Abstract:

Teachers’ personal sense of responsibility has been defined as: “A sense of internal obligation and commitment to produce or prevent designated outcomes, or that these outcomes should have been produced or prevented” (Lauermann & Karabenick, 2011, p.127).

In the school context, responsibility is a highly relevant topic, since educational outcomes (failure or success) can be ascribed to teachers’ activities, students’ abilities and effort, families’ contribution and involvement (e.g. Helker & Wosnitza, 2014; Lauermann, 2014; Matteucci 2015, Matteucci & Gugliemi, 2014). Consequently, the teachers’, students’ and parents’ point of view need to be taken in account in order to understand different patterns of responsibility ascription and effectively share responsibility for educational process and outcomes.

Despite its importance in the educational policy context and the recent awareness of its relevance, the topic of responsibility ascription and of personal responsibility acceptance and endorsement remains largely unclear. The present study aims at identify teachers’, students’ and parents’ perspectives about their mutual level of responsibility for several different educational outcomes.

For this purpose, a questionnaire was administered to a sample of students (F =173) and parents (F=173) and teachers (F= 34), of an Italian junior-high school and a high school.

Preliminary results show, according to previous results (Helker & Wosnitza, 2014), all three agents (teachers, parents students) were attributed responsibility in the context of the specific role this person incorporates and in the frame of the different microsystems they share in the school context. Results will be discussed according to Helker and Wosnitza (2014) theoretical model and practical implications of establishing shared responsibility for educational outcomes will be discussed.

References:
[1] Helker, K., & Wosnitza, M. (2014). Responsibility in the School Context-Development and Validation of a Heuristic Framework. Frontline Learning Research, 2(3), 115-139.
[2] Lauermann, F. (2014). Teacher responsibility from the teacher's perspective. International Journal of Educational Research, 65, 75-89.
[3] Lauermann, F., & Karabenick, S. A. (2011). Taking teacher responsibility into account (ability): Explicating its multiple components and theoretical status. Educational Psychologist, 46(2), 122-140.
[4] Matteucci, M. C. (2015). Perceived teachers’ responsibility: a study on a sample of Italian primary and middle school teachers In: Proceedings of the 9th International Education, Technology and Development Conference (INTED 2015). Paper presented at the 9th International Technology, Education, and Development Conference (INTED 2015), Madrid, Spain, 2-4 March (pp. 3172-3177). IATED pub. ISBN: 978-84-606-5763-7
[5] Matteucci, M. C. & Guglielmi, D. (2014). Personal sense of responsibility and work engagement in a sample of Italian high-school teachers. In: In L. G. Chova, A.L. Martinez, I. C. Torres (Eds.), Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies (EDULEARN14). Paper presented at the 6th International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies (EDULEARN14), Barcelona, 7 - 9 July 2014 (pp. 5673-5677). IATED pub.

Keywords:

Responsibility, teachers, students, parents.