Bringing 21st-century learning to the high school classroom: program evaluation on pedagogical change

Abstract

Children today are born into a world with endless amounts of information at their fingertips, the ability to instantly connect with others, and smartphones with an app for virtually everything. Their teachers and administrators struggle with how to effectively change classrooms to meet the needs of a new digital generation, and provide students with a twenty-first century education that teaches skills like problem solving, critical thinking, innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurship. As part of a five-year grant initiative, a collection of private schools is attempting to create a paradigm shift where content takes a backseat to skill development. The purpose of this qualitative program evaluation was to examine how the grant has impacted the pedagogy of high school teachers at one of these schools. Using the Concern Based Adoption Model (CBAM), the researcher explored change from the teachers' perspectives, their implementation levels, and using collaborative mapping to find the objectives for change. The results indicated that change has occurred in classrooms and that the grant implementation is moving forward. The Stages of Concern Questionnaire showed that 56% of the teachers were showing the highest levels of concern in the early levels related to Awareness, Informational and Personal Concerns. The Levels of Use interviews indicated that all teachers are implementing grant objectives at the Mechanical Level of use or higher. Using pattern coding from the interviews, four positive themes of change emerged: "Helping Hands", "Permission to Take Risks", "Change Can Happen", and "Learn from Others." Two challenging themes emerged as well, "Paradigm Shift" and "Never Stop Communicating." The research will provide the school's grant implementation team the changes needed to achieve the highest levels of implementation for the remainder of the initiative. In addition, this dissertation should provide other researchers with guidance for conducting professional development and using the CBAM for understanding change in a school environment.