Project Design: Exploring How Special Educators' Working Conditions Relate to Their Role Enactment, Engagement, and Effectiveness in Inclusive Service Delivery Models

The primary objectives of this research project are to (1) explore how working conditions relate to special educators' role enactment (routines and behaviors educators use to fulfill their responsibilities in a classroom and school); (2) determine which working conditions contribute most to special educators' role enactment, work engagement, and effectiveness (the quality of reading instruction and student reading achievement); (3) generate and test explanations for how special educators' working conditions contribute to work engagement and effectiveness; and (4) explore how school and district administrators leverage working conditions to support special educators' role enactment, work engagement, and effectiveness. In phase 1, the PI will develop a theory regarding how working conditions shape outcomes to generate hypotheses for phase 2. To do this, the PI will interview eight to ten special educators, teaching grades 3 to 5, and their school principals and special education directors; conduct three field observations of each educator's full workday; conduct three video observations of each educator's reading instruction; and collect district data on reading achievement for students taught by participating special educators. The PI will analyze data to address each of the four objectives. In phase 2, the PI will gather data on a broader scale, from approximately 90 special educators, to test hypotheses generated in phase 1. To do this, the PI will collect data using surveys, structured time diaries, video observations of reading instruction, and district student achievement data. The PI will analyze these data using latent class analysis and structural equation modeling to address the objectives described above.