Keywords

Florida History, Teacher Attitudes, Teacher Perceptions, Social Studies

Abstract

Reacting to an impression that history is not viewed as significant as other curricular subjects such as reading, math, or science, there were multiple purposes for this research: first, to document the attitudes of the fourth grade teachers in one county in Florida towards the subject of Florida history. The teachers' perceptions of the importance of the topic to and for the students, to the administration, and to them personally was surveyed in addition to the perceived preparation of the teachers to teach Florida History. The second purpose was to ascertain the perception of fourth grade teachers regarding preference and efficacy of their methods; third, to discern the teachers' views as to the effectiveness and value of the available materials; fourth, to determine the amount of instructional time devoted to the teaching of Florida History; and fifth, to discover if there is any correlation between teacher attitudes toward Florida History and the methods and materials that they use to teach the subject. Eighty-eight of the 210 fourth grade teachers employed in the county during the research interval responded to a survey that was part Likert scale and part fill-in. The results of this research were in agreement with the premise that teachers perceive themselves as unprepared to teach history; however, the teachers of this county thought that Florida History was important to and for their students, the administration and them personally. Although the teachers advocated the use of constructivist approaches to teaching Florida History such as cooperative learning, student projects, and role-playing, the majority of the teachers utilized lecture as their predominant instructional method due to insufficient classroom instructional time (only one in five teachers included Florida History in the daily schedule). The textbook was the leading material of choice overwhelming tradebooks, computer software, and videos. Although there was a relationship discovered between the teachers' attitudes and the methods they espoused, there was no relationship between the teachers' attitudes and the materials they employed to teach Florida History.

Notes

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Graduation Date

2005

Semester

Spring

Advisor

Allen, Kay

Degree

Doctor of Education (Ed.D.)

College

College of Education

Department

Educational Studies

Degree Program

Curriculum and Instruction

Format

application/pdf

Identifier

CFE0000504

URL

http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0000504

Language

English

Release Date

May 2005

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Access Status

Doctoral Dissertation (Open Access)

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