Matching Items (12)
Description
Teachers of the deaf and hard of hearing have served Arizona since 1912 when the Arizona School for the Deaf and Blind opened in Tucson, Arizona. Several decades later the Phoenix Day School for the Deaf was established in the Phoenix metropolitan area. To reach deaf and visually impaired students in the rural areas of Arizona, itinerant teachers travel from school to school, providing instruction and consultation with families and school personnel. The purpose of the study was to examine the perceptions and attitudes of itinerant teachers of the deaf and hard of hearing as to job satisfaction. Four research questions addressed the roles and responsibilities of itinerant teachers: extent of teacher participation in professional development activities; the opinions and attitudes of teachers toward their work; and additional comments and concerns. To answer these questions, 43 participants from five cooperatives established by the Arizona State School for the Deaf and Blind responded to a modified version of the 2007-2008 Schools and Staffing Survey regarding itinerant teacher job satisfaction. Two open-ended questions made this survey a mixed methods study of both quantitative and qualitative data. It was found itinerant teachers worked with students with a variety of hearing losses and educational needs; worked with regular classroom teachers and other school personnel; planned, assessed, and kept records; coordinated and conducted consultation and IEP meetings; worked with parents; provided technical support; traveled to different schools to work with students; provided accommodations and modifications; and provided direct instruction to DHH students. As to professional development, participants found language strategies and content of subjects taught to be useful and most attended. Ninety-one percent of the cooperative teachers seemed satisfied as a teacher. They felt support from administration, were satisfied with how the cooperatives were managed, and agreed that they were recognized for their efforts. Some of the concerns from teachers were their salary, the paperwork involved with itinerant teaching, and the limited amount of resources available to them. Overall, the findings of this study provided a baseline of information that suggest more work needs to be done related to job satisfaction of itinerant teachers.
ContributorsPeshlakai, Jennifer L (Author) / Spencer, Dee (Thesis advisor) / Appleton, Nicholas R (Committee member) / Gilmore, Treva (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
The purpose of this study was to distinguish factors that influence the satisfaction levels of teachers in urban school districts. This work also distinguished factors that directly impacted teachers' level of satisfaction towards their work and their attitude towards the administration of their schools. Forty-one teachers from two kindergarten through eighth grade schools in the southwest region of the United States were given a modified version of the 2007/08 Schools and Staffing Survey, a federally recognized survey on the satisfaction levels of teachers in America, combined with a select number of questions created by the researcher in this study to address the research questions of this study. Data were collected and analyzed through Survey Monkey, an online data portal, and imported into SPSS for data analysis. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were compiled to provide answers to the research questions established for this study. Results from this study indicated that although a majority of teachers sampled were satisfied with their teaching positions (78%), kindergarten through fourth grade teachers were more satisfied than teachers in the older grades. For the whole group, salary was the most influential factor; however, the teachers with 11 to 15 years of experience were the only ones who chose salary as their primary choice to increase their satisfaction. This study found that the levels of satisfaction per subgroup (teachers' years of experience, level of education, gender, age, type of certification, and grade level) were different than the group needs as a whole. This study revealed that the needs of the whole group and the needs of the subgroups can differ, consequently individual differences of the staff need to be taken into consideration. To view the staff as a whole may discredit the needs of the individual. Even though data indicated that a significant number of teachers felt supported by their administration, this study revealed the need for administrative staff to address specific issues of subgroups in their schools.
ContributorsHalpert, Michael A (Author) / Spencer, Dee (Thesis advisor) / Appleton, Nicholas (Committee member) / Macey, Donna (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011