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ERIC Number: ED344772
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 1991-Dec
Pages: 185
Abstractor: N/A
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Mathematics Teachers' Views about Teaching as a Profession: Final Results of a Four-Year Longitudinal Study. A Report from the Urban Mathematics Collaborative Documentation Project. Program Report 91-4.
Middleton, James A.; And Others
This paper reports the results of a 4-year longitudinal study of approximately 600 urban mathematics teachers who were surveyed to ascertain their attitudes regarding certain attributes of the profession of mathematics teaching, specifically: the use of the professional organization as a major referent, the belief in service to the public, the belief in self-regulation, a sense of calling to the field, and autonomy. The teachers were situated in 11 urban centers in the United States participating in the Ford Foundation Urban Mathematics Collaborative (UMC) project. In addition to the survey data, a written interview administered to a subset of 40 teachers was used to validate findings from the survey and to emphasize the complexity and diversity of teachers' beliefs. Included in this document are: (1) extensive discussions of the teachers' responses to the 1990 administration of the Survey of Teacher Professionalism with comparisons to the previously published results from the 1986 administration; (2) statistical analyses of the change in responses to the survey over time for those teachers who completed both surveys; (3) discussion of the response patterns to the five attributes annotated above in terms of the attribute (factor) structures generated by overall response, participation level, and collaborative site, respectively; (4) a complete listing of responses to the written interview from the subset of 40 teachers; and (5) the survey, itself. Responses, in general, indicate that teachers hold attitudes one would ascribe to members of a profession. Yet, the findings indicate that in contrast to their ideals, teachers preferred that the reality of teaching is hardly facilitative of professional development. Specifically, they tend to feel that too much control is exercised over their work by administrators and that the contribution mathematics teachers make to society is not recognized, generally. Detailed responses to the survey are included in the appendix. (JJK)
Publication Type: Reports - Research; Tests/Questionnaires
Education Level: N/A
Audience: Researchers
Language: English
Sponsor: Ford Foundation, New York, NY.
Authoring Institution: Wisconsin Center for Education Research, Madison.
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A