Supervisors info:
Λεωνίδας Κυριακίδης, Καθηγητής, Πανεπιστήμιο Κύπρου, Επιστημών της Αγωγή
Θ. Ζαχαριάδη Καθηγητή
Δ. Πόταρη Καθηγήτρια
Summary:
Research questions in the field of Mathematics Teaching focus on teacher collaboration within the school environment and how this cooperation affects their teaching practice. For example, Dunn and Shriner (1999) and Kwakman (1999) argue that teacher dialogue is vital for improving their teaching skills. In co-operative groups, teachers can exchange ideas, share experiences, develop and discuss new materials and receive feedback from their colleagues, as reported by Putnam and Borko (2000) and Butler and his colleagues (2004). Besides the positive effects resulting from teacher cooperation, several studies also examine the negative effects and the doubting opinion of teachers, such as their belief that asking for or accepting support can stigmatize them as failures, subordinate or dependent (Fisher et al., 1981, Gross & McMullen, 1982, Shapiro, 1984; Rosenholtz, 1985, 1989; Friend & Bauwens, 1988). In addition, Fisher and his colleagues (1981) and Eisenhart and his colleagues (1988) state that a teacher's success will accept harsh criticism from colleagues and believe that the success may not only lead to the loss of control in their classrooms, but also to the loss of their personal freedom (Friend & Bauwens, 1988; Smylie, 1992; Huberman, 1993).
The above researches studies focus on teacher collaboration and on identifying ways that this collaboration affects their teaching practice. In this study, we examine teacher collaboration within the school environment, and in what ways this collaboration mainly affects student learning outcomes in mathematics and physics, as well as the influence of administrative staffing of schools in student achievement.
Goddard and his colleagues (2007) argue that the relationship between students achievements and teacher collaboration is possibly indirect, while Louis and his colleagues (2009) are in contrary to this position and argue that teacher collaboration relates directly to higher levels of students’ academic performance than it would have in the absence of this. In addition, other studies examines the role of school policy in relation to the development of collaborative groups. Research on school leadership shows that school principals are more effective when they focus on school improvement, share the decision-making process with the teaching staff and encourage teachers to actively collaborate for improvement (& Printy, 2003 Marks, Supovitz, Sirinides, & May 2010).
As regards to the methodology of this study a secondary analysis of the data from years 2007 and 2011 of secondary school teachers from different countries from TIMSS has taken place. Questions concerning teacher collaboration were chosen from these data. This study is a review and not experimental research. The limited time of preparing a thesis in the postgraduate program, the lack of access to schools and the few research questions were reasons to take place a secondary analysis and not experimental research. The questions selected from TIMSS questionnaires refer to different ways in which teachers collaborate, such as the discussions that they have in order to provide feedback each other about their teaching practices. Moreover, these questions examine teacher collaboration aiming to exchange teaching practices and test new ideas and activities. Analysis of the data using the SPSS software was performed in order to examine which of the above factors affect most student learning outcomes in mathematics and physics. The analysis was performed in three stages: descriptive analysis, factor analysis and finally linear regression.
The results of the present study showed that classroom visits among teachers greatly affect their students’ performance in mathematics and physics, as well as discussions, exchange of experience, planning of the next courses and teamwork are of a high importance. In addition, it was observed that teaches collaborate very rare (2 to 3 times a month to zero). The results refer to teachers from different countries for the years 2007 and 2011 separately, but without the necessary correlation between these two year of study in order to observe the changes between these two years.
A proposal for future research is to examine the relation between the structure of the social network of schools and students ' achievement. This proposal becomes even more important as it agrees with the study Coburn and Russell (2008) and Penuel and his colleagues (2010), who argued that it is necessary to examine the relationship between teachers and students as interdependent members of the school community, in conjunction with the support provided by the school principal.
