Policy Mediated through Subject Matter Contexts: Antecedents of Subject-Bound Differences in Teachers’ Perceptions of Collaboration across Subjects

Eyv Elstad, Eli Lejonberg, Knut Andreas Christophersen

Abstract


The main purpose of a current Norwegian educational policy is to stimulate secondary learners’ basic skills. This study focuses on writing skills in schools’ content areas. Teachers’ collaborative activities across school subjects are central components of this endeavour: teachers will discuss with colleagues how they can better provide feedback on the students’ written assignments. Providing feedback on students writing has traditionally been stressed more in some school subjects than in others. We examined the relationships between the teachers’ subject-related context and their personal benefits from collaboration across subjects. We also examined the relationship between the attitudes towards the national education policy and personal benefits of teacher collaboration on feedback. Furthermore, we explored the teachers’ self-efficacy, which is related to the perceived benefits of collaboration across subjects. Regression analyses were performed. A key finding is that the teachers’ subject contexts—their subject-specific beliefs—are related to the personal benefits of teacher collaboration. This means that subject matter contexts might interact with the policy. Further, we found that the more positive teachers in the subjects Norwegian or foreign languages were of the policy, the greater were the benefits in collaboration across subjects. For other teacher groups, it was different. Social studies teachers had the highest personal benefits from collaboration across subjects and the highest policy attitudes, while teachers in Norwegian or foreign languages had the highest self-efficacy. The group of other teachers (science and maths teachers) had low self-efficacy, low policy attitudes, and low personal benefits of collaboration. The implications for school practice, policy design, and further research are discussed.

https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.18.4.1


Keywords


Policy; writing in content areas; school subjects; self-efficacy; basic skills.

Full Text:

PDF

References


Ball, S. J., Maguire, M., & Braun, A. (2012). How schools do policy: Policy enactments in secondary schools. London: Routledge.

Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychological Review, 84(2), 191.

Beijaard, D., Verloop, N., & Vermunt, J. D. (2000). Teachers’ perceptions of professional identity: An exploratory study from a personal knowledge perspective. Teaching and Teacher Education, 16(7), 749–764.

Bergesen, H. O. (2006). Kampen om kunnskapsskolen [The tug-of-war on the knowledge school]. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.

Berliner, D. C. (2014). Exogenous variables and value-added assessments: A fatal flaw. Teachers College Record, 116(1), 1–31.

Chetty, R., Friedman, J. N., & Rockoff, J. E. (2014). Measuring the impacts of teachers: Evaluating bias in teacher value-added estimates. American Economic Review, 104(10), 2593–2632.

Cohen, D. K., Raudenbush, S. W., & Ball, D. L. (2003). Resources, instruction, and research. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 25(2), 119–142.

Cornelissen, T., Dustmann, C., & Schönberg, U. (2017). Peer effects in the workplace. American Economic Review, 107(2), 425–56.

Davis, E. A., & Krajcik, J. S. (2005). Designing educative curriculum materials to promote teacher learning. Educational Researcher, 34(3), 3–14.

Firestone, W. A., & Herriott, R. E. (1982). Two images of schools as organizations: An explication and illustrative empirical test. Educational Administration Quarterly, 18(2), 39–59.

Gitlin, A., & Margonis, F. (1995). The political aspect of policy: Teacher resistance as good sense. American Journal of Education, 103(4), 377–405.

Goddard, Y. L., Goddard, R. D., & Tschannen-Moran, M. (2007). A theoretical and empirical investigation of teacher collaboration for school improvement and student achievement in public elementary schools. Teachers College Record, 109(4), 877–896.

Grissom, J. A., Loeb, S., & Nakashima, N. (2014). Strategic involuntary teacher transfers and teacher performance: Examining equity and efficiency. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 33(1), 112–140.

Grossman, P. L., & Stodolsky, S. S. (1995). Content as context: The role of school subjects in secondary school teaching. Educational Researcher, 24(8), 5–23.

Grossman, P. L., & Stodolsky, S. S. (1994). Considerations of content and the circumstances of secondary school teaching. Review of research in education, 20(1), 179–221.

Grossman, P., Stodolsky, S. S., & Knapp, M. S. (2004). Making subject matter part of the equation: The intersection of policy and content. An occasional paper. Washington DC: University of Washington.

Haladyna, T. M., & Rodriguez, M. C. (2013). Developing and validating test items. London: Routledge.

Hall, D. & McGinity, R. (2015). Conceptualizing teacher professional identity in neoliberal times: Resistance, compliance and policy. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 23(88), 1–17.

Hargreaves, A. (1994). Changing teachers, changing times: Teachers’ work and culture in the postmodern age. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Herbst, D., & Mas, A. (2015). Peer effects on worker output in the laboratory generalize to the field. Science, 350(6260), 545–549.

Jackson, C. K., & Bruegmann, E. (2009). Teaching students and teaching each other: The importance of peer learning for teachers. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 1(4), 85–108.

Jackson, C. K., Rockoff, J. E., & Staiger, D. O. (2014). Teacher effects and teacher-related policies. Annual Review of Economics, 6, 801–825.

Kelchtermans, G. (2006). Teacher collaboration and collegiality as workplace conditions. A review. Zeitschrift für Pädagogik, 52(2), 220–237.

Kraft, M. A., & Papay, J. P. (2014). Can professional environments in schools promote teacher development? Explaining heterogeneity in returns to teaching experience. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 36(4), 476–500.

Little, J. W. (1993). Teachers’ professional development in a climate of educational policy. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 15(2), 129–151.

Lopes, A. (2009). Teachers as professionals and teachers’ identity construction as an ecological construct: An agenda for research and training drawing upon a biographical research process. European Educational Research Journal, 8(3), 461–475.

Lortie, D. (1975). Schoolteacher: A sociological analysis. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

March, J. G., & Olsen, J. P. (1976). Organizational learning and the ambiguity of the past. Ambiguity and Choice in Organizations, 2(1), 54–68.

Markussen, E., Carlsten, T. C., Seland, I., & Sjaastad, J. (2016). Fra politisk visjon til virkeligheten i klasserommet. Evaluering av virkemidlene i Ungdomstrinn i utvikling. Delrapport 2. [From political vision towards realities in the classroom. Evaluation of Development of lower secondary school]. Oslo: NIFU.

McCaffrey, D. F., Sass, T. R., Lockwood, J. R., & Mihaly, K. (2009). The intertemporal variability of teacher effect estimates. Education Finance and Policy, 4(4), 572–606.

Ministry of Education (2016). Ungdomstrinn i utvikling. Lagbygging for elevenes læring og motivasjon. [Development of lower secondary school: Team building for students’ learning and motivation]. Downloaded from: https://www.regjeringen.no/no/tema/utdanning/grunnopplaring/innsiktsartikler/ungdomstrinn-i-utvikling/id737594/

Nye, B., Konstantopoulos, S., & Hedges, L. V. (2004). How large are teacher effects? Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 26(2), 237–257.

Papay, J., Taylor, E. S., Tyler, J. & Laski, M. (2016). Learning job skills from colleagues at work: Evidence from a field experiment using teacher performance data. Downloaded from http://www.nber.org/papers/w21986

Payne, C. M. (2008). So much policy, so little change: The persistence of failure in urban schools. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.

Rivkin, S. G., Hanushek, E. A., & Kain, J. F. (2005). Teachers, schools, and academic achievement. Econometrica, 73(2), 417–458.

Rockoff, J. E. (2004). The impact of individual teachers on student achievement: Evidence from panel data. The American Economic Review, 94(2), 247–252.

Ronfeldt, M., Farmer, S. O., McQueen, K., & Grissom, J. A. (2015). Teacher collaboration in instructional teams and student achievement. American Educational Research Journal, 52(4), 475–514.

Rothland, M., Cramer, C., & Terhart, E. (2018). Forschung zum Lehrerberuf und zur Lehrerbildung [Research on the teaching profession and teacher education]. In R. Tippelt & B. Schmidt-Hertha (Eds.), Handbuch Bildungsforschung [Handbook of educational research] (pp. 1011–1034). Wiesbaden: Springer Verlag.

Schmidt, M., & Datnow, A. (2005). Teachers’ sense-making about comprehensive school policy: The influence of emotions. Teaching and Teacher Education, 21(8), 949–965.

Shachar, H., & Shmuelevitz, H. (1997). Implementing cooperative learning, teacher collaboration and teachers’ sense of efficacy in heterogeneous junior high schools. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 22(1), 53–72.

Siskin, L. S. (1994). Realms of knowledge: Academic departments in secondary schools. London: Routledge.

Skaalvik, E. M., & Skaalvik, S. (2009). Does school context matter? Relations with teacher burnout and job satisfaction. Teaching and Teacher Education, 25(3), 518–524.

Stodolsky, S. S., & Grossman, P. L. (1995). The impact of subject matter on curricular activity: An analysis of five academic subjects. American Educational Research Journal, 32(2), 227–249.

Sun, M., Garrison, A., Larson, C. J., & Frank, K. A. (2014). Exploring colleagues’ professional influences on mathematics teachers’ learning. Teachers College Record, 116(2), 305–335.

Sun, M., Penuel, W. R., Frank, K. A., Gallagher, H. A., & Youngs, P. (2013). Shaping professional development to promote the diffusion of instructional expertise among teachers. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 35(3), 344–369.

Sun, M., Loeb, S., & Grissom, J. A. (2017). Building teacher teams: Evidence of positive spillovers from more effective colleagues. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 39(1), 104–125.

The Directorate for Education and Training (2015) Skrive mye i alle fag og bruke skriving i kunnskapstilegnelsen. [A lot of writing in all school subject and using writing in knowledge acquisition]. Downloaded from: https://www.udir.no/laring-og-trivsel/lareplanverket/grunnleggende-ferdigheter/skriving/prinsipper-for-god-skriveopplaring/prinsipp-1/

Tschannen-Moran, M., & Hoy, A. W. (2001). Teacher efficacy: Capturing an elusive construct. Teaching and Teacher Education, 17(7), 783–805.

Tschannen-Moran, M., Hoy, A. W., & Hoy, W. K. (1998). Teacher efficacy: Its meaning and measure. Review of Educational Research, 68(2), 202–248.

Terhart, E. (2013). Teacher resistance against school policy: Reflecting an inconvenient truth. School Leadership & Management, 33(5), 486–500.

Yuan, K. (2015). A value-added study of teacher spillover effects across four core subjects in middle schools. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 23(38), 1–24.

Vangrieken, K., Dochy, F., Raes, E., & Kyndt, E. (2015). Teacher collaboration: A systematic review. Educational Research Review, 15, 17–40.

Volante, L., & Fazio, X. (2007). Exploring teacher candidates’ assessment literacy: Implications for teacher education policy and professional development. Canadian Journal of Education, 30(3), 749–770.

Weick, K. E. (1976). Educational organizations as loosely coupled systems. Administrative Science Quarterly, 1(1), 1–19.


Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


e-ISSN: 1694-2116

p-ISSN: 1694-2493