A study of practices that support school improvement through staff development in DoDDs-Europe schools.

Abstract

The teachers, principals and members of the district offices in the DoDDS schools participating in the survey agreed that teachers, principals and members of the district office believed that the majority of the RPTIM practices should be used in DoDDS Germany schools. They also saw that although the great majority of the practices were used, almost all were under implemented. Furthermore, practices in the Planning, Implementation and Maintenance stages must receive more attention.

The study also revealed significant differences between the "what should be" and "what exist" mean scores among the teachers, principals and members of the district offices. These data also indicated that only one practice was implemented to a greater degree than was seen as ideal.

The population of this study was composed of teachers, principals and district office personnel responsible for staff development functions in all schools in the Hessen, Heidelberg, Kaiserslautern and Wuerzburg districts in DoDDS-Europe. Criteria for participating in the study was having been involved in the school improvement process and having held the position of principal, school-based staff developer, school-based school improvement leader or district office member for the previous nine months. Sixty-eight principals, 132 teachers and 32 members of the district office were surveyed.

This study surveyed educators in four districts in the Department of Defense Dependents Schools (DoDDS)-Europe and analyzed their perceptions of staff development practices that support school improvement and identified the extent to which they should be and were practiced, and where changes might be made to bring current practice more in line with desired practice.

The Modified Survey of School-based Staff Development Practices was used to collect the data and was distributed by military parcel service. The return rate was 78%. Data were analyzed using analysis of variance and Tukey statistics to determine pair-wise contrasts between role groups when statistical significance occurred. T tests were performed to determine level of significant difference between "what should be" and "what exist" scores. Percentages, frequencies, means and standard deviations were used to report descriptive data.