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Browsing by Subject "English Language Arts"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
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    Disciplinary Literacy, Reading, and Middle School ELA Teachers: A Multi-Case Exploratory Study
    (2024) Taylor, Anna
    Middle school serves as an important transitional stage in U.S. educational systems, as the foundational learning of the elementary grades gives way to the specialized, disciplinary studies privileged in secondary and post-secondary schools. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore how middle school English Language Arts (ELA) teachers shaped the operational curriculum in their classrooms, in light of disciplinary literacy. Disciplinary literacy has emerged as an important field of research in secondary literacy in the past fifteen years; this study built upon several bodies of literature, including disciplinary literacy, ELA, and studies of educator decision-making. After examining this literature, I created a complex conceptual framework that anchored my study of educator decision-making in middle school ELA classrooms. Research questions examined teacher factors such as training and beliefs, contextual factors such as school and state expectations, and the ways that the operational curriculum in their classrooms reflected these factors.A qualitative, multi-case design was implemented to examine the instructional decision-making of two focal ELA teachers in a single school: Erin, a first-year teacher of eighth grade, and Natasha, a 16th year teacher of seventh grade. Conducting the study in one school enabled careful examination of shared contextual factors, such as school expectations and the absence of official curriculum, as well as unique individual factors, such as teachers’ beliefs, training, and past teaching experiences. Data collected included multiple rounds of interview data, notes from 8-10 classroom observations, artifacts of classroom instruction, and researcher memos and jottings. Data were analyzed through rounds of qualitative coding and analysis, drawing on provisional codes from the study’s conceptual framework. The study showed that educators shape their classrooms’ operational curriculum based on myriad factors. Teacher factors, such as access to materials and personal interest, and contextual factors, such as state standards and school-level expectations for instruction, directly shaped the operational curriculum in each classroom. Literary study, generally viewed as the heart of ELA in traditional and disciplinary literacy paradigms, was evident but not central to instruction in participants’ classrooms. This study indicates the need for additional teacher- and classroom-focused ELA disciplinary literacy research.
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    Feedback in professional learning communities: exploring teachers’ and administrators’ experiences and implications for building systemic and sustained learning
    (2012-10) Roloff, David Jonathon
    American educators are provided with far less time to improve their professional practice than their international counterparts, often experience professional development in short and disjointed ways, and work in systems whose structures too frequently isolate them from the practice of their colleagues. Professional learning communities (PLCs), however, recognize that improved teacher learning is essential to improved student learning and thus create structures which engage educators in regular, job-embedded, collaborative action research directly tied to their individual teaching contexts. However little is known about the specific feedback which educators in PLCs provide and the ways in which various feedback loops in educational systems assist in improving teacher practice. How does feedback made available through a PLC model impact the practice of teachers and administrators? This phenomenological study utilized a pre/post design to explore the role of feedback in the lives of two administrators and eight high school English educators at a central Wisconsin high school. The findings discuss the ways in which participants gave and received feedback prior to their involvement in PLCs and how feedback changed as their school and district adopted a PLC model. The study identified five major themes: 1) the need to build trust to encourage an open sharing of practice; 2) reduced isolation, improved collaboration and increases in the amount of and teachers' desire for additional feedback; 3) a shift from covering content to assessing student learning through instructionally-sensitive data sources; 4) the need to consider feedback and power implications when mandating structures, increasing transparency and enhancing accountability so as to improve feedback and reduce frustration; and 5) critical considerations in systemic structures including fostering collaboration, making feedback meaningful, and addressing the key issue of time. The study concludes with recommendations for teachers, administrators, district policy makers and researchers, pointing to ways in which those working in educational systems can develop feedback structures which heighten teacher learning.