NWT RESEARCH DATABASE

Regions: Dehcho Region, North Slave Region, South Slave Region

Tags: social sciences, education, teachers

Objective(s): The study will look at ways in which teachers in Grades 4 to 8 address the issues involved in teaching writing in urban and rural schools across Canada. The goal of the research is to determine ways in which educators teach and assess writing, including their use of new technology as they work in the diversity of classroom settings that exist in Canada.

Project Description: The study will look at ways in which teachers in Grades 4 to 8 address the issues involved in teaching writing in urban and rural schools across Canada. The goal of the research is to determine ways in which educators teach and assess writing, including their use of new technology as they work in the diversity of classroom settings that exist in Canada. The benefits of the research to teachers will be to gain a window into the teaching practices and philosophies of their colleagues across the country. The researchers hope that the study will assist teachers in their own professional development as teachers of writing. Because this study is being conducted in ten provinces and three territories, there are varying protocols for contacting potential teacher participants. Researchers will follow the appropriate protocols for each jurisdiction, as determined by their initial contacts at the district level for each selected district. Upon receiving district approval to conduct their research from the school board superintendents in each district, the researchers will contact the language arts consultant for the district and the school principals for the particular schools that serve the Grade 4-8 student population which is the focus of this study. They will ask the district consultant and the school principals to provide them with the names of teachers of Grade 4-8 who teach writing. The researchers will contact these teachers by phone or by email to introduce themselves, to provide them with an oral description of the research and to invite them to participate in the study. The researchers will send the teachers a copy of the information package about the research along with the consent forms to teachers in Grade 4-8 who might be interested in participating in the study. If teachers consent to participate, the researchers will ask them to complete and fax the Consent for Participation in Educational Research form to the University of Alberta. After the consent forms have been received at the university, a graduate research assistant will contact the teacher to set up a convenient time for a telephone interview. The telephone interview will be recorded using a Personal Call Logger computer program. The recorded interview file will then be transcribed for further analysis. The participating teachers would be part of a sample of 230 teachers from the 10 provinces and 3 territories to take part. Participating teachers will take part in a telephone interview to be arranged at a time convenient to them. The researchers anticipate the phone interview will take approximately 30–45 minutes, but this may vary depending on the responses of individual teachers. The researchers hope to attain data from 24 teacher interviews in each province or territory, including 12 urban and 12 rural teachers. The researchers plan to present the results of their research in educational journals and at professional and scholarly conferences. A copy of all publications that result from this study will be sent to the principals and teachers of each participating school, as well as to the Aurora Research Institute. Interviews will be conducted from May 1 to December 31, 2007 with teachers (pending their agreement to participate in the study) from the following schools: - Deh Cho Divisional Education Council: Echo-Dene School, Deh Gah Elementary and Secondary School, Bompas Elementary School, Thomas Simpson Secondary School, Louie Norwegian School, Territorial School, Charles Yohin School, Charles Tetcho School, Chief Julian Yendo School - South Slave Divisional Education Council: Deninu School, Joseph Burr Tyrell Elementary School, P.W. Kaeser High School, Princess Alexandra School, Chief Sunrise Education Centre, Lutsel K’e Dene School - Yellowknife Catholic Schools: Weledeh Catholic School, Ecole St. Joseph School, Yellowknife Education District No. 1, Mildred Hall Elementary School, N.J. Macpherson School, Range Lake North School, Ecole William MacDonald Middle School, K’alemi Dene School