Force Field Analysis

1. Describe the change issue and the desired direction of the change.

Change Proposal: Provide educational technology tools to assist Physical Science teachers to prepare students to master the course and help improve EOC test scores above 17%.

Desired direction of change: My desired direction of the change is to help improve the test scores of the Physical Science department as well as any other areas that need improvement for my school. I would like to do this while maintaining high scores of 90% in the courses that I have been assigned to teach this year. One key reason why the test scores were low last year was due to several Physical Science teachers quitting in the middle and at end of the year. At this current time, it is an area of improvement that I wanted to take a shot at along with some of my other colleagues who feel passionate about teaching and being able to reach all students to have them succeed.

2. List the political forces driving change and those restraining in a diagram which has the forces in opposition to one another.

3. Give a weighing to the forces, those that are stronger and more powerful than others.

Political Forces and Weighing to the Forces

4. Focus on the restraining forces and assess which of the significant ones need to be worked on and those which can be worked on.

The key restraining forces that I am going to focus on are 1) Teachers, 2) School District IT Department, and 3) Students. I will definitely need teachers to support the efforts to make it beneficial and rewarding for all of us since I would like to develop a framework to not only focus on Physical Science classes but, all classes since we are striving to increase or maintain scores 77% or higher. The District’s IT Department is another area that I would need buy-in because all of our software needs the approval to use it in the district based on the newly sanctioned guidelines. Lastly, I will work cooperatively with teachers to help boost the morale of learning for students by providing incentives for them wanting to master the course as well as excel in the EOC tests. I know I cannot do this alone and it will take all the teachers in my school to come together to make this experience rewarding.

5. Develop plans for reducing these forces.

Currently, I have been meeting with the Lead Physical Science Teacher and Principal to inquire what has been done in the pass in preparation of lessons for students. I've been talking with our local administrators to see if we can host our information on the local web server to serve as a place where we can establish a blog to record our findings and forums to post questions. Ground rules are being worked out to help us facilitate tutoring lessons and obtain the approvals for using learning technology tools (i.e., Microsoft Student, Moodle, Sparta, etc.,). Furthermore, I am planning to reach out to other teachers in the district who are scoring high and surpassing the state requirements to see if we can collaborate on some best practices and other ideas. This seems to be a strong challenge to face but, I truly believe that we can succeed together if we continually focus on student success and the mastery of learning.