THE EFFECTS OF A TEACHER FEEDBACK INTERVENTION IN A VIRTUAL SCHOOL SETTING by Lauren Nicole Barry Bachelor of Arts, Washington and Jefferson College, 2011 Master of Education, Duquesne University, 2013 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the School of Education in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Education University of Pittsburgh 2018 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH SCHOOL OF EDUCATION This dissertation was presented by Lauren Nicole Barry It was defended on May 17, 2018 and approved by Marilyn Hoyson Ph., Chief Operating Officer, Watson Institute James Longo Ed., Department Head & Professor, Education Department, Washington and Jefferson College Steven Lyon, Ph., Associate Professor, Instruction & Learning Dissertation Advisor: Rachel Robertson, Ph., Assistant Professor, Instruction & Learning ii Copyright © by Lauren Nicole Barry 2018 iii THE EFFECTS OF A TEACHER FEEDBACK INTERVENTION IN A VIRTUAL SCHOOL SETTING Lauren Nicole Barry, EdD University of Pittsburgh, 2018 With a growing number of students with disabilities electing to enroll in virtual education programs, it is imperative for teachers in virtual education programs to employ evidence-based practices to ensure that instructional delivery meets the student’s needs and facilitates academic success. However, there is a limited amount of quantitative research on how educators in a virtual education setting can provide feedback to students with disabilities to promote active student engagement in this isolated environment. The purpose of the study was to examine the effect of a teacher feedback intervention on the quality of teacher feedback to students provided in a virtual education system and how this factor impacts active engagement time of students with disabilities in the virtual education program. The study utilized a single-subject multiple baseline across participants research design to examine the effects of the teacher feedback intervention on improving the quality of teacher feedback as well as the effects of the quality of teacher feedback on the active engagement time of students with disabilities in the virtual education program.
Results indicated that the teacher feedback intervention training had a functional relationship with the quality of feedback provided by teachers in the virtual education program. Although there was an increase in the quality of feedback provided by teachers in the virtual education setting, there was no evidence of a functional relationship between increasing the quality of teacher feedback and increasing the active engagement of students with disabilities iv in the virtual education setting. All three teacher participants rated their experience with the intervention and training as effective on social validity surveys. v TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE .1 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM .0 REVIEW OF LITERATURE .1 VIRTUAL EDUCATION DEFINITIONS .2 GROWTH OF VIRTUAL EDUCATION .3 TRADITIONAL EDUCATION AND VIRTUAL EDUCATION.4 BENEFITS OF VIRTUAL EDUCATION .5 CHALLENGES OF VIRTUAL EDUCATION .6 LEARNER CHARACTERISTICS OF STUDENTS .7 TYPES OF STUDENT INTERACTIONS .8 EVIDENCE-BASED PRACTICES IN VIRTUAL EDUCATION .9 INDICATORS OF QUALITY FEEDBACK .10 SPECIAL EDUCATION IN VIRTUAL EDUCATION .5 EVIDENCE AND DATA COLLECTION .6 ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION .1 TEACHER FEEDBACK INTERVENTION .2 STUDENT ACTIVE ENGAGEMENT TIME .3 SOCIAL VALIDITY RESULTS .2 CONNECTIONS TO RESEARCH.4 IMPLICATIONS FOR RESEARCH .5 IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE.
85 viii LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Clark's (2001) Seven Categories of Virtual Schools. 6 Table 2: Waston et al.’s (2004) Categories of Virtual Schools. 7 Table 3: Allen and Seaman’s (2006) Virtual Terminology Definitions. 8 Table 4: Ahn’s (2011) Delivery Model Definitions.
8 Table 5: Social Validity Results. 59 ix LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Teacher quality of feedback scores. Student active engagement time.
55 x PREFACE I wish to express my sincere gratitude and appreciation to those individuals whose endless guidance and support made this dissertation and degree possible. To my advisor, Dr. Rachel Robertson, thank you for the constant support and continuous encouragement during this process. I learned so much from you, thank you for the valuable investment of your time, knowledge, and patience.
To my dissertation committee, Dr. Rachel Robertson, Dr. Marilyn Hoyson, Dr. Steven Lyon, and Dr.
James Longo, thank you for your guidance along this journey. I valued your support and feedback and look to all of you as role models and passionate leaders, who make a difference in the field of education every day. I truly appreciate the knowledge you shared with me throughout this process both as professionals and leaders in the field. It is truly inspiring.
To the teachers that consented to participation in this study, thank you for the willingness, support, and dedication you gave to improving best practice for our most valuable stakeholder, the students. xi To my colleagues and my administration, thank you for supporting my journey and continually seeking avenues to individualize learning for students. I am inspired by your passion and perseverance to expand learning opportunities for our students. I would also like to thank Toni Baldanzi, whose passion for helping students in the virtual education environment find success is unparalleled and inspirational.
To my friends, thank you for your patience as I completed this journey and for always reminding of my purpose. I am so lucky to call all of you my friends and I look forward to continuing to support, encourage, and celebrate these special moments throughout our lives. To Dan Corrado, thank you for loving and believing in me throughout this process. I could never entirely put into words how thankful I am to have you in my life.
Your continued and unfailing love, support and understanding during my pursuit of this degree that made the completion of this dream possible. I cannot wait to pursue our dreams together and am so lucky to have found my other half. To my family, thank you, for being my foundation and my rock throughout this journey. You have always believed in me and encouraged me to pursue my dreams.
Your love is the cornerstone of my life and my greatest blessing. I love you all. To my parents, thank you for being my role models for life. You have instilled in our family a passion for education and helping others, and these values have guided my life.
Without your boundless love and support, I would not be here today. I am incredibly grateful for everything xii you have done to help me achieve this life-long dream. I love you; this dissertation is dedicated to you, Ken and Lisa Barry. To all my students, past, present, and future may you always know that it is possible to achieve your dreams when you put in the time and effort to chase them and believe in yourselves.
Work hard, be kind, and you will change our world. You are the future. You will always be my motivation, and you are the reason I am a teacher. I have always learned more from you than I can ever hope to teach you and may you continue to pursue knowledge with a limitless tenacity.
I believe in you, thank you for the opportunity to be your teacher and believing in me.0 INTRODUCTION Cyber education, distance education, virtual education, and online learning are all terms that have been used to describe the field of nontraditional virtual instruction (Saba, 2005). While many models exist for the structure of a virtual learning program in K-12 education, the most commonly accepted research definition of a virtual school is a form of schooling that uses online computers to provide some or all of the student’s education (Russell, 2004). The conventional modes used to provide instruction in virtual instruction include independent delivery, asynchronous delivery, or synchronous delivery (Kaseman, 2000). In this new frontier of education, these different delivery models allow the student and parent to select the educational course that would best suit the student’s unique needs.
In all models of instruction delivery in the virtual education environment, the central defining characteristic of virtual education is the physical separation of teacher and learner due to the nature of the online educational environment and method of instructional delivery (Keegan, 1996). However, decades of research establish that the success of an educational environment correlates to the educators who are in direct contact with the students (Darling-Hammond, 2000). The separation of teacher and learner in the virtual education environment is a factor that is imperative to examine to facilitate successful student outcomes in the virtual education environment. Post-secondary schools initially utilized the virtual education delivery model, but 1 K-12 virtual education programs have evolved and grown over the past decade and serve all students including students with disabilities.
Carnahan and Fulton (2013) developed a study to address several questions about the virtual school system in Pennsylvania and the population of students receiving special education services. The findings from the data collected from 2005 to 2009 noted that over this four-year span, there was a 114% increase in the number of students receiving special education services in Pennsylvania attending virtual schools. There are several unique benefits of virtual education for students with disabilities that could be potentially impacting the increase in the number of students with disabilities enrolling in virtual education programs. Students with disabilities benefit from the individualized instruction in virtual education, the use of extended time, the use of a variety of multimedia technologies, and the flexible location (Vasquez & Straub, 2012).
The number of students receiving special education services is projected to increase as more school districts explore the numerous benefits of offering virtual education programs, including addressing growing student populations, scheduling conflicts, credit recovery, and meeting the needs of specific groups of students for flexibility (Saba, 2005). Despite this evolution and growth of virtual education, there is a limited amount of published research on virtual schooling practice (Barbour & Reeves, 2009). Research on teacher and learner interaction has concluded that commercial course management systems used in virtual education environments restrict most teachers to the delivery of information rather than to the provision of engaging, authentic learning experiences (Oliver, Herrington, Herrington, & Reeves, 2007). Due to the nature of the virtual education environment and the limited opportunity for traditional teacher-learner interaction, it has been affirmed that providing 2 frequent and meaningful feedback to students is a critical element in virtual education environments (Jonassen et al.
With an increasing number of students transitioning from traditional schooling to virtual school, it is crucial to analyze what factors promote academic success for students in this environment. A significant factor in the literature that impacts the students’ academic success was learner-teacher interaction in the virtual education environment. The review of the literature on the relationship between student interaction with teachers and student success in the virtual education environment highlights the importance of a teacher actively monitoring students understanding of the content to identify gaps in their knowledge and provide support through quality feedback (Johnson & Pitcock, 2007). Active monitoring of student progress has been a critical predictor of student success as documented by research on post-secondary online education because it helps the learner accommodate to the independent world of online learning environments (Kurtz, Beaudoin, & Sagee, 2004).
Virtual teachers should communicate at the first signs of student struggle and provide detailed feedback on assignments. Quality feedback offers guidance, fosters the teacher-student connection, and ensures that students are more apt to work towards the goals set forth (Segal, Chipman, & Glaser, 2014). The effects of teacher interaction on the student success outcomes in virtual education programs uncover a pressing need for extended research in the field on evidence-based practices. Teachers can employ these evidence-based practices in the virtual education setting to be proactive in their use of interventions to provide feedback and communicate with students in this unique, isolated environment.1 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM The problem of practice will examine the quality of feedback provided by teachers instructing students with disabilities within a virtual education program.
Addressing teacher feedback is imperative because for students with disabilities to make progress on academic/behavioral goals within their individualized education program, the students must be actively engaged in the virtual school environment.