Teacher Training for "Response to Intervention" at a Midwest University

The compelling force behind education is improving teacher quality. This research study was designed to find out how improving teacher quality in terms of RTI knowledge occurred at differing levels of instruction and how faculty perceived the changing role of general education teachers and administrators with regard to RTI. Participants in the study included 13 faculty instructors and 196 of their students. Instructors had experience ranging from three to 14 years and experience in public school settings varied from eight to 17 years teaching K-12 and from four to 20 years as administrators. The instrumentation and data collection consisted of the administration of a student survey and face-to-face interviews with education administrator students and faculty. This was a descriptive mixed methods study. For the quantitative phase, I used SPSS 21 to collate descriptive data and then to explore relationships among variables. The survey contained (a) Likert-style questions, with the resulting data classified as nominal or scalar; (b) questions that produced nominal data; and (c) questions that produced binary data. Descriptive data were provided for each variable based on its measurement level. Frequencies for each nominal variable were generated. Qualitative analysis showed that student teachers and administrators were learning about RTI, but apart from education majors, not through their coursework. Awareness of RTI correlated positively with the perceived effect of not being instructed in RTI; however, knowing more did not correlate with perceiving RTI to be important