A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR THE ANALYSIS OF IN-SERVICE TEACHER EDUCATION IN OCCUPATIONAL EDUCATIO

Much of the research in in-service teacher education and occupational education is considered to be trivial and piecemeal by many educators. There are many calls for the construction of conceptual frameworks that will organize existing knowledge in these fields and guide research in a rational manner. This dissertation responds to these calls by having as its goal the construction of a conceptual framework for in-service teacher education. The approach is applicable to other areas of education and indeed to occupational education as a whole.;General system theory, as espoused by Bertalanffy, and system engineering methods are interpreted and used in the construction of a framework and in the analysis of a real in-service teacher education program. General system models are used to construct specific models of in-service teacher education conceived as a system. In their construction measures are taken to counteract the traditional criticism that system engineering methods are too narrow and mechanistic to be able adequately to represent social systems. A broad-scoped, open system framework is constructed by using three distinct but complementary system models. Openness is considered by emphasizing patterns of interrelationships among groups and individuals within the system and their interaction with the environment. The mechanistic criticism is countered by viewing the humans within the system in terms of their function as structure. This notion is espoused by Katz and Kahn who claim that system structure can be conceptualized as an organization of roles that takes into account human behavior within a system context.;Thus, the three models that comprise the framework are the system-environment, spatial-structural, and dynamic process models. Each is defined by a set of interrelated system concepts and principles that can be in turn related to real systems to identify problems of relevance, rationality and effectiveness in their design.;A system analysis of a real in-service teacher education program is performed to test the adequacy of the framework to analyze a real-world system. The analysis surfaces discrepancies between the two that serve to focus on inadequacies in both the framework and the system being examined. By addressing these discrepancies specific areas are defined for improvement. In the analysis performed, additional inquiry is implied for two major areas of in-service education--goal or outcome clarification and effectiveness determination. It is seen that examining existing research in education or other fields within the context of the framework is helpful in guiding the direction of research. The framework specifically relates evaluation research conducted in other areas of education to in-service teacher education and points to particular methodologies that may be useful to determine the effectiveness of in-service education in a more generally acceptable way. The process-product paradigm used in teacher-effectiveness research is the example used.;In essence, this study contends that the critical use of conceptual frameworks based on system models can be helpful in improving the understanding of social systems in general and in-service teacher education in occupational education, in particular.