Data Collection Practice #4 Survey

(Warning: I was a little confused about this assignment. I wrote "Video Reflection" in the log entry portion of my syllabus, but after looking through a few other blogs it appears that we were supposed to choose a fourth data collection process. Also, I noticed that a few students posted about the Google+ hangout and the grammar presentation- I have not, but please let me know if I should! Sorry, this semester has been a little confusing for me.)

The fourth data collection process I attempted this semester was to create and administer a survey. At my school, all teachers participate in quarter one meetings where the teacher, department chair and school director come together to discuss student progress, data and to reflect on the first quarter. Because the teachers are subject to quarter one reviews, the department chairs (including myself) decided to administer surveys to our respective departments about our progress.

This is where I faced the first hurdle. Because I've conducted survey research before (last Spring in Dr. Turner's class), I volunteered to create the survey document and then upload it to surveymonkey.com. However, because the five department chairs decided to send an identical survey, I had to create several drafts to narrow down what questions should remain on the survey.

My first attempt was:


1.On a scale of 1-10, how positive do you feel about the direction of your department?
2.Do you receive consistent feedback on your lesson plans each week?
3.On a scale of 1-10, how effective do you feel the lesson plan rubric is?
4.On a scale of 1-10, how effective do you feel the Walk-Through Observation form is?
5.Reflecting on the formal observation and quarter 1 meeting procedure, do you have any questions or concerns?
6.Does your department share best practices and lessons with each other?
7.What area of professional development (Lesson Planning, Sharing Resources, Classroom Management etc) do you feel should be addressed more? Please explain.


My final draft, which was approved by the school's executive director was:

1. What is going well with our department?
2. If you could change one thing about our department, what would you change, why would you change it, and how would you change it?
3. What do you find most helpful about the feedback you receive?
4. If you could change one thing about the feedback you receive, what would you change, why would you change it, and how would you change it?
5. What do you find most supportive in our coaching relationship?
6. If you could change one thing about our coaching relationship, what would you change, why would you change it, and how would you change it?

The notable differences between the drafts include the omission of the Likert scale type questions and the clear pattern of questions in the final draft from What is happening to what would you (the teacher) change.

This survey is still in progress. Teachers have until December 9th to complete it, but the data I'm currently receiving has been helpful. Until I receive all the responses, it's difficult to begin coding answers, but I have noticed that the three teachers who have responded have been overwhelmingly positive and are all returning staff members. I'm predicting that the teachers who are short on time and a bit overwhelmed will be the last few to complete the survey, but we'll see. I will add on to this post as soon as all of my responses come in!

Document Analysis

I was excited to attempt the process of Document Analysis this week. I constantly work with the writing of my students and now I work with the lesson plans of my department, so the opportunity to analyze the documents I receive weekly was an interesting and time consuming experience. Altheide says, “In general, data analysis consists of extensive reading, sorting, and searching through your materials, comparing within categories, coding, and adding key words and concepts; and then writing minisummaries of categories” and I have to agree. I already have a checklist that I use weekly to provide feedback for my teachers and I figured this checklist would be a good starting point for developing the categories of my document analysis.

Some of the categories I use weekly are:

-Essential Questions and Standards inform the lesson
-Coherent Structure
-Differentiation
-Checks for Understanding/Assessment
-Learning Activities are appropriate, meaningful and valid

Through this protocol (and the use of my weekly lesson plan rubric), I was able to analyze each teacher's lesson plan document and how succesfully the plans met the school lesson plan goals. However, because the process did not prompt me to change the categories I wasn't sure if I had successfully implemented the process.