Browsing by Subject "Teacher Professional Development"

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    A Design-Based Research Intervention On Motivating Teachers To Feel Capable Of Designing And Implementing Effective Disciplinary Literacy Instruction
    (2018-05) McDonald Van Deventer, Megan
    Recently, educational reading research transitioned from studying general comprehension in secondary school settings to studying disciplinary literacy, foregrounding the reading, writing, speaking, thinking, and other discursive practices unique to each academic discipline (Moje, 2008; 2015; Moje et al., 2008; Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008; 2012). During this transition, academic mantras like “reading like a historian” or “reading like a scientist” were coined to communicate that classroom literacy experiences should emulate the practices of disciplinary experts working in the field (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010; Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008; 2012). However, to be able to read like disciplinary experts effectively students must employ literacy strategies coupled with disciplinary thinking processes (Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008, 2012), which is often at odds with how students read outside of academic settings (Alvermann, 2001; Hyland, 2012; Moje, 2006; 2015; Moje et al., 2008). Therefore, adolescent readers may struggle to comprehend academic texts without disciplinary literacy instruction that modifies and scaffolds expert disciplinary literacy practices so they are accessible to novice students as they develop literacy abilities and dispositions that emulate expert practices. Even though secondary teachers often assign reading to “cover” content (Alvermann & Moore, 1991; Calder, 2006), they do not explicitly teach comprehension or disciplinary reading strategies, instead prioritizing content (Greenleaf & Valencia, 2017; Lester, 2000; O’Brien, Stewart, & Moje, 1995, Yore, 1991). In this study, I designed an intervention to motivate three history teachers to feel capable of designing and implementing effective disciplinary literacy instruction. Prior to the intervention, I collected verbal protocol data from three Frederick Douglass teachers and 20 students in which they thought out loud while reading a primary source document. During the design-based research (DBR) intervention (Barab & Squire, 2004; McKenney & Reeves, 2012), the three teachers and I collaboratively analyzed the teachers and students’ verbal protocol transcripts to identify literacy abilities and dispositions. Together, we designed disciplinary literacy instruction for the primary source document, and one teacher participant, Jane, taught the text in class two weeks later. I observed Jane’s disciplinary literacy instruction when she taught the primary source document to evaluate the success of the intervention. Findings from this study demonstrated that the DBR intervention motivated the three teachers to design effective disciplinary literacy instruction that met their students’ literacy needs, and the teachers felt capable to implement effective disciplinary literacy instruction by witnessing their own more expert literacy abilities and dispositions. The larger implications of this study show the importance of positioning teachers as disciplinary experts who are ideal mentors to scaffold disciplinary reading for their students.
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    Teachers as Designers: The Iterative Process of Curriculum Design Focused on STEM Integration
    (2015-05) McFadden, Justin
    Curricular resources play an important role when educational reform efforts are introduced (Powell & Anderson, 2002). Taking Science to School (NRC, 2007) and more recently the Next Generation Science Standards [NGSS] (NGSS Lead States, 2013) have advocated for changes related to standards, curriculum, and teacher learning. Previous science standards (NRC, 1996) have been set aside as two transformational documents have taken the forefront in U.S. science education. The Framework for K-12 Science Education (NRC, 2012) and the succeeding NGSS are aimed at providing a new structural organization for science education that now includes engineering practices. The integration of science and engineering practices presents new opportunities and challenges for teachers as they must now design learning experiences that integrate science, mathematics, and engineering concepts. Teachers are not typically asked to be curriculum designers (Penuel, Roschelle, & Shechtman, 2007; Reiser et al., 2000) and when they are asked to be designers face unique challenges. There are limited studies (e.g. Boschman, McKenney, & Voogt, 2014) that directly investigate teachers during the curriculum design process and multiple calls to further explore teachers during the curriculum design process (Huizinga, 2014; Penuel & Gallagher, 2012; Voogt, et al., 2011). This study explores the actions and conversations of nine elementary science teachers during the curriculum design process while they design and develop a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics [STEM] integrated curricular unit. Teachers in the study worked in small teams and were paired with a coach during the design process. The study was framed around the participatory relationship that exists between teachers and curriculum (Remillard, 2005; Brown, 2002) and the view that curriculum design is a design problem that requires uniquely human interpersonal responses (Jonassen, 2000; 2011). This applied case study (Merriam, 2009) employed an inductive analysis and creative synthesis that followed the analysis strategies of constructed grounded theory (Charmaz, 2006; Glaser & Straus, 1967). Data collected from a 12-day professional development opportunity included audio-recorded curriculum design conversations of three unique teams (~3000 minutes), 12 individual interviews, daily participant reflections, and curriculum design artifacts. The study's major theoretical assertion is that teachers need encouragement to be innovative during the curriculum design process due in part to their tendency to design and develop curriculum resources similar to those they have used in the past. Teachers strongly considered their own classroom contexts during the design process and therefore primarily designed resources they could use in their own classroom. Secondly, curriculum design needs to be considered a design problem with no concrete solution that therefore warrants all participants be made aware of and prepared to discuss the complexities and propositions required of each designer (Remillard, 2005) during the curriculum design process.