Draft Action Research Project Report

Implementing Adult Motivation Strategies to Develop and Foster a Positive Working Relationship between Teachers and Teaching Assistants and the Effect on Student Behaviors

Needs Assessment

The strained relationship between our teachers and teaching assisstants on our campus has been an ongoing problem.  Because our direct care staff’s main responsibility at our residential treatment facility is behavior management therapy (keeping the students from harming themselves or others), they feel that their purpose during the school day is to simply monitor student behaviors and step in for assistance as needed.  However, it ihas been stressed to them many times that they are to serve a dual role as a teaching assistant as well during school hours.  Over the years this has continually created a difficult relationship between the teachers and staff.  I had the teachers and assistants complete a short survey inquiring about their thoughts on the topic including how they felt about the current relationship, what problems they see, and how they think these problems can be fixed.  Our teachers surveyed are all caucasion teachers, male and female, of various age ranges.  Our teaching assistants are predominantly African American, female and male, and various age ranges.  Our student population has grown tremendously this year, and there have been many incident reports and therapeutic restraints in the classroom.  I also want to see if the relationship between teachers and teaching assistants affects the behavior of our students in the classroom.  Therefore, I collected data on the number of incident reports and restraints that occurred in the classroom.  Our student population is a mix of caucasion, African American, and Hispanic.  We have 18 females and 22 males ranging from 12 years old to 22 years old. 

Objectives and Vision of the action research project

The objectives that I hope to accomplish are to develop positive working relationships between the teachers and teaching assistants, improve campus climate, and decrease the occurrences of negative student behaviors.  All of these objectives are measurable with the use of  teacher and teaching assistant surveys and interviews to monitor the progress of their working relationships, as well as analyzing the data to see if there is a decrease of student incident and restraint reports.   Through my action research I will be able to study the impact of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation for adults to encourage the teaching assistants to work harder at their jobs of assisting students academically as well as emotionally.  I will be able to have surveys completed as well as hold discussions with both entities to see if relationships are improving.  I will also be able to view our incident reports and restraint log to see if improving relationships help to improve student behaviors as well. 

Review of Literatre and Action Research Strategy

The decision making process for implementing the action research project was done by myself and my site supervisor.  We both agreed that this was a continuing problem between our teachers and teaching assistants, and we discussed trying intrinsic and extrinsic motivation for our teaching assistants including a Teaching Assistant of the Month award and a monetary award the second semester.  The award is given based on commendations done by the teachers and myself.  My site supervisor has helped to guide me through the entire action research project from start to finish.  Anytime I have questions he is able to give me great ideas to work with.

Articulate the Vision

I communicated the vision of the action research project to our program director, staff supervisor, principal (my site supervisor),  and executive director last summer during one of our monthly leadership meetings.  Then once school started I explained my project as well as staff commendations that need to be completed to the teachers at our first staff meeting the first week of school.  I was then able to explain to the staff (i.e. teaching assistants) about their expectations in the classroom, the staff commendations that the teachers would be completing, and the Teaching Assistant of the Month awards.  I did not yet tell them about the entire project in relation to comparing intrinsic and extrinsic motivation because they were the subjects of this particular aspect of the project.  I also did not explain the details of the project to the students so that I would not get any type of skewed data in results to their behaviors in the classroom.  Parents (our students only have surrogate parents due to their CPS placements) and community members were not a part of this action research project and were not directly affected by the project so I did not explain it to them. 

Manage the organization

Most of the responsibilities for implementing this project belong to me.  I had the task of designing a Google doc form to use for the staff commendations and updating it monthly.  I also designed the various surveys to be given to staff members and teachers as well as conduct the interviews and meetings with the teachers and teaching assistants each month.  The teachers and myself are responsible for completing the staff commendations, and I complete the tallies each month to see who has received the Teaching Assistant of the Month award, as well as present the award each month.  Our program director keeps a log of incident reports and restraints that I use for my data collection to determine the effect on student behavior.  The only money involved in my project is the monetary award that we have been giving as part of the teaching assistant award during the second semester.  The facility that I work for agreed to pay for this once I had it approved from our CEO.  The only way that students will be involved in this project is when I will do student surveys and questionnaires at the end of the school year which will basically get their opinions on the role of teaching assistants in the classroom and the partnerships between the teachers and teaching assistants.  However, one of the main objectives of this project is to decrease the amount of incident reports and restraints in the classroom which leads to an overall more positive experience in the classroom for the students.

Manage Operations

I used the needs assessment to determine what the problem areas are on our campus that need to be addressed.  There was an obvious need to improve the working relationships between our teachers and teaching assistants.  Surveys completed by our teachers and staff reiterated the need for better communication, more concise job duties for our teaching assistants, and more motivation for our staff.  I then spoke with teachers during our staff meetings to gather their concerns in regards to our staff and explained to them how the staff commendation forms need to be completed.  I then took their concerns to the staffings with the teaching assistants and discussed these with them.  They also provided input regarding their concerns with the teachers in the classroom.  I would relay these concerns on to the teachers.  I would then check in often with both parties to see if issues had improved or been resolved.  If there were continuing problems then I would get the teacher and teaching assistant together with myself to mediate to discuss how we could resolve these problems.  I always follow up with them afterwards to see if improvements have been made.

Respond to Community Interest and Needs

This action research project will be incredibly beneficial to our students.  We serve a very unique population of students.  They are in CPS custody due to some type of neglect and/or abuse and have been placed at our facility due to their severe behaviors.  Almost all of them are in special education.  Positive relationships among them are very important to help in their therapeutic care.  A good working relationship between teachers and teaching assistants will allow a collaborative effort between the two to ensure the best academic and behavioral support needed by our students.  This will in turn improve the campus climate at our facility by allowing for better communication skills and work ethics among the teachers and teaching assistants.