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4.1 Research design

4.1.2 Study II—Intervention

The second study in this thesis is an interventional study with the purpose of investigating how and what teachers learn in a modified lesson study model of professional development.

The aim of this study was to examine the effects of an intervention, a professional

development program designed for teachers’ learning. The objectives were to explore teacher efficacy and readiness to teach for student diversity after participating in the program based on lesson study methodology with three learning cycles.

A lesson study is a teacher learning process, used mainly in Asian countries, but which has since the 90s spread across the world (Dudley, 2013). A lesson study as professional development for inclusive teaching has the potential to respond to teaching students with SEND, however these implications thus depend on institutional conditions in schools, e.g., leadership support, possibilities for funding and adequate preparation (Norwich, Benham-Clarke, & Goei, 2021). In lesson study, teachers learn in collaborative groups and the

improvement area is based on different aspects of the learning of their students. Literature of effective teacher learning models and conditions suggests that successful teacher learning for improving the learning of the students occurs when the teacher learning is longitudinal, focuses on practice, when there is collaboration among professionals and active experimental enquiries about students’ learning and development (Dudley, 2013). This study focuses on classroom action enquiry, developing new practice knowledge and measures more specific teacher efficacy and readiness to teach for student diversity. The independent variable, the intervention, has the name Neurodevelopmental Conditions Awareness Intervention.

This second study is a mixed methods study, where data collection was performed in the form of a questionnaire, field notes and follow-up interviews for social validity. A convergent mixed methods design was used, where qualitative and quantitative data were collected in parallel, analyzed separately and then merged (Creswell & Creswell, 2018), shown in Figure 1, page 226, Leifler, 2020. The pre- and post-test was a questionnaire with both closed and open-ended questions. The open-ended questions were quantified when presenting the results.

The questionnaire had three measures: a six-item teachers’ self-efficacy scale with a four-point Likert scale (disagree, agree a little, agree and agree a lot), open-ended questions covering the different areas of providing support in the learning environment—the

pedagogical/didactical, psychosocial and physical—and finally a student case. The student case was modified based on the age of the students the participating teachers were teaching.

Teachers’ self-efficacy was measured through the indexed variables of I have enough competence to teach children with neurodevelopmental conditions, I have enough

competence to adjust the learning context for children with neurodevelopmental conditions and I know many concrete and valuable accommodations that work well for children with neurodevelopmental conditions. The reliability analysis with Cronbach’s alpha was a = 0, 80.

An additional variable was I need professional development to teach and meet the needs of children with neurodevelopmental conditions. This variable was not indexed due to the complexity of the concept and evaluation of participants.

4.1.2.2 Participants

In total 26 school personnel participated in the NDC AI. There were 20 female staff and 5 male staff. All teachers had many years of experience of teaching. See Figure 8 for teachers’

years of experience. The mean level of years of experience was between 11 and 15 years.

Years of experience was categorized after the figures: 1 = one year or less, 2 = 2–5 years, 3 = 6–10 years, 4 = 11–16 years, 5 = 16–20 years and 6 = more than 20 years. Elementary teachers (n = 13) were the largest professional group, followed by subject teachers in middle school (n = 9).

Figure 7. Professions represented among participants.

Figure 8. Personnel’s years of experience.

4.1.2.3 Instrument

Paper II, the implementation of an intervention designed for teachers’ learning, took place at two elementary and one middle school during a period of five months. The participating personnel took part in a professional development model based on the lesson study

methodology. The intervention model/PD took part in the school environment, three times with two hours each time, in total about 6 hours. The time period between sessions was about two weeks. In the between time, the teachers had homework, such as reading literature and research about neurodevelopmental conditions and possible difficulties in learning and handling the school environment. The intervention model procedure is presented in Figure 2, page 228, article 2. In sum, the intervention content consisted of

• In-depth content knowledge of NDC, a theoretical background

• Information about and demonstrations of how to implement support in the classroom, i.e., evidence-based methods for students with NDC

• Knowledge of concrete accommodations, how to differentiate teaching and instructions

• Strategies for handling students with challenging behavior

• Collaborative discussions and literature reading with reflections

• Feedback from the researcher during the intervention

The intervention for teachers consisted of three lesson study cycles, where the participants followed the four-step process; study, plan, do and reflect (Lewis, 2015). The researcher showed and demonstrated (modeling) evidence-based strategies, methods and how to adjust the learning material for students with NDC in cycle 1 and 2, where some examples are presented in Table 3. The teachers were then supposed to choose one or two accommodations to implement in the learning environment between sessions. For the purpose of evaluation and follow-up discussions, this was documented by the researcher. There were

accommodations linked to the three different domains of the learning environment, the pedagogical content/didactical, physical and psychosocial. Table 3, shows a selection of accommodations presented for the teachers.

Table 3. Accommodations in the learning environment.

Physical accommodations Psychosocial accommodations

Pedagogical/didactical accommodations Individual place—possibly

with screen added, listen to the student

Strengthen the relationship with a challenging student by asking a personal question every day

Visual support—develop and improve your visual support to the whole class or to an individual student with their own schedule on the bench

Individual place in the dressing room for sports class, the same place every time

Raise a student who is usually noticed negatively in a positive context

Complete working tasks with information and with a step-by-step guide

Canteen—individual place close to the teacher

The whole group—choose an activity for strengthening the class community

Highlight all material in the same subject in one color.

Mark the shelves for the material of the subject in the same color.

Classroom or the hall—

stimuli sanitize

Recess activities Develop more checklists to a subject or a class

Retreat room—a room for rest and calming feelings close to the classroom

Let a student present their special interest

Homework—double sets of books and work sheets

(Derived from the content in the NDC AI for teachers in Paper 2, Leifler, 2020).

4.1.2.4 Model for analysis

The data collected in study II was handled in the SPSS software. The closed-ended questions were analyzed in SPSS (Version 27) by the Wilcoxon signed-rank test and by descriptive statistics. The qualitative data was first analyzed by coding the data from each domain and categorized and thereafter quantified at both pre- and post-test. The student case responses were also quantified by calculating the number of accommodations at pre- and post-test. The field notes were analyzed in terms of teachers’ standpoint and changes of values for teaching diversity. The follow-up interviews were analyzed manually by linking the answers to social validity, which is, for example, satisfaction with the intervention.

4.1.3 Study III—Semi-structured interviews