Teachers' Attitudes Toward a Consumer Economic Education In-Service Program Based on Involvement in Planning.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine teachers' attitudes toward in-service programs based on involvement level in planning a consumer economic education in-service program. Attitudes investigated were: (1) teacher involvement in in-service planning; (2) required in-service; and (3) release time for in-service. Data source was derived from the Interuniversity Consortium for Consumer Economic Education coordinated by the Michigan Consumer Education Center at Eastern Michigan University. A quasi-experimental design was utilized by r and omly assigning fifty-five participants in experimental and control groups. The experimental group assisted in planning two in-service workshops, whereas the control group had no input. Once the workshops were planned, all participants were intermingled throughout both sessions. A semantic differential was designed as a pre-test and post-test to determine attitude changes. Two sample t-tests compared experimental and control groups on pre-test and post-test. An analysis of variance was performed on three factors of the instrument, namely: evaluative, potency and activity. The .05 level was used on the data as the criterion for all statistical tests of significance. On the basis of data presented, there were no significant differences between attitudes of the two groups toward teacher involvement in in-service planning. The conclusions drawn from this study were: (1) Teacher involvement in the planning process for an in-service program did not serve as a clear predictor of positive attitudes toward the concepts tested. In fact, the results of the study were contrary to those found by previous researchers who investigated this topic. (2) Selected variables, such as quality of inservice, sex, years of teaching experience, degree level, subject matter taught, had no significant relationship to teachers' attitudes toward involvement in in-service. (3) The variable "age" was found to have a negative correlation with teachers' attitudes toward the concept "required in-service for teachers." This was significant at the .05 level. (4) The semantic differential developed for this study was found to be a valid instrument through the use of principal component analysis.