The Pupil Control Ideology of Beginning Teachers: An Empirical Analysis of Classroom Management and Induction
Summary of the article
This study was an empirical study call by researchers concerning the teachers’ beliefs calls about education with particular aspects of management strategies and classroom behaviors of teachers. The study answered the calls by empirically exploring the possible relationships of the contextual factors of school and their own perceptions of management styles of classrooms as measured by pupil control ideology.
The purpose of the study was in two dimensions; first to make comparisons of the pupil control ideology of the beginner teachers with about 2-5 years experience in teaching with their pupil control ideology at the end of their years of pre service. The second dimension was to make a determination of the relationship between the pupil control ideology of the beginner teachers and external and internal factors (Rideout & Windle, 2010).
The research applied explanatory mixed methods research design with qualitative and quantitative data from the pre service years being compared with data from the beginning years. Mail in questionnaires was used in quantitative data collection, and qualitative data was collected through one-on-one interviews. The study participants were enlisted from a sample of 474 teachers who are pre-service ad had participated in a study previously and subsequently hired by either of the two school boards of Ontario (Rideout & Windle, 2010).
For the results to satisfy the research questions, the study followed three steps in statistical analysis. That is t-test, multiple regression analysis and Pearson Product Moment Correlation analysis. From the t-test analysis, there existed a significant difference in the analysis, t=26.94and p<0.001. The analysis showed that the participants tended to be more humanistic during their beginning teaching years.
From the Pearson Product Moment Correlation analysis, there was a significant correlation between pupil control ideology and transformational leadership perception (r=-0.423, p<0.05). From the multiple regression analysis, the program and context variable cluster was not significant in making a prediction of the pupil control ideology scores of the participants.
Analysis
The study findings suggested that, in classroom practice, external factors are very influential during the year of pre-service, whereas internal factors in the beginning years are more important. This according to Rideout & Windle (2010) has implications on the program developers of teacher’s education.
The study was also conducted in Ontario, a setting where, school boards that are publicly funded must present New Teacher Induction Program and done by teachers who are new. Given that the responses of the interview and survey suggested the limited programs impact on the teaching practice of the participants, a program review of New Teacher Induction Program may be beneficial.
The review should be first identifying specific effectiveness areas and the areas that need improvement, based on the perceptions of the teachers as opposed to identifying component completion rates that are official. To obtain such honest data, the researchers should not have any connection with the teachers participating because that will be a threat to validity. The study has also operationalized the authenticity concept within the teacher centric framework.
The practices of the teacher are considered authentic if their classroom actions are aligned with their educational belief. However, the teachers’ practices might be identified as inauthentic if they behave in a way that appears to be basically imitating the mentors and lack reflection concerning the actions or beliefs alignment. Future research is needed and is encouraged that may lead to the development of vibrant and robust theoretical framework in which such kind of path to system-wide authenticity can be understood better.
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