Teacher Perceptions of Their Ability to Improve a High-Poverty Urban School

Abstract

This study sought to gain insight into teacher perceptions of their ability to improve a high poverty urban school. The school selected for this study came from a purposive sampling of urban schools that had exited from improvement required status and had then demonstrated gains in student academic performance in subsequent years. Four teachers and two administrators were recruited to take part in this study. Two teachers from English Language Arts and two teachers from math participated. These two disciplines were selected due to the reliance on student performance in these two areas on state and federal accountability ratings. Two administrators who had experience during the time the school was in improvement required status and had participated in seeing the school exit IR and make gains in student academic performance also participated.

All participants participated in 45-minute, semi-structured interview. Additionally, the teachers agreed to a 45-minute classroom observation where instructional practices and questioning strategies were recorded according to established protocols. Additional data sources included state and campus performance reports, the school’s campus improvement plan, and anecdotal data from the researcher’s reflexive journal kept during the study. Data from the interview were reviewed to find themes that were consistent with prior research on collective efficacy and trust.

The data show that teachers’ perceptions of collective efficacy and trust were positive. Four subthemes of collective efficacy; mastery experience, vicarious experience, social persuasion, and affective state emerged from the analysis. Subthemes of trust that emerged were supportive actions by the administrators and relational trust. The data from the classroom observations indicated that the teachers who participated in this study demonstrated higher level instructional practices and used questioning strategies that were at a level above what prior research on teachers with economically disadvantaged students had shown.