Assignment 5 con't - Revising Survey Questions

Analyzing the answers and feedback that were provided by the four teachers who completed the original draft shed light on a fundamental problem with my survey. Question #2 revealed that there was a wide disparity in what teachers believed the term “integrated curriculum” to mean. Their definition, of course, affected most of the remaining answers, making the survey ineffective and futile. Although my original intent behind having teachers provide their own definition of the term was to get a feel for how familiar they were with this concept, the negative repercussions soon outweighed the benefits of this approach.

Having learned from this mistake, my final draft addressed this issue in two ways. First, I replaced the term “integrative curriculum” with a more obvious synonymous choice of “subject integration,” and second, I provided a working definition near the beginning of the survey to help my participants to better focus their answers.

The rest of the changes I instituted were aimed at making the survey more comprehensive, focused, clearer and user-friendly. Consistency in formatting was also something that I considered as I made my revisions. The following is a breakdown of the changes that were made and the line of thinking that spurred them:


- The Title
I changed the title to make it more focused by adding the level of education – elementary and middle years. Since secondary education is so vastly different from that in the elementary and middle years, I did not want teachers to get overwhelmed by trying to consider what subject integration may or may not look like at the high school level. It is also more in line with what Saskatchewan Learning had in mind when they introduced this concept.

- Question 2
Integrative curriculum was changed to subject integration and a definition was provided.
The final version also included a question on the position of Saskatchewan Learning when it comes to subject integration, in order to get a feel of how informed teachers are with Saskatchewan Learning’s initiatives.

- Question 3
An “I am undecided” option was added for individuals who may have mixed feelings on the topic. I found “yes” and “no” options to be overly constraining.
Also, I no longer ask for an explanation since I found the answers to be redundant with the answers in Question 9 where participants are asked to list advantages and disadvantages of subject integration.

- Question 4
Deleted the zero from the rating scale for consistent formatting.

- Question 5
Changed wording for improved clarity.

- Question 6
Added the option, “I am undecided”. Same reasoning as in Question 3.

- Question 7, 8, and 10 (in Revised Survey)
These questions were added to provide some more feedback on teacher views of subject specialization and its believed impacts on subject integration.

- Question 11 (in Revised Survey)
Added the option, “I do not recall receiving any training in this area” in case an individual is not quite sure.
The wording was also changed somewhat for improved clarity.

- Question 12 (in Revised Survey)
Revised the question from “Based on the training you received, how prepared do you feel to use an integrative curriculum in your classroom?” to Based on your training (including self-study), how prepared do you feel to use subject integration in your classroom?
This minor change was made because I noticed that this question did not follow up well with Question 11. Specifically, a couple of my participants had indicated in Question 11 that they received no training on subject integration, but then they went on to indicate that they felt very prepared for using it in their classrooms due to the training they received. After questioning them about this further they informed me that it was because of their own preparation and study and not due to any outside training. I concluded that adding the phrase “including self-study” will eliminate this disconnect between the two consecutive questions.

Questions 13, 14, and 15 (in Revised Survey)
- were developed to gain a better understanding of how much teachers already use subject integration in they classrooms and whether there is any interest to increase that frequency. I felt that Question 10 in the original draft addressing the satisfaction level didn’t effectively target this that information.