Date of Graduation

1987

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

Abstract

This study examined the contribution of action steps (steps taken to prepare for and implement a new curriculum) to resulting outcomes (outcomes that resulted from implementation efforts) for pilot teachers of the seventh grade technology education curriculum in New York state. A survey instrument was used to gather teacher-reported data on twenty-three variables. The four dependent variables (resulting outcomes) included: (a) degree of change in program support from school and community, (b) degree of change in teacher job satisfaction, (c) degree of success of implementation of technology education, and (d) amount of student achievement of technology education. Five independent variables (action steps) included: (a) involvement of other people during implementation, (b) teacher use of technology education promotion activities, (c) emphasis on technology topics, (d) use of technology education teaching methods, and (e) number of technology education preparation activities. Data on fourteen personal and contextual factors was collected and analyzed as alternative variables. A semi-partial multiple regression correlation coefficient data analysis technique was employed to identify the action steps and alternative variables that contributed a significant unique proportion of variance in dependent variables. The main findings were: (a) involvement of other people during implementation, emphasis on technology topics, and use of technology education promotion activities contributed significantly to the degree of change in program support, (b) use of technology education promotion activities and emphasis on technology topics contributed significantly to degree of change in teacher job satisfaction, (c) use of technology education promotion activities, emphasis on technology topics, and involvement of other people during implementation contributed significantly to degree of success of implementation of technology education, and (d) emphasis on technology topics, use of technology education promotion activities, use of technology education teaching methods, and number of teachers in the school teaching technology education (an alternative variable) contributed significantly to amount of student achievement of technology education. Based on these findings, the researcher concluded the following: (a) a combination of action steps contributed significantly to each dependent variable, (b) use of technology education promotion activities and emphasis on technology topics contributed significantly to each dependent variable in the study, and (c) the only alternative variable which contributed significantly to a dependent variable was the number of teachers in the school teaching technology education.

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