An Investigation of the Relationships between Teacher Beliefs ...

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  • Title: An Investigation of the Relationships between Teacher Beliefs and Student Achievement: Teacher Beliefs
  • Author(s): Brian Cunningham, Aarek Farmer
  • Publisher: Common Ground Research Networks
  • Collection: Common Ground Research Networks
  • Series: The Learner
  • Journal Title: The International Journal of Educational Organization and Leadership
  • Keywords: Educational Organization, Self-efficacy, Collective-efficacy, Intrinsic Motivation, Extrinsic Motivation, Incremental Beliefs, Teacher Expectations, Attitude
  • Volume: 23
  • Issue: 2
  • Date: April 09, 2016
  • ISSN: 2329-1656 (Print)
  • ISSN: 2329-1591 (Online)
  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.18848/2329-1656/CGP/v23i02/1-14
  • Citation: Cunningham, Brian, and Aarek Farmer. 2016. "An Investigation of the Relationships between Teacher Beliefs and Student Achievement: Teacher Beliefs." The International Journal of Educational Organization and Leadership 23 (2): 1-14. doi:10.18848/2329-1656/CGP/v23i02/1-14.
  • Extent: 14 pages

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Abstract

The purpose of this study was to address the problem of low student motivation in terms of connecting teacher expectations and student academic performance. If teacher expectations are truly self-fulfilling, a greater probability of changing the way that teachers view their students may exist. This study examined the relationships between teacher beliefs and student achievement. The target population for this study included seven schools within a small rural area school district in West Tennessee. All of the classroom teachers were included for the purpose of collecting quantitative data. Quantitative data was initially collected from the Attitude towards Teaching Survey, created by Dr. Aarek Farmer. The Attitude toward Teaching Survey is a twenty-item survey that measured teacher beliefs regarding the 5 variables referenced in the research questions. Survey data was compared to the test results from a 2014-2015 Triand assessment program administered during December of 2014. Data from the Attitude toward Teaching Survey was paired with the Triand scores for each teacher. For the research questions, descriptive statistics, Pearson’s correlations, and multiple regression analyses were used to detect the association between teacher beliefs and student achievement. Though, it was found that none of the motivational concepts exhibited by teachers were individually correlated to student achievement, data did reveal that, as a whole, all five motivational concepts—self-efficacy, collective-efficacy, intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, and incremental beliefs—impacted student achievement with intrinsic motivation having the most significant impact on student achievement.