LPRPArchivesPractitionerResearch
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4/18/05
I have attached (and pasted below for those who have problems with attachments) a bibliography of resources on teacher/practitioner research. Some of the publications use the term “teacher research,” others use “practitioner research”.
The bibliography includes citations that are more focused on the nuts and bolts of doing teacher research (e.g., Cockly) and others take a more theoretical approach (e.g., Demetrion). There are also some citations for “action research”, a related but slightly different approach to research.
I have also posted this list to the ALE Wiki, so if you want to make comments about the citations, or add citations of your own, please go to this new ALE Wiki page -
http://wiki.literacytent.org/index.php/AleTeacherResearch
I have slightly reformatted the section of the wiki that was devoted to the Meeting of the Minds Symposium. It is now a more general section called “Research to Practice, Practice to Research.”
http://wiki.literacytent.org/index.php/AleResearchToPractice
The title is awkward I think, but I wanted to get the space going before a great name for it came to mind. This space has a link to the Meeting of the Minds resources, a link to the terminology page (which I hope to get to soon), the bibliography noted above, and may in the future contain an archive of this discussion list.
Erik Jacobson
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4/20/05
A few months ago I pasted the questions participants at the Meeting of the Minds Symposium generated about learner retention. Those questions, along with comments about them, are located at the ALE wiki at http://wiki.literacytent.org/index.php/Retention_%2816%29.
In light of the recent discussion about what kinds of research questions teachers/practitioners have on their minds, it might be a good time to revisit all of the questions that were generated at the symposium. They are located at http://wiki.literacytent.org/index.php/SymposiumQuestionResponse
The topics were (in order of number of questions asked)
Retention
Generalized Instructional Models
Professional Development
ESOL
Assessment Issues
Impact of ABE
Specific Methodological Questions
Learning Disabilities
Policy and Practice
Administrative Issues
Teachers Working Conditions
Enrollment
Time Required for Development
Technology
Adult Development Issues
Employment/Workplace Issues
Are there topics that were left out? Do you have questions that would not be captured by any of those themes?
On the list, I think we could look at a given topic and -
1) Consider adding new research questions
2) Comment on research questions that have already been posed
For example, just going in order, these were the questions people had about instruction:
B1. [What are] best practices for teachers?
B2. How to [best] work in a classroom with multilevel readers?
B3. What models work best with part-time instructors?
B4. Based on cultural backgrounds – is there research on how best to teach certain cultural groups? What are the best practices?
B5. Which reading programs show best results for adult learners?
B6. Where is the research to determine impact of various curricula?
B7. What instructional strategies are most effective for basic skills learners in reading comprehension or basic math or writing?
B8. What are effective teaching strategies for writing instruction?
B9. What factors positively impact learning gains and other learning outcomes?
B10. What are the most effective strategies for teaching GED?
B11. How do we help students retain what they learn?
B12. How do I make my students better readers, writers, math problem solvers?
What research already has been on some of these questions? What research remains to be done? Some of them are big topics and somewhat vague (e.g., B1), but some are pretty targeted (e.g., B4).
Erik Jacobson
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5/9/05
Last Friday (May 6th), CALPRO staff made a presentation at the 2005 COABE conference entitled “Extending and Sustaining Research Findings Through Professional Development.” During this session, participants were given five minutes to complete the following exercise:
1) Think about the question – “How can we infuse research into the classroom?”
2) Choose one level of intervention – Teachers/ Administrators/ States
3) Brainstorm ideas
At the end of this exercise, participants gave the following suggestions for professional development that brings research into the classroom. Please feel free to comment on any of these suggestions. They are also posted at the ALE wiki at http://wiki.literacytent.org/index.php/CALPROCOABE2005
Erik Jacobson
Supporting “Research to Practice” in Professional Development
1. Coaching
2. Peer mentoring
3. Videotape actual practice so that other teachers can watch methods in action
4. Study circle trainings
5. Teacher cohort groups
6. Practitioner research projects
7. “Lunch and Learn”
8. Weekly communication at the program level of “good ideas”
9. Print examples of research applications
10. Graph retention data (Provide charts for teachers regarding their own class and the program)
11. Provide training in exercising professional judgment in classroom
12. Include indicators in teacher evaluations
13. Offer in-service and professional growth days
14. Provide credit (professional development hours) for implementing strategies
15. Pay for additional hours of professional development
16. Expect director support/involvement (they must know what teachers are doing)
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5/19/05
Hi. This article is not about adult education, but does provide a brief overview of a debate that has been going on in education policy and research circles about methodology, peer review and the dissemination of information. There have been competing reports on the efficacy of charter schools, and there has been a public struggle over whose methodology is sound. Part of the debate revolves around when it is OK for researchers to go public with their findings.
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2005/05/18/37peer.h24.html
This is a timely article, because we (CALPRO) have often been asked by adult education administrators to develop a rubric for what counts as “quality” adult education research. This is a natural question, since given the massive quantity of things that are published each year you want to know what to spend your time on. But of course it is really hard to come up with a single rubric. As the article points out, is being published in peer-review journals the only way to document quality? Not all published research is good, and there is a lot of good research that doesn’t fit journal parameters. If peer reviewed publication is the standard, then what do you do with practitioner research that is typically reported only by the school or center that conducted it?
Erik Jacobson
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5/19/05
Yes, I'd like an answer to this question! I'm thinking for example, of the very informative action research San Diego did on persistence; or studies currently under way at Long Beach and Elk Grove regarding the effectiveness of CBET classes and how they are affecting the children that the students are tutoring. (For those of you outside CA, CBET is funding we have here for ESOL classes at elementary and high schools where the participants commit to tutor students at the school a certain amount of time each week.)
These studies will probably not be published in peer reviewed journals, but they will hopefully have an important effect on policy in California. How should we be disseminating such studies, and how should we be framing them?
Marian Thacher
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5/31/05
Hi. There is a new post on the Modified Sustained Silent Reading blog, listing the books that were available for students in the classroom. The address of the blog is http://calpronwpkimssr.blogspot.com/. A final report will soon be available.
Erik Jacobson
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6/1/05
Here is a short summary of one of the CALPRO sponsored Northwest Practitioner Knowledge Institute (NWPKI) projects. I have also posted it to the NWPKI blog (http://calpronwpkipairwork.blogspot.com/), where you can also find other resources on interaction in second language acquisition (http://calpronwpkiinteraction.blogspot.com/).
Erik Jacobson
Northwest Practitioner Knowledge Institute
Negotiations in Small Learning Groups of ESL Learners
Results of a study by Kathryn A. Harris on pair work interaction in beginning adult ESOL classes (at the NCSALL Lab School at Portland State University) suggest that pair work is an important component of the ESOL class. Results indicate pair work provides an opportunity for “off task” negotiations. During pair work, students negotiate meaning and pronunciation, make clarification, comprehension and confirmation requests and reformulate understanding by emphasizing forms that need change. The learner is challenged by the question, “Why didn’t my partner understand me?”
As part of the NSCALL Practitioner/Researcher Institute, I designed an exercise to observe Asian students, aged eighteen to eighty-four, who attend EL Civics in Chinatown and gathered information on Small Learning Groups (SLG). During the first six sessions, I remained in the middle of the classroom, outside the SLG, observing negotiations within the SLG and noting the questions students asked of the teacher. During the remaining twenty-four sessions, I observed at the edge of the SLG or entered it to make an intervention. Observations were of the form and frequency of student negotiations, how often students stopped the task to ask the teacher a question, how often students went to the easiest part of the task, and how often and why I used an intervention rather than remaining an observer.
From this exercise I learned that:
1)Students negotiated with or without the teacher being in or near the SLG;
2)Students did not always ask the teacher a question or go to the easiest part of the task when the teacher entered the SLG;
3)The number of questions students asked decreased from the beginning of the observations to the end;
4)The incidence of students going to the easiest part of the task decreased over time;
5)Teacher interventions decreased over time;
6)Student negotiations increased over the course of the sessions;
7)As teacher interventions increased, student questions increased and student negotiations decreased; and
8)Students negotiated in both their first language and in English.
In summary, I observed that a classroom culture of student negotiations was created as the teacher remained an observer rather than entering the SLG to make an intervention. Referencing the results of Ms. Harris’ study, student learning should have increased as a result; however, verification of that result was not part of my design.
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6/6/2005
As part of the Northwest Practitioner Knowledge Institute, two adult ESL practitioners in California have been conducting research-based interventions in their classrooms. We created blogs for each of these projects.
Project One focused on student interactions and pair work in the classroom. The blog for this project is at http://calpronwpkipairwork.blogspot.com/. A summary of the project was uploaded last week.
Bonnita Solberg of Oakland was the teacher who conducted this investigation.
Project Two focused on the use of a Modified Sustained Silent Reading approach. The blog for this project is at http://calpronwpkimssr.blogspot.com/. I have just uploaded a summary of this project today. Jennifer Kearns of Mt. Diablo was the teacher who conducted this investigation.
Each one of the blogs was designed to track the process of the intervention, from preparation to evaluation. Now that the projects are done, I think it would beneficial to discuss these great examples of teacher inquiry. The teachers involved have kindly agreed to answer any questions that people might have about the nature of their work, including their goals for conducting the study, their method for introducing research into their practice, and what they think the implications of their work might be. Please post any questions you may have for Bonnita or Jennifer to this list.
And thanks again to Bonnita and Jennifer for conducting the research and for agreeing to post their reflections via the blogs!
Erik Jacobson
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6/21/05
Dear all - I work in a master's program for adult ESL/EFL teachers, and I'd like to post a question to this list-serve about your experiences as practitioner-researchers. What advice would you give to novice or newly hired adult ESL teachers about the promise of teacher-led research, or the process of using research to improve practice? Some related questions include: What about your experiences doing classroom research do you find most rewarding? challenging? surprising? What aspects of research do you find yourself wanting to know more about? Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts.
Maricel
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6/22/05
Hi Maricel: Bonnita Solberg here. You pose some interesting questions. Let me try my hand at answering them. based on my participation in the Oregon Practitioner-Researcher Institute this school year, I would suggest that any teacher new to accessing research for use in the classroom develop a study circle to delve into an issue of choice for a group of 5 to 6 teachers. The process used for the Oregon Institute could be duplicated in general: meet as a group to discuss the research the first session. Have the study circle led by a facilitator, not an instructor, so each teacher contributes to the norming and forming of the group. Participants could set up their individual mini classroom research between the first and second session and discuss it in the second session. Three weeks or so after the second session, reconvene to report on progress or set backs and continue the research, with group meetings and continuing research for as long as time, interest and money permit. I can say without reservation that the Oregon experience was the best professional development training I have had in my 30 year career teaching Adult ESL, because I had an interest in the subject and I was able to share my experiences with others. Being paid to have so much fun was icing on the cake. Study circles can challenge research results and in so doing make their own contribution to the field. Research results must be taken within the context the research is performed; your class, with its special configurations and with your unique personality, could have different results that are important additions to the fund of knowledge. If you do not have a live group to support your area of interest, perhaps a group could be formed in a discussion list such as this one. I think Erik is available for assistance in both cases.
I chose the classroom research on pairwork as my classroom research project to determine if my observations would substantiate the research findings, not published at the time, that when a teacher enters a dyad student negotiations stop and one of two, and only two, adjustments occur. Either the students go to the easiest part of the task, ostensibly to impresss the teacher with their learning, or they stop the task to ask a question of the teacher. This was the most surprising aspect of the research presented at Oregon. My experience was that these two adjustment take place sometimes, but not always; my classroom research substantiated this "practitioner wisdom." What was most rewarding to me was that during the process of my classroom research, a culture of neogtiations was strengthened. I believe this was largely due to two stances I developed: consciously refraining from entering the groups for the first five sessions, and when I did enter the groups, training myself, very gradually, to not make an intervention unless asked to do so by the students. I coined the term "intervention by request" for this interaction. When asked to make an intervention, I would revert the question back to the students for negotiation whenever possible. Negotiations actually increased from the first observation to the last obvservation, which was over a period of sixteen sessions in morning and sixteen sessions in the afternoon.
The most challenging aspect of my classroom research was to train myself to not make an intervention. I did so by constantly reminding myself that the research showed students actually learn more when negotiating than when teacher guided. The results also challenged previously held theories that negotiations in the primary language slow language acquistion rather than supporting it. I had been trained, as most of us have I believe, that a good teacher corrects pronunciation and explains meaning, while at the same time making adjustments to dyads (or groups; I actually used larger groups than dyads). The most rewarding part of my research was to see how successfully the students negotiated, often for minutes on end; with this realization, it was no longer difficult to refrain from making an intervention. It is now part of my teaching style to create a classroom culture of student negotiations; however, I do provide chunks of time when the primary language is not used, such as for phonics/pronunciation and listening exercises.
I would like to see more research into a process/strategy of teaching pronunciation/spelling that is successful with adult learners of English as a Second Language. My experience is that the strategies used in most ESL classes is based either on processes that are successful with English speaking children in the primary grades, or are taken from literacy programs for adults. Both populations have a large speaking vocabulary that is the basis for learning to read and write English; adult ESL students do not have that large of a speaking vocabulary. To my way of thiking, isolating English sounds is of primary importance to replicating those sounds verbally, and writing the symbols that represent them.
Thank you for posting your question on the discussion list. You are the first, but hopefully not the last.
Bonnita
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6/27/05
My name is Jennifer Kearns and I have been corresponding with a few of you in regards to the MSSR intervention. It has been a challenging, yet rewarding experience to be involved with bringing research to the classroom. To be honest, I had never known much about practitioner research. I had assumed that it was only for only an elite few. I never considered being a part of it myself, until this opportunity presented itself and beckoned me to join-in this mysterious world of research-to-practice in our field. Under the right guidance, involving oneself as a teacher-researcher can open up a world of exploring new practices, confirming old ones and stretching both teacher and student to embrace other ways of learning.
As a newbie in this role of teacher-researcher, I initially felt under-equipped in terms of my knowledge of how to conduct research-to-practice interventions. As I studied the specific research on MSSR with adult second language learners, I began to feel more comfortable with the thought of bringing MSSR to the classroom. Meeting with a group of colleagues who were embarking on the same task also had a calming effect, as we brain-stormed together and talked over multiple ways to conduct the intervention. The biggest struggle ended up to be money and time. Funds are needed to set up the intervention and time needs to be carved out of an already packed curriculum. Furthermore, in the case of MSSR, there was no real ‘hard’ data that I could bring to my administrators to try and rally support for this intervention. What the data ultimately said that MSSR didn’t hurt. It proved to be just as effective as mainstream practices of teaching reading. While that might be good enough for some, it very well might not be for others.
In my case, I came to see the effectiveness of MSSR as another reading strategy to be used in the classroom, and witnessed the value in “mixing it up a little”. All this said, I would definitely participate in teacher research again. I was able to bring a new and just as effective practice to my students, which they thoroughly embraced, and I was able to grow as a teacher and branch out a little. It was a win/win for all
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1/5/06
Colleagues,
Perhaps this essay may have some interest among some among the CALPRO community. http://www.nald.ca/fulltext/dewey/cover.htm
This new piece is meant to complement an earlier essay on teacher research accessed here. http://www.nald.ca/fulltext/George/practitn/cover.htm
My orientation is a bit different than many in the emerging field of practitioner-based inquiry in that I focus on the theoretical dimensions of this still very emergent genre. In this respect, I believe such essays help to supplement more strictly-speaking practitioner focused pieces. I say “strictly speaking,” because I also am a practitioner and my insights emerge as much from the dynamics of my own practice as much as from my understanding of theory.
I argue, also strongly, that theory construction is, in any event, unavoidable (not necessarily academic theory), so that a focal point on theory is worthy of some concentrated attention, an argument, which, I believe, Cochran-Smith & Lytle make in Inside/Outside: Teacher Research in Knowledge, and that John Dewey’s theory of experience has something of importance to offer here. Also, with the authors of Inside/Outside, on the table in this emergent field is not only the need for high quality individual studies grounded in practice while moving toward theory, but the development of the genre itself as an authentic sub-field of educational research. In various respects, both of the essays linked here seek to address this issue as well.
Best,
George Demetrion
