Theses and Dissertations

Issuing Body

Mississippi State University

Advisor

Hare, R. Dwight

Committee Member

Watson, Joshua C.

Committee Member

Thompson, Nicole

Committee Member

Harper, Sallie

Committee Member

Owen, Sean

Date of Degree

5-12-2012

Document Type

Dissertation - Open Access

Major

Curriculum and Instruction

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

College

College of Education

Department

Department of Curriculum, Instruction and Special Education

Abstract

Response to Intervention (RtI) integrates assessment and intervention within a school-wide, multi-level prevention system to maximize student achievement. RtI requires that educators collect ongoing information about student progress and provide instruction that aligns with that progress. By providing rigorous interventions prior to students failing and by tracking them as they advance through the grades, students can have successful school careers. A majority of RtI research has been conducted in the elementary grades and while research in middle schools and high schools is emerging, few developments in effective implementations have been made. This study was conducted to address the gap in the educational literature concerning middle school implementation of RtI. More specifically, the purpose of this study was to better understand general middle school teachers’ perceptions of RtI implementation by comparing middle school teacher perceptions to elementary school teacher perceptions using the mean scores on the five variables (i.e., universal design for learning, evidence-based literacy, collaboration, data-driven decision-making, and implementation of interventions) of the Multi-Tiered Instruction Self-Efficacy Survey (MTISES). A causal-comparative design was used for this study. The statistical analysis of data, using the Mann-Whitney test, determined that no significant differences were found for 9 of the 10 pairwise tests calculated. Significances were only found for the implementation of interventions information variable. This significance indicates that middle school teachers have lower self-efficacy than elementary teachers in using print or web-based resources to implement interventions (such as those used in the Tier process) to small groups and individuals. Because teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs are related to the effort teachers invest in teaching, the goals they set, and their persistence when things do not go smoothly, teachers would be less likely to use web-based resources to guide their implementation of intervention to small groups and individuals. Future research should include studies focusing on specific issues within the Tier process that middle school teachers find troublesome. While this research showed concern with intervention implementation, a more descriptive study would assist teacher educators and administrators in developing specific guidelines for implementing small group and individualized interventions in the middle school.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11668/17925

Comments

Response to Intervention||Teacher Self-Efficacy||Middle School

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