Middle School Teachers' Sense Making of RTI: A Case Study

Read about the Context for the Study, an Overview of RTI, and the Conceptual Framework for the study in previous posts.

Methods:

This qualitative case study used a cognitive perspective to examine the sense-making of a team of middle school language arts teachers who received professional development in Response to Intervention (RTI) and sought to implement strategic literacy instruction into their instructional practice during the 2010-2011 school year. Spillane, et al (2002) defined a cognitive framework as a view of policy implementation “that takes into account basic information processing, as well as the complexities and influences involved in the processing of information about abstract ideas, the influence of motivation and affect, and the ways that social context and the social interaction affect sense-making” (p. 388).

I used a case study approach in order to “explore a bounded system (one setting and one particular event) over time, through detailed, in-depth data collection involving multiple sources of information” (Creswell, 2007. p. 73).  This design approach is often used for documenting organizational processes as they unfold (Yin, 1984). Whereas I am a beginning researcher in this capacity, I used this as a pilot project and started with limited data collection to help gain some initial experiences (Sampson, as cited in Creswell, 2007).  I relied primarily on in-depth interviewing and supplemented this strategy with observation of meetings and document analysis. I used an analytical framework to help deconstruct the teachers’ sense-making of LAC as they attempted to incorporate it into their practice.

Site Selection: The selection of this case study school was based on two main factors; the middle school is in its first year of RTI implementation and my accessibility to the participants. In addition, my desire and passion to unpack the middle school teachers’ sense making of RTI motivated me to do the study. The reform effort was led at the school site by a leadership team composed of the principal, four language arts teachers, two math teachers and a Title-1 teacher. During the spring of 2010, the RTI team participated in three full-day meetings directed by the researcher. A comprehensive overview of RTI for literacy was provided during the first day. The other two days were dedicated to the creation of a plan that included a program initiative for improving the reading competence and confidence of students and thus improving scores on district and state level tests. The initiative involves the implementation of Literacy Across the Curriculum (LAC), a RTI program that requires content area teachers to infuse reading instruction into their daily practice. Additionally, prior to the implementation at the start of the school year, the teachers received a full day of training on the chosen tier two reading intervention program called Corrective Reading from an expert from the publishing company.

This case study is based on purposeful sampling strategies (Creswell, 2007; Maxwell, 1996). Although LAC is a school-wide initiative, I intentionally limited the case to three teachers and the principal. My selection was based on very specific criteria. First, although twenty teachers are directly implementing the program, I was interested in only those teachers that are members of the RTI team and who received training in both RTI and the tier two reading program (i.e., Corrective Reading). Second, I chose general education teachers who are implementing tier two reading interventions to seventh graders. Two language arts teachers and a Title-1 teacher met the specific criterion. In this way, I gained different perspectives to the problem, which did not dilute the overall analysis (Creswell, 2007). 

Field issues can result when researchers attempt to gain access to the site of their research (Creswell, 2007). Problems that may arise include building credibility at the site, gaining access to the individuals at the site, and getting participants to respond to requests for information. By focusing on the two language arts teachers, the Title-1 teacher and the principal who know me, these field issues were addressed. I understood that gaining access involves a continual negotiating and renegotiating of my relationship with the participants (Maxwell, 1996). Furthermore, I am aware that my relationship with the individuals is a complex and changing entity (Maxwell, 1996). My particular relationship to the respondents was a key element in my sampling strategy.

Data Sources and Collection: I gathered and analyzed data throughout the study from a variety of sources (i.e., in-depth interviews, participant observation, and documents). I attempted to produce descriptive case of the phenomenon of teacher sense-making of the implementation of a particular policy, Literacy Across the Curriculum (LAC). In order to capture the participants’ worldviews on their general beliefs about schools and instruction, I conducted semi-structured interviews with two of the language arts teachers and the Title-1 teacher. “At the root of in-depth interviewing is an interest in understanding the lived experience of other people and the meaning they make of that experience” (Seidman, 2006, p. 9). Maxwell (1996) posited that, “Your research questions identify the things you want to understand; your interview questions provide the data that you need to understand these things” (p. 53). To help unpack the participants’ beliefs and values, I structured my initial interview questions (Appendix A) based on Glickman, Gordon, and Ross-Gordon’s (2004) work on developmental leadership related to forming an educational platform. An educational platform may include the aims of education, views of knowledge, the social significance of students’ learning, the image of the learner, the image of the curriculum, the image of the teacher, the preferred pedagogy, and the preferred school climate (Sergiovanni & Starrat, 2001, pp. 78-79). The subsequent questions of the first interview and those of the second interview related to the cognitive perspective framework of the study.

In addition to obtaining an understanding of the teachers’ educational platform, I wanted to learn the ways the teachers connected the main principles of the reform to their personal assumptions, beliefs, values, and attitudes toward teaching and learning. Spillane et al. (2006) posited, “If implementation involves interpretation, because implementers must figure out what policy means and how it applies in order to determine how it is used, then a cognitive framework that unpacks the ideas that implementers construct from reform proposals” is beneficial (p.49). I was interested in knowing how the teachers individually and collectively make sense of the policy. Additionally, I interviewed the principal to gain more insight into how he directly influenced shifts in practice by shaping the conditions under which the teachers attempt to unlearn the present way of doing things and relearn LAC.

In this study, I audio recorded the interviews via an iPod Nano and obtained informed consent of the interviewees. The university institutional review board approved this project and interview protocols. A work initiative student and myself shared the responsibility of transcribing the interviews using Microsoft Word. The transcribed interviews were then transferred and stored electronically using NVivo software. I interviewed the participants one time each, which ranged from 30 to 45-minute sessions during the third month of implementation and again at seven months. I sent the transcribed interviews to the participants as a word document via email for them to review in order to assure transcript accuracy. This process was one way for me to solicit feedback from the participants, known as member checking, rule out validity threats and increase the credibility of my findings (Maxwell, 1996).

I collected and examined various documents including, the LAC materials that I obtained as a participant observer, which included the notes from the RTI leadership team meetings, school email correspondences and attachments connected to LAC, a state-wide middle school blog post, and documents related to a school board meeting (i.e., observation field notes, analytic memos, email correspondences, newspaper article). The documents helped provide me with an in-depth look at the broad context of the study, the policy (RTI/LAC), and what the principal intended in terms of implementation. I scanned relevant documents, organized them into NVivo, and referred to them throughout the study. The previously described conceptual framework helped guide my development of sub-research questions, interview questions, data collection strategies, and data analysis efforts. Table 1 illustrates the relationship between the different components of the conceptual framework and data sources that I used.