Research method
Alright team, addressing teacher retention is a top priority for ensuring the stability and quality of education at our school. Here’s my initial thinking on how we can approach this with a research study focused on work-life balance:
Question 1: State your research question.
How does the implementation of a comprehensive "Teacher Well-being and Support Program," encompassing flexible scheduling options, dedicated mentorship, and access to on-site wellness resources, impact the perceived work-life balance and job satisfaction of newly hired teaching staff within their first two years at our local public school?
Question 2: Describe how the method you chose is experimental or non-experimental.
I would choose a quasi-experimental method, specifically a non-equivalent control group design. This is a non-experimental approach because we cannot randomly assign newly hired teachers to different groups due to practical and ethical considerations. Instead, we would identify a cohort of new teachers hired before the implementation of the "Teacher Well-being and Support Program" to serve as our control group. We would then implement the program with a subsequent cohort of newly hired teachers (the intervention group). We would collect data on perceived work-life balance and job satisfaction from both groups at similar time points (e.g., at the end of their first and second years).
Question 3: Explain why the method makes a positive difference in studying your question.
This quasi-experimental method offers a practical way to study the impact of the "Teacher Well-being and Support Program" in a real-world school setting where random assignment is infeasible. By comparing the outcomes of the intervention group (those who receive the program) with the control group (those who did not), we can gain insights into whether the program makes a positive difference in improving perceived work-life balance and job satisfaction among new teachers. While it lacks the rigor of a true experiment due to the absence of randomization, the non-equivalent control group design allows us to control for some pre-existing differences between the groups and provides stronger evidence for a causal relationship than a simple pre-post study with only one group. This method allows us to assess the program's effectiveness in a way that is ethically sound and feasible within our school context.