The Effects of Video-Based Embedded Supplemental Instruction upon Preservice Teachers’ School Law Competency

This quasi-experimental posttest only study examined the impact of embedded school law video-based mini-lessons upon preservice teachers’ levels of proficiency with school law. The intent of the study was to address the concern that approximately only 18 out of 700 American teacher education programs include a required school law course (Gullatt & Tollett, 1997). The study aimed to discover whether or not a statistically significant difference in level of school law proficiency as measured by Schimmel and Militello’s (2007) Education Law Survey would emerge between preservice teachers who had been exposed to a series of eight video mini-lessons containing school law topics and those who had been exposed to no treatment or a combined video seminar containing the same information as the mini-lessons. The purpose of a combined video seminar was to simulate the school law seminars employed by some teacher preparation programs immediately preceding the student-teaching component of their preservice training (Eckes, 2008). The goal of this study was to identify potential solutions to the problem that teachers entering the field of education are not appropriately trained within the area of school law leading to increased potential for liability issues within the school districts by which they are employed. Results indicated that both treatments had a statistically significant impact upon participants’ perceived knowledge of school law topics, but a non-statistically significant effect upon their actual knowledge of school law topics