As I am working on my lit review, several themes are emerging:
a. Media specialist-teacher collaboration is connected to student achievement.
b. Media specialists, teachers, and administrators all want this collaboration to happen.
c. It is often not happening because of several common barriers: administrative support, time/communication, and the independent nature of teaching culture.
For my pilot study, I would like to explore to what extent these factors are influencing this type of collaboration in my own high school, and if there are others. To start my project, I gave my media specialist a list of all teaching staff and asked her to highlight those with whom she had "collaborated on a lesson." Out of 130 staff, she highlighted 46, which is roughly 35%.
At first glance, this percentage seemed low to me. However, when I conducted a brief interview with the media specialist, she reported that she was happy with this percentage and that she didn't believe she could fit in working with many more teaching staff into her busy days. I haven't found any concrete data in any of the literature to compare this percentage to, so I'm not sure what to think. One article recommended media specialists spending 50% of their time in the role of instructional partner. I could ask my media specialist about this. Others conceded it was impossible to work with many teachers (particularly in a large high school), but what is more important is the quality of the co-teaching. Maybe I don't have to make any judgments about whether media specialist-teacher collaboration should be increased in my building anyway, as I am just focusing on why it's happening and why it isn't happening.
The next step for me is making a final decision about my sampling for my survey. I definitely want to stratify so I don't end up with all non-instructional partners, but I am still debating between the following options:
a. Survey all 46 instructional partners only. Focus just on why they did collaborate. This should result in data about how/why partner teachers were able to overcome the typical barriers.
b. Survey half instructional partners and half non-instructional partners. Ask questions about why they did or didn't collaborate. This should result in data about partners and non-partners equally.
c. Survey 35% instructional partners and 65% non instructional partners to more accurately represent the entire staff. This may tip the survey to focusing on reasons collaboration isn't happening.
I would love any feedback on these sampling options!
Which ever sampling method I choose, I will likely create my survey on a Google Form. I have limited knowledge of Google Forms and will have to spend some time getting to know how it all works. Once the surveys are collected, I will likely have to read Richards and Morse again. I understand about grouping data into categories and then conceptualizing what it all means. But, I have zero experience actually doing the coding of data and have never used coding software. I'm sure I have a big learning curve ahead of me.
The barriers to collaboration that you're finding from the literature and from the interview with the media specialist are in line with my own limited knowledge of the subject. Your sampling considerations are sound.
ReplyDeleteOption a, surveying only those who have collaborated, would be sufficient for a pilot study, and you could propose in your final report to extend the research to those who haven't yet collaborated.
Either option b or c would be good to also find out why teachers may not be collaborating. In this case, you could do your survey in 2 parts - one for those who have collaborated, and a different set of questions for those who have not. There is a possible educational by-product doing this: the questions might encourage those who haven't collaborated to see its advantages. A disadvantage might be additional demand from non-collaborators on the media specialist, who seems to be happy with the current situation.
Or you could do 2 different surveys. The advantage of using 2 separate surveys are shorter surveys and the ability to target each group of respondents differently.
I think Google forms would work fine for the surveys.