Challenges Public School Teachers Face Teaching Military Connected Students

Many military children face obstacles during their lives, and these obstacles can affect their classroom environment due to their mobility, social-emotional behavior, and academics. The purpose of this study was to identify challenges, if any, that teachers indicate exist while educating military-connected students in public schools and teacher actions to address any challenges. Existing literature on military connected students and teacher perceptions of military-connected challenges was reviewed.

This study examined teacher perceptions of the challenges, responses to challenges and training these teachers experienced while teaching military-connected students.

A Likert-type survey of questions was administered through an online survey tool to elementary school teachers in two public school divisions in Virginia. The survey instrument was developed by Mittleberg (2014). After collecting the data, the researcher examined and analyzed data based on the survey responses. The following research questions were addressed:

What challenges do teachers identify related to educating military-connected students? What practices do teachers use to address the perceived challenges? What do teachers indicate as their level of training to teach military-connected students?

The study concluded with eight findings and eight implications. The findings provided teachers with the tools necessary to address the needs of military-connected students as well as provided schools and school divisions with information that could impact their professional learning decisions.

Findings included but were not limited to how teachers perceived that assessment of students' background knowledge was a challenge when teaching military-connected students, how filling in students' knowledge gaps was a challenge, and how adjustment to students leaving and arriving at various times during the school year were a challenge when teaching military-connected students. A few implications were, school leaders should investigate ways to assist teachers in assessing students' background knowledge. It should be a consideration that personnel be provided with resources to help focus on meeting the needs of the students who have knowledge gaps and the development of a handbook of team building and getting to know you resources should be given to teachers to assist in building a strong classroom environment.