| Teacher unions on the local, state, and national levels have traditionally focused on obtaining what has become known as "bread and butter" issues for their members. Specifically, those issues are: improving wages, hours and working conditions. In recent years, prominent union leaders such as Bob Chase, Former President of the National Education Association, and Adam Urbanski, President of the Rochester Teachers' Association and a founding member of the Teacher Union Reform Network (TURN), have called on union leaders and members to move away from an industrial-style unionism to one of greater collaboration with management rooted in professionalism. Chase refers to this type of collaboration as "new unionism." It is theorized that "new unionism" will provide opportunities for teachers to gain a greater role in addressing teaching and learning issues, ultimately resulting in improved student achievement.;The primary research question investigated was: Do kindergarten through grade 12 teachers in Massachusetts support educational reforms to improve teaching and learning based on the ideals of new unionism? The following secondary question was also addressed: Do kindergarten through grade 12 teachers in Massachusetts support nontraditional forms of compensation (e.g., differentiated pay, merit pay)?;To gain an insight into the above questions, a secondary analysis of survey data collected on behalf of the Massachusetts Teachers Association's (MTA) Strategic Direction Committee was undertaken. The MTA data was collected in a three-phase process. Phase one consisted of a series of ten focus groups of different subsets of the MTA membership (teachers K-12, Education Support Personnel, higher education, and staff) that took place from April 25, 2005, through May 5, 2005. Phase two consisted of a telephone survey of a random sampling of 600 MTA members from July 7, 2005 through July 10, 2005. Phase three was a follow-up random telephone survey to 800 MTA members (600 K-12, 100 higher education faculty, 100 Education Support Personnel) completed in September, 2005. The secondary analysis involved the responses of the 600 K-12 teachers participating in the September, 2005 telephone survey.;Two scales (education reform and non-traditional compensation) were created to delve into the data. Data analyses included factor analysis, principal component analysis, ANOVA, t-test, and other appropriate analyses. The secondary analysis focused on a series of survey questions that addressed many components of "new unionism." Specific attention was given to the number of years a respondent had been teaching (independent variable). The hypothesis of this study is that teachers with less than ten years of experience are more likely to be open to exploring the concept of "new unionism" and contractual obligations/issues in non-traditional ways than teachers with more than ten years of experience. Given the changing demographics of the teaching force, and the fact that teachers in their first ten years have entered the profession amidst a significant number of reforms on the national and state levels, teachers attitudes toward reform, including components of new unionism, may be changing from a traditional industrial view to one of professionalism. This study may enable union leadership to assess members' understanding of and acceptance of a variety of the concepts associated with "new unionism" and to potentially use the information for shaping future union policies/practices.;The primary findings of this research indicate that there is a divide along the lines of experience in the teaching ranks when it comes to supporting certain components of education reform in Massachusetts. In particular, years of teaching experience was found to be a predictor variable in determining one's favorability toward non-traditional forms of compensation. |
