Effectiveness of Alternative Schools At Modifying Disruptive Behavior and Improving Academic Performance

876 Words2 Pages

CHAPTER THREE RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY The purpose of this study is to explore how effective alternative school are at modifying disruptive behavior and improving academic performance in middle and high school. The study will track students sent to alternative school for a period of one year and study the change of improvement in the student through school records, observation and grades. The study will also test if there are any correlations between student nonsuccess in the classroom and teachers lack of classroom management skills, perception and stereotyping of the teacher. This chapter will describe the research design and methodology as follows: 1. The research question will be stated with the hypotheses 2. Details of the study design and the techniques for collecting data will be outlined 3. Explanation of how the data will be analyzed The research questions addressed were: 1. Are alternative schools successful in improving disruptive behavior and academic performance or do these schools enhance disruptive behavior and reduce academic success? a. What percentages of students return to the mainstream classroom, graduate, improve attendance, raise grades, stay in school, and improve behavior after attending alternative schools? b. What factors show that some teachers may use the write-up procedure as a way to eliminate the classroom of questionable behavior problems when proper behavior management techniques are the key? c. Do some teachers in the traditional educational system demoralize disruptive students through diminished expectations and stereotyped as failures? i. What factors show that there may be a link to at risk student’s failure to succeed in school due to teacher’s perception of the student’... ... middle of paper ... ...on to assess teachers behavior management skills will be taped and transcribed verbatim to ensure triangulation of the data. This method will be used based on information obtained from writings of emerson, Fretz, & shaw, 1995. Based on Merriam’s (1998) strategies, open coding will be used to sort and categorize interviews. The SPSS software package will be used to tabulate the data. Student’s percent of improvement behavorially and academically will be the independent variable. Since the researcher has worked in alterantive and traditional schools, several things will be used to ensue the trustworthiness of the qualitative data gathered: 1. Triangulation of data findings will be confirmed through interview transcripts and interview and questionnaire results will be reviewed by a third party as suggested by seidiman, 2006 to ensure validity of the data results.

Open Document