Kurt Blancaflor 6/2/16 HCDE 313 Investigating The Teacher Experience Introduction: Several theories exist concerning how the American education system should be restructured. For example, while currently students are continually exposed to multiple different subjects until their second year in college, some high schools are beginningto have their students “declare a major that will determine what electives they take for four years and be noted on their diplomas” (Hu, 1). Discontent with the current system brings about new approaches to address issues such as student engagement, but many of these ideas are too radical for them to be implemented without much controversy. As Fullan puts it, “[the] main reason that change fails to occur in the first place, on any scale, and is not sustained when it does, is that the infrastructure is weak, unhelpful, or working at cross-purposes” (Fullan, 18). Therefore, while investigating how to reform the educational system as a whole would take alot of effort and exploration, it is more practical to analyze the existing system and identify ways to improve upon it. ‘The purpose of this research project is to improve upon elementary school teachers’ experiences when it comes to teaching their students. More specifically, | wanted to better understand how teachers receive and decide upon the lessons that they teach. The goal approaching this investigation was to identify aspects of the curriculum administration system that negatively impacted their teaching so that ‘we may, through observation and inquiry, find ways to improve upon these aspects in order to make the classroom experience more efficient and enjoyable for everyone. ‘Through this research I wanted to communicate with teachers in order to identify aspects of the educational system that they are having trouble with. | started by performing several 2 hour contextual- inquiry visits with a classroom to observe a teacher's experiences throughout the day. Afterwards, 1 conducted interviews with 3 different teachers to expand upon what I leaned from the field study sessions, And finally, | created an online survey to reach a wider audience of 23 teachers across the Greater Seattle Area in order to gain quantitative data to support or build upon what | learned in previous phases of the research. Hopefully the findings of this project can be delivered and used by the Seattle teaching community in order to encourage them to adjust the current system and construct more effective learning environments. Key Finding 1: Pain Points With Students Teachers reported that dealing with student diversity made teaching difficult at times. One of the biggest problems identified by teachers when trying to design a curriculum is to take into account student diversity. This point was chosen because it was discussed in the field study and interview sessions, and was supported by 10 out of 23 survey respondents. For example, when asked Blancaflor 1.how they ensure that her students are up to date by educational standards, one teacher stated that “they can't, because her kids come from all different places” (Interview 52). A survey respondent supported this idea in explaining that her biggest difficulty teaching was “best meeting the needs of [their] diverse learners. The writing skills that students [bring] with them are so varied and it is difficult to find time to meet their many needs” (Survey $11). Other teachers emphasized the importance of getting to.understand their students, so if teachers find it difficult to create personalized lessons for their students, then a curriculum designed by their administrators would be even less effective in this regard. Many teachers believed it would be ideal to curate lesson plans to meet every student's needs. However, due to time and resource limitations this is not possible within each school year. Therefore, many teachers opted to use the material that was available to them, despite their reported difficulties with student diversity. This can be accounted to the fact that it may be simpler to deliver a generalized lesson to the entire class, and then meet with student outliers afterwards. it was agreed upon that no curriculum can be relevant and engaging for every student across every school. Therefore, as much as administrators may try to create the most inclusive lesson plans, teachers must ultimately adjust these lessons to meet their students’ needs, or use them at the risk of leaving students behind, Design Recommendation: Create varied material for the same subject and branching teaching pathways for each lesson plan. General Recommendations: ‘+ Provide different sets of material for the same teaching concept. '* Develop teaching options for each lesson plan. ‘+ Share the strengths and weaknesses in an overview of each lesson. Potential Approach: Create a catalog of available lessons ‘+ This would allow teachers to pick and choose material to provide more personalized learning for their students with reduced effort on the teachers’ parts, ‘+ Also reduces extraneous costs on the school district in the case that a teacher has their own lesson that they want to teach to their students. Key Finding 2: Pain Points With The System Teachers agreed that many aspects of the current system were time consuming and distracted from teaching efficiently. Despite having multiple different teaching experiences reported, most problems that teachers face were encompassed by the idea that they were time consuming to deal with. This was a major finding because, ‘hile it wasn’t evident during the field study sessions, many of the interviewed teachers felt this way and 7 out of 22 participants made references to time constraints when it cameto teaching their most difficult subject. For example, one participant cited that ‘/tJhe amount of time to give individual {feedback and conferencing” (Survey $10) was what made teaching writing dificult, while another explained that “science takes a lot of preparation to make engaging and to enable students to have hands on experiences, so that is a lot for the teacher to take on, and to clean up after” (Survey S20). To addto this, one teacher that had a lot of satisfaction with online learning material she found explained Blancaflor 2that “it's quick and she doesn't have to spend a lot of time planning what she's going to use...[instead] she spends most of her time planning how she’s going to use the information’ (Interview $2). Therefore, it could be argued that for most teachers, teaching is difficult because itis hard to find/create lessons. ‘With the way the current system works, teachers are given a lot of different information to take in and juggle throughout the year. Therefore, the best thingthat can be done for them is to givethem enough time to efficiently work with this information, and with their students. However, the school year has a inning and end date for each school district, so this time can not easily be given. However, it can ies faster and easier to deal with Design Recommendation: Make curriculum delivery more efficient and move toward more technological curricula. General Recommendations: ‘+ Minimize lesson set-up/clean-up time. ‘+ Adjust lessons to avoid extra effort due to arbitrarily chosen topics. Potential Approach: Adopt more technology-based lessons. ‘+ Many of the teachers interviewed found success with online learning material, so it may be more helpful to provide teachers with computerized lessons online. ‘+ These teachers explained that learning with this information was not only more engaging for students, but it also streamlined theteaching process. ‘+ Student activity can also be recorded and analyzed based on the software to giveteachers a fast and detailed report on how their students’ mastery levels are. '* Combined, these benefits reduce the extra effort that teachers find themselves needingto spend to teach their students. Key Finding 3: Pain Points With Administrators Teacher reports suggested that there was a correlation between their relationship with their administrators and their success when teaching, ‘This final pain point was chosen because mixed results were received with all three phases of research in regards to teacher-administrator interaction. While most of the teachers interviewed experienced a disconnect between themselves and the administrators that guide their teaching, many survey respondents stated otherwise. The correlation derived from this lack of agreement was that teachers that had a closer relationship with their administrators felt more support and success in their teaching endeavors. For example, oneteacher that reported being satisfied with their students’ mastery levels said “/ feel very supported by my administrators. There is mutual respect and trust between us in terms of instructional decisions | make" (Survey S7). In other cases, many teachers felt isolated, stating that “the administrators] tend to just let [them] run [their] classrooms and hope that nothing goes wrong’ (Survey $17) or “the district and the federal government have no clue about [their] practices...[they can feel] kinda lonely teaching...[and it's as ifthe district is saying]: ‘it’s your job, figure it out’” (Interview Blancaflor 353). This difference in interaction indicates the importance of this relationship, and id ally both parties should work closely together to strive for student success, There was no location-specfic results indicating that a certain school district is supporting their teachers ‘well or not. However, the reported differences in experiences do suggest that not every teacher of a given district gets the attention or the support that they need to help their students. Satisfaction levels varied, with responses ranging from teachers that were comfortable enough to turn to their administrators whenever they needed, to teachers that felt abandoned to some extent. Perhaps these teachers that felt isolated still have the ability to contact their administrators with their issues, but they don't know how to take advantage of it, so something must be doneto ensure that administrators are as closeto classrooms and teachers as possible. Design Recommendation: Create a network for the teaching community. General Recommendations: ‘+ Leave teachers in charge of personalizing their lessons, but support them in their efforts. ‘+ Usethe work of some teachers to benefit others. ‘+ Encourage schoot wide involvement in creating a better learning environment. Potential Approach: Create a online forum for teachers. ‘+ Network with teachers and use an online platform to connect them to one another. ‘© Amessage board can beused to foster a community of instructors teaching similar subjects, age groups, localities, etc. ‘© This way, they can work together and help each other overcome the obstacles they face with the existing system. ‘© This also gives administrators a resource that allows them to develop a closer relationship with the teachers they supervise. Pain Points With Students (Overview: Teachers found that student diversity made teaching dificult. "The writing ski thot student fring] with them are so varied ands difiut to find time to meet ther many reeds (Survey 51), ‘Suggestion: Diversy material ane provide mere options toteachers, Pain Points With The System Teachers found that curiclurnrelted sues distracted rom teaching "Science takes alt of preparation to make engaging and to ‘enable students o hove hands on expereince, s0 tho is @lot {fora teacher to foke on, and to clean up ofter” (Survey 20) ‘Suggestion: Adopt more technology-bated leszons to make ‘them more engaging fr stodents an efcent for teachers. Blancaflor 4Pain Points With Administrators achers shared that having supper irom others helps them to more succesfully "work with my teams BUT would ke to work with teachers from ather schools In he same grade bond to share ideas" (Survey S15). ‘Suggestion: Create an online forum to encourage callaboration amongst members ofthe ‘teaching community. Figure 1. Summary of teacher pain points. Future Research: 'dllike to conduct further research into the interaction between administrators and teachers and learn more about what factors exist that affect this relationship. Dueto time limitations and lack of contacts, | ‘was not able to reach out to school district administrators. By connecting with these administrative groups and communicating these findings with them we may be able to havea conversation about what can be done to improve the system, or foster this conversation between them and the schools they advise. tt would be helpful to interview the administrators themselves in order to ask them about the factors that limit their ability to communicate with teachers and the process through which they develop and distribute materials to instructors. Additionally, this research could focus down on material that is provided by the school district, or lack thereof, like what was done during the contextual inquiry field study sessions. Via extended usability studies, this material can be compared to what is actually used by teachers in order to identify what changes worked for certain subjects, and these adjustments can be brought back to the administrators. ‘This could hopefully lead to more conscientiously designed curriculum that better reflects what teachers and their students need. ‘We could also look into how teachers and schools work together to formulate material to be used in certain classrooms. This interaction can be observed through field study visits or interviews. The successes/difficulties from this research can be identified and relayed to administrative groups so that they may learn from these more personalized processes, or work to better encourage proactive and community-based curriculum development. With these insights, administrators can strive to create a system that fosters teachers’ efforts to create engaging material for their students and connects teachers with each other in order to promote teaching as a community, rather than individual, effort. Blancaflor 5References: Fullan, Michael. The new meaning of educational change. Routledge, 2007. Hu, Winnie, "Forced to Pick a Major in High School.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 15 Aug. 2007. Web. 05 June 2016. Blancaflor 6