Date of Award

1-1-2012

Document Type

Campus Access Dissertation

Department

Educational Leadership and Policies

Sub-Department

Educational Administration

First Advisor

Zachary Kelehear

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which select Best Practices are used in regular education classrooms and if there was correlation between the frequency of their use and previous professional development attendance. Regular education teachers were the target audience for this study because the average ELL spends only three hours a week with a certified ESOL teacher, and the remaining 34 hours with a regular education teacher. Charleston County was chosen because of its large ELL population (2,138 students), the fact that there are currently 78 schools serving ELLs and its expansive demographic that includes urban, rural and suburban schools, as well as low and high socio-economic populations. Participants completed an online survey which was analyzed for frequency and impact of professional development. Overall, elementary participants used student pairing and grouping between bi-weekly and daily; manipulatives and visuals weekly to daily; classroom workshops such as choral reading and drama bi-weekly to weekly; and authentic experiences and personal reflective assessments seldom to weekly. In contrast, middle and high school teachers reported that they use all four Best Practice methods between seldom and bi-weekly. The results to the question concerning a correlation between professional development and frequency of use was somewhat inconclusive due to a great discrepancy between the results of the self-rating question and that of the statistical correlation completed.

Rights

© 2012, Barbara Ellen Rabon

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