Dissertation

Teacher Adherence to School-Based Psychoeducational Report Recommendations

Barrett, Faith Hannah

2019

Overview

The recommendations in a psychoeducational report are acted upon by the child’s parents and teachers, with the intention that they have a positive impact on the child. However, recommendations are not always adhered to, for a variety of reasons. To date, the rate of teacher adherence to recommendations has not yet been investigated. This study investigated how much teachers adhere to recommendations and the potential factors impacting adherence. In a semi- structured interview, teachers were asked about each school recommendation from a psychoeducational report for a student they had taught, whether they had used the recommendation (adherence) and for any reasons or circumstances that interfered with being able to use the recommendation (barriers). Teachers were also asked in general for any reasons or circumstances that helped them use the recommendations. In the current study, teacher adherence rates were high (74.5% overall). Thematic analyses were conducted to understand the factors involved with adherence, finding five recommendation themes, eight barrier themes, and four facilitator themes/subthemes. Further descriptive analyses show the adherence rates across the recommendation and barrier themes, as well as the occurrence of the different barrier themes across recommendation themes. This study provides a framework for future research to use when investigating teacher adherence, as well as provides insight into the real-life difficulties of adhering to recommendations. Future research in this area should further explore the impact of barriers on teacher adherence, as well as examining other potential influencing factors (e.g., demographic variables, age or diagnosis of student, number of recommendations).

• Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
• Subject: Educational psychology / Psychology
• ISBN: 9781658438148, 1658438140