The purpose of this study was to explore the perspectives of social studies teachers concerning the impact of the Ohio Graduation Test (OGT) on geography instruction in the secondary schools of central Ohio. To answer the major question in addition to supplementary research sub-questions, an exploratory study employing quantitative methods was designed.
The population of this study consisted of all secondary social studies teachers who are currently teaching in the middle and high schools of central Ohio. A specifically developed 28-item cross-sectional survey as the major data collection instrument for this study was constructed through a content validity approach and pilot tested. The survey instrument was then administered via the Internet to a randomly selected sample of secondary social studies teachers. The data gathered were analyzed by SPSS 16.0. Data analysis of the study basically utilized descriptive statistics. Tables and figures were constructed to present the results.
The major demographic profile of the research subjects is by and large Caucasian males who teach middle class students with above average OGT scores in suburban public schools for 11 or more years. A great majority of those teachers have a master’s degree, hold a comprehensive social studies (7-12) licensure and completed at least two or more college level geography courses. One-third of these teachers work at a middle school and two-thirds work in a high school setting. Typically they work as teachers of U.S. History, World History and U.S. Government.
The study overall suggests that it would be reasonable to infer that the OGT has impacted the way in which geography instruction is delivered in the secondary schools of central Ohio. The results of this study indicate that social studies teachers do practice more of a “teaching to the test” strategy since the implementation of the OGT. The findings specifically suggest that teachers who teach the grades where the OGT is administered evidently perform more “teaching to the test” behavior and are under more pressure.
However, the most important impact that the OGT has had on geography instruction is a noteworthy decrease in the amount of time teachers spend with geography in their general social studies curriculum. According to the data, the time devoted to teaching geography is diminishing. Even though geography is one of the social studies subjects tested on the OGT, the decrease in the amount of time to teach geography within the social studies curriculum might imply that the geography portion of the social studies test on the OGT is not as important as the others or that geography is over-shadowed in the social studies curriculum by other subjects—particularly by history. This was evidenced by the finding that teachers consider geography the least emphasized among the social studies content areas tested on the OGT.
As a result, along with recommendations for further research, contributions to the related literature and implications for both policy-making and teaching and learning were discussed in detail.