Changing Teacher Practices From Within: An Action Research Study of Teacher Adoption of the Constructivist Teaching Model Supported, Monitored and Facilitated by a Fellow Teacher

252 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2003.This study examines one teacher's adoption of the constructivist teaching model as monitored, supported and facilitated by a fellow teacher. Data in the form of field notes, teacher artifacts, teacher interviews, student interviews, informal discussions, audio taped notes, journal notes, and observations were collected on one teacher's attempts at implementing various constructivist strategies in her Criminalistics class by a fellow teacher (myself) during the 2000--01 school year. Kemmis and McTaggart's Action Research Methodology (1988; 1988a) were used to organize the research process, while Miles and Huberman's (1984) and Erickon's (1986) qualitative research techniques were utilized to plan and execute the collection and analysis of the data. The data analysis revealed two categories of findings, namely the role of the facilitator (myself) and the role of teacher beliefs in the teacher change process. The role of the facilitator produced the following four subfindings: I continuously educated, exposed, and modeled the constructivist teaching and learning referent with Mary at various department meetings under the guidance and collaboration of my department chair; I constantly challenged Mary's current teaching philosophy and her perceptions about student learning during our interactions together; I implemented various time-saving research strategies to help Mary spend more time developing and implementing constructivist techniques; and I encouraged Mary to commit to a number of professional development activities which were not previously part of her past teaching and professional development repertoire. The role of teacher beliefs in affecting a teacher's change process produced the following subfinding: Mary reconceptualized her perceptions about student learning and made changes in her practice to support these new conceptions. These findings support the idea that teachers may be influential in facilitating a fellow teacher's adoption of the constructivist teaching model due to their insider perspectives, their unique relationship with other teachers and their ability to motivate, challenge, and affect change with fellow teachers. Policy and change implications for fellow teachers involved in teacher change are discussed. In addition, specific emphasis is placed on the tension between the use of both didactic and constructivist approaches for facilitating teacher change.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD