Was this a mistake?

I struggled with one of my questions, and the struggle continues...

I wanted to have a question that would draw out opinions and attitudes towards provincial curriculum documents, without the question biasing the response. Essentially I was fishing for "beefs".
I settled on the following question:

"What do you believe is the main goal of the course as presented by Provincial Curriculum documents? "


I expected responses that would either make an attempt at answering the question at face value and perhaps a few "the goal of the ELA curriculum is make students hate reading novels”. I hoped to pull those quotes for use in Professional Development discussions as conversation starters.

I am getting several of the first kind of response, but in addition I am getting a healthy handful of " I don't understand the question.

Hmmmmm....
What would have been a more clear question I could have asked to achieve my goal?

Survey o Rama

I created a survey to gather some baseline data surrounding the theme of "Relevance" and tested it with a few non-teaching staff. It did not go over well. It was too wordy, and had several sneaky distractor phrases in it I had not caught.
example:

"I feel I have been given the freedom to modify my course content to make it as relevant as I feel is possible."

The "I have been given" statement didn't allow for those who had simply "taken" the freedom. In this case, I was less interested in wether teachers felt "allowed" to do something than if they felt "free" to do it.

I orignally tried to set the survey up on the U of S site, but abandoned it when I saw how less "user-friendly" it was in comparison to the unfortunately named "Survey Monkey.com"

Here's a draft of the final question set I sent out to Staff:




I have been employed as an educator for:

0-9 Years
10-19 Years
20+ Years

Rate your level of agreement with the following statements:
Strongly Disagree
Disagree
Somewhat Disagree
Somewhat Agree
Agree
Strongly Agree

I consider myself a subject expert in at least one of the courses I am teaching this trimester.

I feel students at my school are receiving an education that addresses their basic needs.

I feel students at my school are receiving an education that addresses their academic needs.

I feel students at my school are receiving an education that addresses their social and emotional needs.

I have the freedom to modify my course content to make it as relevant as I feel is possible.

I have the freedom to modify my teaching methodologies to make the course as relevant as I feel is possible.


During the last month, I have heard a student make the following statement, or one with similar meaning:

0 times 1-3times 4-8times 9 or more times


This is stupid!

Why do we have to do this?

How much do I have to do?

Can’t you just give us the answers?

Am I going to pass?

This is interesting!

Can we (insert a learning activity the student is suggesting)?

This will help me (insert a future application for the skill the student is learning)

Don’t tell me the answer!

When answering the following open-ended questions, please indicate the general subject area at the beginning of your response. You may opt out of these questions if you have any concerns regarding anonymity.

What portion(s) of your course are relevant?


When answering the following open-ended questions, please indicate the general subject area at the beginning of your response. You may opt out of these questions if you have any concerns regarding anonymity.

What portion(s) of your course are relevant?

What portion(s) of your course lack relevance?

What portion(s) of your course lack relevance? 6. What do you believe is the main goal of the course is presented by Provincial Curriculum documents?

What do you believe is the main goal of the course as presented by Provincial Curriculum documents?

What barriers, if any, are there to presenting the course in a way that is most relevant to students?


What barriers, if any, are there to presenting the course in a way that is most relevant to students?


I will show you all the on-line version of the survey in class. I would include the link here for you all to peek at, but I'm afraid of empty response number creeping into my data....