Changes in Teachers’ Beliefs: Four Years of CGI Implementation

 

Anita H. Bowman

UNC-Greensboro

abowman@acme.highpoint.edu

 

George W. Bright

UNC-Greensboro

gwbright@uncg.edu

 

Nancy Nesbitt Vacc

UNC-Greensboro

nnvacc@uncg.edu

 

We examined changes in teachers' beliefs about teaching and learning across a five-year cognitively guided instruction (CGI) project.  The CGI Beliefs Scale (Peterson, Fennema, Carpenter, & Loef, 1989) was administered six times during the project; we had complete data on 16 teachers.  For each administration, four subscale scores (i.e., Role of Learner, Relationship Between Skills and Understanding, Sequencing of Topics, and Role of the Teacher) and a total scale score were determined.  Scores were subjected to repeated measures analysis of variance and non-linear regression analysis.  For each subscale and the total scale, time effects were significant at an alpha = 0.0001 level, and hyperbolic least-squares regression models across time fit the data with rcorr values in the range of 0.97.

During the initial year of implementation of principles of CGI, teachers’ beliefs declined, though not all the way back to the baseline.  By the end of the second implementation year teachers’ beliefs recovered to the same level evidenced immediately after the initial workshops. Little change occurred in scale and subscale scores after the second implementation year.  During the entire four-year implementation period, teachers were supported extensively. It seems possible that without this continuous support, teachers might have given up on CGI and abandoned it as an organizing scheme for their mathematics instruction.  This study strongly supports the need for long-term, intensive support for teachers.  The hyperbolic models derived from the data in this study may prove helpful in assessing project impacts and in beginning to correlate levels of beliefs to implementation.

Reference

Peterson, P. L., Fennema, E., Carpenter, T. P., & Loef, M. (1989).  Teachers' pedagogical content beliefs in mathematics.  Cognition and Instruction, 6, 1-40.