Theses and Dissertations

Issuing Body

Mississippi State University

Advisor

Hare, Dwight

Committee Member

Lindley, Clyde

Committee Member

Davis, Ed

Committee Member

Perkins, Fred

Date of Degree

8-7-2010

Document Type

Dissertation - Open Access

Major

Elementary, Middle, and Secondary Education Administration

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

College

College of Education

Department

Department of Educational Leadership

Abstract

Redesigning High Schools for the 21st century became a goal of the Mississippi Department of Education in 2006. The focus of redesign is to ensure that students gain the knowledge necessary to compete in the technological world they will enter after high school graduation. Students who choose not to go to college are to leave high school with the skills that have prepared them for employment. The redesign process incorporates classes of technology in grades 7–9. Grade 7 students will be involved in Information and Communication Technology I. Information and Communication Technology II will include eighth-grade students. Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) courses will be added to the ninth-grade curriculum. During the second year of implementation, Career and Technical Education (CTE) classes will be converted to Career Pathway classes for students in the 10th grade. Using a competitive grant application process, 13 school districts were chosen to participate in Phase I of Redesign. In the second year of implementation, 19 school districts were chosen to begin Phase II of the redesign initiative. This study focuses on the Alcoville School District (a pseudonym), which was chosen as a Phase II school. The purpose of this study was to understand the issues of redesign that were faced by the teachers involved in the implementation process. Emphasis was placed on the knowledge the teachers had of the redesign implementation in this district and the problems they faced as implementation occurred. The results of this study suggested that teachers (a) wanted to be more involved in the planning of redesign, (b) thought there was a lack of training, (c) were concerned with the lack of knowledge of their trainers, (d) were concerned with the difficulty of the curriculum, (e) stated there was no follow-up training offered from the Research and Curriculum Unit (RCU) at Mississippi State University, (f) reported that the RCU was not able to answer their questions, (g) stated there was not a network of Phase I teachers with whom to talk, and (h) reported that the administration did not understand their curriculum or show concern with what they were teaching.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11668/15353

Comments

High School Redesign Initiative||Career Pathways||Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics||Information and Communication II||Information and Communication Technology I

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