TEACHERS' AND SUPERVISORS' PERCEPTIONS CONCERNING THEIR OPEN-SPACE LABORATORIES IN BUSINESS AND OFFICE EDUCATION IN OHIO

This research was a comprehensive study of the perceptions of BOE teachers and supervisors in Ohio who were employed in open-space laboratories. The participants in the study consisted of a majority of all teachers and supervisors who were working in such facilities during the 1979/80 school year. While the study was comprehensive in nature and covered a broad spectrum of practices and conditions in the open-space BOE laboratory, the study also included supplemental concerns expressed as eleven general hypotheses. Six of the hypotheses were accepted as stated, and five were rejected.;The findings of the study included:;Both teachers and supervisors expressed many positive perceptions concerning a variety of topics related to practices and conditions in the open-space BOE laboratory. Supervisors were consistently more positive in their responses than were teachers.;The sharing of equipment by students and teachers in different laboratories was a common practice in most schools.;The open-space BOE laboratory was defined as "any facility, designed for the three-hour block segment of instruction, commonly referred to as lab, which houses two or more BOE programs without visual walls or partitions separating them.".;The use of office simulation in the curriculum was a common practice in a majority of programs. Two-thirds of the teachers responded that they incorporated some sort of simulation in their programs. Very few inter-program simulation exercises which involved students from several different laboratories were implemented.;A majority of teachers and supervisors perceived the open-space laboratories to be environments which were conducive to teaching and to learning.;The open-space laboratory had a positive effect on peer relationships among teachers. A substantial majority of all respondents indicated a positive or very positive effect on staff relationships.;Supervisors believed that supervision of instruction was more effective in the open-space laboratory. They also perceived teacher performance to be positively affected by the open-space laboratory because of the teachers' visibility to other teachers.;Such variables as the type of school district (city, local and joint vocational) in which a teacher was employed or the number of years the teacher had taught did not have a significant effect on the perceptions of teachers concerning the open environment.;Team teaching was not a common practice in most of the open-space BOE laboratories. Although the findings revealed a considerable amount of cooperation and sharing among staff, the concept of team teaching was seldom or never practiced by a majority of teachers.;Teachers perceived noise, visitors, and activities in other laboratories to be more frequently occurring problems than did supervisors. Considerably different viewpoints were expressed on this topic by the two groups.;The study provides a considerable amount of base data regarding many facets of the open-space business and office education facilities in Ohio. The research should prove to be of value to educators interested in the development, practices and conditions, and successes and shortcomings of the open concept as it is utilized in Ohio business and office education laboratories.