Date of Award
2004
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Education
Department
Fischler Graduate School of Education and Human Services
Advisor
Paul Borthwick
Committee Member
Mel D. Coleman
Committee Member
Barbara Packer
Keywords
collaborative decision making, FCAT, Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, mentors, middle schools, participative decision making, reading achievement, reading test scores, student achievement, teacher collaboration, teacher efficacy, teacher mentors, team teaching
Abstract
This applied dissertation was designed to evaluate students’ reading test scores in the teacher mentor program. Over the past few years, students at the selected school have scored poorly on the reading portion of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT). Teachers have used a number of teaching methods to increase their students’ performance on the reading section of this assessment to no avail.
The researcher developed a strategy designed to increase teacher mentoring/collaboration at the middle school level. This strategy included a comprehensive program for the development of a teacher mentor cluster. The cluster, and the inherent increased collaboration, provided a number of strategies that were designed to help students increase their reading scores on the FCAT. The researcher evaluated students’ reading FCAT scores to determine if the teacher mentor collaboration team did in fact increase student reading scores.
An analysis of the data revealed that students’ reading scores were not, in fact, impacted in any statistically significant fashion by the implementation of increased teacher collaboration. The researcher will continue to improve and revise teacher collaboration efforts at the school site in order to increase teacher efficacy.