Date of Award
12-2017
Document Type
Action Research Project
Degree Name
Master of Arts in Education
Department
Education, Montessori
First Advisor
Alisha Brandon
Department/School
Montessori Early Childhood
Abstract
The purpose of this action research project was to measure the effects that collaborative curriculum planning had on three early childhood classrooms in a private Montessori school. The study population included six early childhood teachers who collectively designed a curriculum and helped collect data for the first seven weeks of the intervention. Each participant filled out a teacher feedback form which was based on Spreitzer’s (1995) psychological empowerment scale to measure changes in perceptions of four different aspects of empowerment: meaning, competence, self-determination, and impact. The primary researcher also analyzed data from individual teacher journals, notes from weekly discussions, and observations in all three classrooms. Analysis of the data indicated that collaborative curriculum planning led to a heightened sense of competence, self-determination and impact among the six participants. Further research is needed to determine the correlations between collaborative curriculum planning and student engagement. Keywords: early childhood, collaboration, psychological empowerment,
Recommended Citation
Feinauer, Brittany Kay. (2017). The Effects of Collaboration on Teacher Empowerment. Retrieved from Sophia, the St. Catherine University repository website: https://sophia.stkate.edu/maed/242