By Ryan Spoehr
Editor
The Whitewater Unified School Board has accepted a request for research into the affects of instructional behavior from fieldwork students.
Katy Casey, an associate professor for the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater in the special education department, spoke before the School Board on April 24.
“This is a district that gets a lot of requests for fieldwork students, so I’m sure it has a lot of great insights on areas we could develop further or maybe some strengths in our teacher candidates,” Casey said.
Casey made the request with Ozalie Toms and Tia Schultz, also of the university.
“What we are looking for is to ask for the participation of the teachers in your district that host students either in their fieldwork or student teaching placements,” Casey said. “In their participation, we are asking for them to give us feedback on professional dispositions.”
Casey defined dispositional skills were defined as values, commitments and ethics that teachers have that could affect their skills in lesson planning and teaching.
According to the request project form submitted to the board, researchers have found the nature and quality of education by which students learn is dependent upon the dispositional skills of teachers.
“Some examples of professional dispositions that we believe are really important are things like being able to communicate, being able to be collaborative and working as a team, taking initiative and being able to problem solve. All of these skills we currently don’t capture as well in our teacher preparation program. We talk about in lesson planning and how to deliver a lesson, but we want to start at looking at how well our teaching candidates develop their professionalism as they are going out to the field.”
Casey, Schultz and Toms will reach out to teachers, but teachers will only participate on a voluntary basis. There is no requirement for teachers to participate in the study.
The research will be conducted through June. A final product will present an evaluation rubric of professional dispositions to be used in all three of the fieldwork experiences.
Focus groups will be conducted at a school district site, according to the project form, if there are enough participants from one district to fill one group.
“For each focus group, we need eight to 10 people,” Casey said. “We are looking into other districts too, but for us to get eight to 10 is ideal.”
Otherwise, focus groups will be held in a classroom in Winther Hall at UW-Whitewater, and will be comprised of people from several districts. Each focus group will be about 90 minutes.
According to the form, a final copy of the research findings will be supplied to the district administrator.
