Teacher Beliefs in Title I Schools Compared to Teacher Beliefs in Nontitle I Schools

The purpose of this multiple case study was to discover and compare teacher beliefs of elementary teachers in Title I schools to elementary teachers in Non-title I schools. Two theories guided this study, Kegan’s Constructive Development Theory (CDT) and Bandura’s Theory of Self-Efficacy. Together the two theories provided a framework for how adults think and form beliefs that influence their decisions and behaviors. This qualitative research sought to answer the following questions: What do elementary teachers in Title I schools believe about themselves as teachers, compared to what elementary teachers in Nontitle I schools believe about themselves as teachers? What do elementary teachers in Title I schools believe about student learning, compared to what elementary teachers in Nontitle I schools believe about student learning? Ten teachers agreed to participate in the study, eight from a Title I school and two from a Nontitle I school. The participants in the study are all employed by the same school corporation. Data collection methods were focused interviews, asynchronous discussions and online reflections. Data analysis included memoing and coding, HyperRESEARCH and triangulation. Each source of data was memoed and coded separately to determine the frequency of common codes in that source. The most repeated codes of each source were then loaded into HyperRESEARCH for triangulation and to determine the codes most frequently shared among sources. HyperRESEARCH was also used to make comparisons between Nontitle I and Title I data. This research concluded that there are no significant differences between the beliefs of Title I teachers and Nontitle I teachers, however, they do have different stresses and successes due to the differences in the types of students they are teaching