746ED3/0/TQReportJune2006.pdf Raymond, M., Fletcher, S., & Luque, J. (2001). Teach for America: An evaluation of teacher differences and student outcomes in Houston, Texas. Stanford, CA: The Hoover Institution, Center for Research on Education Outcomes. Sergiovanni, T. (1999). The life world of leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Shen, J. (1997). How to reduce teacher attrition in public schools: Policy implications from a national study. Educational Horizons, 76(1), 33-39. Truell, A. D. (1999). Concerns of traditionally and alternatively certified marketing education teachers. Delta Pi Epsilon Journal, 41(2), 89-104. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. New York: Cambridge University Press. Creswell, J.W (2003) Research Design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed approaches. India: Sage Publications. Don, E. (2004) Research methodology in applied economics: Organizing, planning and conducting economic research. New York: Blackwell publishing. Read More