Title Page: Sustaining instructional practice and English reading comprehension achievement through teacher inquiry learning to accelerate achievement Authors: Meaola Amituanai-‐Toloa (the University of Auckland) & Rosi Fitzpatrick (Teuila Consultancy Limited) with Laepa Sililoto-‐Malele and Malo Sepuloni Correspondence should be addressed to Meaola Amituanai-‐Toloa, Project Lead Researcher, Contact details:
[email protected]
Abstract This paper reports the first phase of a one year sustainability project (in progress) funded by the New Zealand Ministry of Education to sustain and accelerate the English reading comprehension achievement of students in Samoan bilingual contexts in mainstream schools in New Zealand. Two years earlier, a professional development took place with the first cluster (Cluster A) involving three schools and their seven teachers and students in the first year, and with the second cluster (Cluster B) of ten schools with more than 40 teachers and their students the second year. Baseline English achievement on Supplementary Test of Reading Achievement (STAR) and classroom observations of instruction were gathered from both clusters in 2012 (beginning) and 2013 (beginning) respectively to examine where students and teachers were at and to identify professional development needs. In both clusters, the baseline showed a general pattern of achievement where students were high in decoding but low in reading comprehension – a finding that is similar to previous profiling studies of Pasifika students in New Zealand when assessed on the same battery. The profiles for classroom instruction showed that in both clusters teachers were low on Extended Talk but by the end of the year had increased their talk resulting in similar increases in talk by students. At the beginning of the current year, a new group of teachers some of whom were involved in the previous year participated. Student achievement of selected five priority learners per teacher and classroom observations were collected for the nine teachers to identify professional development needs for sustainability using the Teaching as inquiry model supported by intense in-‐class facilitation of teacher practice. We report the initial stage of the professional development and the decision to use teaching as inquiry.
Introduction:
The sustainability project (in progress) is a by-‐product of two years of professional development with teachers in bilingual units in two clusters of low to medium decile1 mainstream schools in New Zealand involving altogether 13 schools, more than 50 teachers, and almost 1000 students. The overall project aimed to: (a) identify the extent that the provision of professional learning and development helps teachers build classroom communities of learning; (b) identify the elements of current pedagogical practice that positively impact on student achievement; and (c) strengthen the provision of bilingual teaching and learning in order to raise achievement for Pasifika students. The strategic purpose was to build learning communities through the use of bilingual tools, such as student language, culture, and identities and have access to responsive pedagogical professional opportunities with the ultimate goal of changing classroom instructional practice to enhance students’ academic achievement. Two clusters of mainstream schools (Cluster A and Cluster B) were targeted by the Ministry of Education (MOE) initiative to raise and accelerate achievement for priority learners in the bilingual units within these schools. Cluster A began professional development in June 2012 and Cluster B, the following year. Teachers in each cluster were observed at the beginning of the year to identify professional development learning needs. It was found that teachers were not making optimal use of students’ linguistic oral proficiency in both L1 and L2 to raise critical thinking and discussions in text reading. After intensive in-‐ class facilitation with teachers to extend children’s talk in order to raise achievement, the same teachers in each cluster were again observed at the end of the year for instructional shifts. Results at the end of each respective year showed that teachers increased their Extended Talk and when they did, children’s Extended Talk increased too. This prompted the sustainability phase this year with the teacher instructional observations conducted at the beginning of the year for a new group of teachers some of whom were involved in previous 1
A ‘decile’ is a Ministry of Education ranking from 1 (being the lowest) to 10 (being the highest) system for schools according to the socio-‐economic status of a school’s community.
year. This is reported in this paper. Also reported are the planned professional development sessions and the planned follow-‐up in-‐class facilitations, based on the teacher instructional data. Achievement gaps Achievement ‘gaps’ between students who are second language learners and those of the majority language have been noted in research to have existed for quite some time. This is particularly evident in English literacy scores on standardized tests in English. Thus it is presenting a challenge for educators globally. According to recent commentaries, literacy instruction is facing a major theoretical challenge where although resolved for some of the more immediate pressing issues, for example, in beginning reading instruction in the case of reading comprehension, evidence suggests that overall effectiveness in teaching reading comprehension is somewhat limited. Furthermore, research has not had much influence on effective comprehension instruction (Pressley, 2002; Sweet & Snow, 2003).
While achievement gaps are evident internationally, for example, for Latinos (Garcia,
2003) and African American (Lee, 2003) students in the United States, similar gaps also exist in New Zealand for students who are of minority groups, speak a language in addition to English and come from low socio economic areas where most of them attend low decile mainstream schools (Amituanai-‐Toloa & McNaughton, 2008). Maori (Indigenous) and Pasifika (of Pacific Island descent) are the two groups of students that are more often than others, implicated in the Ministry of Education (MOE) goals and initiatives to raise their achievement in English literacy. Disparities between these two groups and the even bigger disparities between these two groups and the majority group had been reported on since as early as the 1950s (Openshaw, Lee, & Lee, 1993) and continued until three decades later when it surfaced again this time escalating to a warning of pending ‘crisis’ if the disparities are not resolved urgently (Ramsay, Sneddon, Grenfell, & Ford, 1981).
Three decades on, the education system in New Zealand has been undergoing many
developments from school restructuring to designing initiatives expected to raise the achievement of second language students from minority groups. However, despite these initiatives and professional development programs for teachers up until now, the achievement of these students still remains much the same as it was then despite little improvement noted in some areas (Flockton & Crooks, 2001). We must stress that professional development programs in general in New Zealand have been successful and influential. However, while they have been for most students, they have not been influential enough to raise and sustain achievement of minority students particularly, second language learners.
This has also been the problem in the United States in the case of second language
learners who are not performing and are not achieving in schools especially those from minority groups (Garcia, 2003). It was found that with all the initiatives that had been conducted for the purpose of raising achievement, the initiatives had very little effect. In addition, Harwell (2003) noted that raising student performance and achievement has had phenomenal economic costs associated with it. She concluded that the reason why this is so is because attention has been focused in the wrong areas and not where it counts – in the classroom. She states: “… too little attention has been paid to what actually goes on in the classroom (p.1) This suggests the need to refocus attention on classroom practice and the urgency of providing teacher professional development that changes not only practice but behaviors in ways that lead to student performance and higher student achievement. This means putting due recognition on teachers in the belief that they are important and that they can raise student performance and higher student achievement. Some have even argued that if every reform initiative is to succeed, a vital place from which to begin is recognizing that teachers
are important in this task (Ferguson, 1991; Armour-‐Thomas, Clay, Domanico, Bruno, & Allen, 1989) and a high quality professional development to enable teachers to learn new strategies for teaching and change their teaching practice in the classroom for application for learning is what teachers need when given the opportunity (Alexander, Heaviside, & Farris, 1998). Studies in New Zealand have found, given the low achievement of minority students, that the greatest variance in student achievement is not the school, nor the environment but, the teacher (Alton-‐Lee, 2004) so it makes sense that teachers, through a specific evidence-‐ based focus on classroom practice in a high quality professional development program be given the opportunity to learn and to modify their practice in order to raise student achievement and sustain it (Hattie, 2003). One such New Zealand study was conducted to sustain achievement for primarily indigenous and ethnic minorities in low socio-‐economic areas that have long been associated with low levels of achievement, particularly in literacy (Lai, McNaughton, Amituanai-‐Toloa, Turner, Hsiao, 2009). Against the backdrop of schooling improvement reviews there have been suggestions that small gains over the short term are possible with well-‐designed interventions, but for children in the middle primary school years such as children in the current study, the criterion against which effective interventions need to be judged is sustained and systematic acceleration across levels of achievement in order to achieve equitable distributions of achievement. The quasi-‐experimental design study was a three-‐ year research and development collaboration among schools, government, and researchers to raise reading comprehension through critical discussions of achievement and teacher observation data and linking research on effective comprehension practices to specific needs. It was found that the collaboration resulted in increased rates of achievement that were variable but sustained across three years (see Lai et al., 2009). In the present study, similar goals for teachers are anticipated particularly in relation to their instructional practice as a means to sustain practice for overall purpose of
transferring to student achievement. Outcomes from the previous two years have shown instructional shifts particularly the discussions around data and the understanding that teachers had gained in relation to the specific purpose of the tools they used and what the tools measured. With this knowledge, teachers in the sustainability phase were excited to be part of the study and were looking forward to further new knowledge. We ask the question in this paper: Given teachers’ new knowledge and the focus of Extended Talk for students, what were the instructional pedagogical patterns and particularly that of Extended Talk that occurred in the guided reading lessons within teachers’ classrooms at the beginning of the year? We hypothesized that Extended Talk as a strategy to raise reading comprehension achievement may have been taken up productively by teachers in their attempt to extend their students’ talk not only in vocabulary but also in their understanding of texts. Methods: Participants: Schools Nine low to middle decile schools from South (n=6), West (n=2) and Central (n=1) Auckland schools, in New Zealand, and their nine teachers were involved. Most schools were primary schools of year 0-‐6, and others were full primary schools of year 0-‐8 students. All schools had a Samoan bilingual unit with Samoan students taught by Samoan teachers who are culturally and linguistically similar to their students. Teachers Nine female teachers from nine schools were involved. They ranged in age from 30-‐ 55 years old. Some were Island born and were originally trained and taught in Samoa and on arrival in New Zealand, had undergone retraining. Others were New Zealand born and trained. All were Samoan and fluent in both Samoan and English.
Students Five students were selected by each of the nine teachers for the study according to the criteria agreed upon with teachers. That is, students have to be at STAR stanine 4 or just below. The goal was to accelerate these students to above the national norm to stanine 6-‐9. Although 45 students were selected, only 40 were noted to have data. Of these 40 students, one was in year 2, four were in year 4, 13 were in year 5, 12 were in year 6, three were in year 7, and two were in year 8 (five students had missing data so were not included). Measures: Classroom observations: Nine classroom observations of reading lessons were conducted lasting 30-‐ 40minutes each at the beginning of the sustainability year. The observations were conducted for two reasons. The first one was a snapshot of instructional practice to provide a critical examination and discussion of teachers’ pedagogy based on beliefs and ideas of teaching and learning. The other was to see what teacher instruction was like in these contexts given the hypothesis that teachers might not have been effectively utilizing children’s linguistic oral proficiency and cultural prior learning enough in the classroom discussions. In addition, teachers are probably not inquiry learners and therefore not critically examining their own practice in order to be effective teachers (Cardno, 2003; Ministry of Education, 2009). These were video recorded and were transcribed for coding and analysis. Supplementary Test of Achievement in Reading (STAR): The STAR test results of children were collected to examine where students were at in terms of academic achievement in English. The STAR assessment is normally administered at the beginning and end of the year as part of normal school assessment. It has four subtests (subtest 1 – 4) for years 3 – 6 and six subtests for years 7-‐ 8. Subtest 1 tests decoding, subtest 2 tests sentence comprehension, subtest 3 tests paragraph comprehension,
subtest 4 tests vocabulary, subtests 5 tests different genres and subtest 6 tests language of advertising. The STAR test is measured in stanines. Stanines are normalized standard scores having a mean of five and a standard deviation of about two (Reid & Elley, 1991). They are expressed as a scale of nine units with a low of one and a high of nine. In the Progressive Achievement Test (PAT) manual for example, stanine nine is described as “outstanding”, stanine seven and eight as “above average”, stanine four to six as “average”, stanine two and three as “below average” and stanine one as “low” (Reid & Elley, 1991, p. 23). The nine stanine units may be considered as nine categories of reading attainment, making it “highly suitable for interpreting performance on the PAT: Reading” (Reid & Elley, 1991, p.23). For the purposes of this paper, the baseline achievement of students at the beginning of the sustainability year will only be reported as a group in relation to instructional practice for professional development needs. Data analysis Supplementary Tests of Achievement in Reading (STAR) The student achievement on the STAR tool were analysed using means and standard deviations for the 45 priority learners from year 3 to year 8. Stanines and raw scores for the whole group were also analysed in addition to mean scores in the subtests of the STAR. For the purposes of this paper, the group stanine and group subtest mean scores will only be reported. Instructional Observations The instructional observations were coded and analysed by frequencies and means based on exchanges within a unit of exchange. These are described with examples below. A unit of exchange (UoE) is a complete interaction on a topic before moving to a new topic. An example of a UoE:
T: I’m talking about words, what are the words in that paragraph that actually stick out for you and that paints a picture for you? C: inaudible T: where does it say that? C: it says “flicking a casual glance towards the post” T: speak up loud, please C: it says “flicking a casual glance towards the post” T: can you tell the line that it’s in? Ok, got it, everybody put your finger on that word, on that line...‘flicking a...what?’ ALL: a casual glance towards the post T: ok, good [child], what is the picture that these words paint for you? Tell us the picture that you had in your mind? C: he’s looking at the post T: Who’s he? C: the coach T: ok, this is the picture that [says the child’s name] sees in her head [T Writes on the board]… sees the coach...is looking where? C: towards the post T: towards the post. Ok, this is the picture that [child] had. Coding and Reliability of instructional practice: Text Related (T) Exchanges were any exchanges that dealt specifically with the text at hand. For example: T: What do you think the text might be about? C: Something to do with the war C: The great war C: the army
Vocabulary Elaboration Question (VE) was any interaction seeking elaboration on a word in the text whether by the teacher or students. It could be a question or a comment. For example this interaction on the word ‘columnist’: T: compulsory military service. So you have to work for the military, yeah? What’s another word for military? C: army T: army-‐ fantastic. So, that’s what this word mean-‐conscription. You will be working and you have to. C: ...(inaudible)… T: it’s not description… C: scription...just scription… T: I don’t know, we have to look that up. I want you to write that word down, when we finish so I can see.
Vocabulary Elaboration Comment by Teacher (VECT) was any comment made by the teacher that elaborates more on vocabulary. For example, this vocabulary elaboration by the teacher on the word ‘stretcher-‐bearer’: T: Yes, fantastic. So a strentcher-‐bearer is a person that carries the stretcher. Extended Talk by Teacher (ET) was any elaboration on the topic by the teacher or child. For example this excerpt of children and teacher talking extensively about what they wanted to find out about bears before they read the text together: T: yeah, you buy them from the shop but where else would you see it? Come on.
What is it for? What is a stretcher for? C: for help when you’re injured
T: Silas the stretcher-‐bearer . What is a stretcher-‐bearer? What’s a stretcher-‐bearer? C: something you lie on T: something you lie on, yes. Where have you seen it. Come on, bring your prior knowledge. Where have you seen it? C: i sleep on it T: you slept on it? At your aunty’s house, at home? Like in the house? Where have you seen a stretcher ? C: when we went camping T: yeah, but where else would you see it? C: army? T: is it only in the army that you see the-‐ C: shop? T: okay, Loreal said when people are injured...and C: (inaudible) T: and just to lie them down? okay, so what if...what else do they do with that? Okay, so she said it’s to lie the injured people on the stretcher...and then what? So where do you see people injured? Where do you see people injured? C: the hospital T: really. C: in the war? T: what about on the rugby field? Do you not see people injured on the rugby field? Do you see a stretcher on the rugby field, do you? Yes, that’s where you see them. Incorporation (I) was any interaction that used the prior knowledge and experience of the child. For example: T: Come on Nico, you have to go and fight in the war. Never mind your wife and your kids, your dad, your mum you have to go...and you and you and you. Think about it, what does that mean? C: that the government is telling people to fight... T: yeah, but what do you think about that? What do you think? Do you care about the war? Do you care about your children...You’ve got a baby. Do you care about that? So what do you think about that? Come on, think! C: (inaudible)
T: but what do you think? If it was you what would you think? C: I really won’t go T: why not? C: I have a family Checking and Evaluation by teacher (TC) and or child was any interaction that directs the child to check the responses made in relation to the text being read. For example: T: where is the fight...come one, look in your text, look in your text. Where is the fight? Where is it? Does it say? C: no Feedback (F) was any exchange by teacher to child that had elements of further constructive information to add to child’s knowledge. T: fantastic, I like the way you’re thinking. Fantastic. Do you have a question about the government? Do you have a question about the government and their decision? C: (inaudible) T: who’s he? C: John key T: are we talking about John Key here? do you think we’re talking about the government at the moment? C: no T: which government are we talking about here? At the time...awesome, at the time. Let’s read the last paragraph Awareness (A) was any interaction that noted the rules of Exchanges which focused on child’s awareness through teacher comments, questions, explanations or feedback which explicitly draws attention to the relevance of the child’s knowledge or reflection on knowledge, to the rules of participating, and to the purpose or ways of participating. For example:
T: is there an overall impression of … what do you the text … cos these words are from the text that we are going to read. What’s the overall overstanding about these words, what do you think it might be still? No, wait … don’t say it cos we’re going to move to this side. It is important to note that some codes were split to take into account the child’s responses given Extended Talk as the goal of the study. For example, Extended Talk was split into Extended Talk Teacher (ETT) and Extended Talk Child (ETC). Incorporation was also split into Incorporation by teacher (IT) and Incorporation by child (IC), Checking and Evaluation (C&E) had Teacher Checking (TC) and Child Checking (CC), Awareness (A) was added another code to include the strategies that teacher and child used during reading (AVE). This was also done with Feedback (F) to take into account High Feedback (FH) and low feedback (FL). In the end, a total of 13 codes were used. Results
We report here the overall summary of the group achievement of students on STAR
and the instructional practice from teacher observations at the beginning of the sustainability year and. Also reported are the planned six professional development sessions for the whole year. Student Achievement Results of the STAR tests at the beginning of the year show students at mean raw score of m=52.98 (SD 8.17) Stanine mean m=3.65 (SD 0.58) stanine. This is well below STAR national norm of Stanine 5. In STAR subtest achievement, students were high in decoding with correct responses of 83% and low in reading comprehension with only 38.38% correct responses. Instructional practice of teachers
Table 1. The instructional practice of Sustainability Samoan bilingual teachers at beginning of year
Teacher
Teacher
Teacher
Teacher
Teacher
Teacher
Teacher
Teacher
Teacher
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
TR
16
25
8
14
21
6
14
17
22
VEQ
10
15
2
6
9
2
5
3
1
VECT
4
2
0
1
6
0
0
0
0
ETT
9
7
3
3
5
3
6
12
15
ETC
9
7
3
2
5
5
9
13
17
IT
5
6
1
6
6
2
2
0
18
IC
4
6
0
6
1
4
1
0
16
TC
5
5
3
3
11
5
9
9
1
CC
4
2
2
2
11
3
9
8
1
AS
1
3
2
0
0
0
0
4
3
AVE FH FL
6 7 1
2 1 6
10 4 13
1 11 3
8 4 2
2 6 3
0 14 2
4 10 8
5 9 16
Total (Mean)
143 (12.6) 53 (5.08) 13 (1.04) 63 (7.0) 70 (7.07) 46 (5.01) 38 (4.02) 51 (5.06) 42 (4.06) 13 (1.04) 38 (4.02) 66 (7.03) 54 (6.0)
Table 1 shows the instructional practice of teachers at the beginning of the sustainability year. Generally, the majority of exchanges were related to the text at hand (TR) with a mean of m=12.6 followed by Extended Talk by chidren (ETC) with a mean of m=7.07 and high feedback (FH) with a mean of m=7.03. Extended Talk by teacher (ETT) was also high (m=7.0) but lower than ETC thus suggesting that there was some control on teacher talk which might have allowed children to talk more than usual. Vocabulary elaboration comment by teacher (VECT), Teacher checking (TC), and Incorporation by teacher (IT) had similar means of m=5.08; m=5.06; m=5.01 respectively but lower than ETT and ETC and FH.
It is important to note that mean exchanges of low feedback (FL) were quite
high (m=6.0) compared to vocabulary, incorporation, and checking and evaluating means. When compared to FH means, this is quite alarming. According to Hattie (2003), high feedback is one of the most important and influential aspects of teacher instruction on achievement. High feedback by teachers in this study were noted to provide encouragement for students to critically think and engage with the topic which in turn had encouraged students to respond using more words in complete and simple structured sentences. For example, in the reading discussion excerpt below, the teacher asked the students what the government should do given that too many of the soldiers are dying in war. For example: T: isn’t that...what do you...what do you think about that? Think about that. It says in here that the Government what... C: introduced conscription T: the government introduced conscription...what does that mean? What does that...think about it? I want you to think about it. Think about it...the government introduced conscription, what do you understand of conscription? Come on Nico, you have to go and fight in the war. Never mind your wife and your kids, your dad, your mum you have to go...and you and you and you. Think about it, what does that mean? C: That the government is telling people to fight... T: yeah, but what do you think about that? What do you think? Do you care about the war? Do you care about your children...You’ve got a baby. Do you care about that? So what do you think about that? Come on, think! C: (inaudible) T: but what do you think? If it was you what would you think? C: I really won’t go T: why not? C: i have a family
T: yeah...yeah, what about you? What about you, Caleb? C: (inaudible)...helping and then they might volunteer again T: yeah, that’s good thinking. I like, I like what Caleb...it’s volunteer so it’s up to, but why...what do you think about this government decision, if it was you what do you... C: (inaudible)...when you go out, you’re protecting them...and they can get hurt T: but what if the fight...what if the fight is not in New Zealand? But its um...is the fight in New Zealand? ALL: no Discussion and Extended Talk around vocabulary began with the teacher asking students about their understanding of the word “conscription”. The discussion around this word had created further discussions and Extended Talk when the teacher used the strategy of incorporation to elicit students’ prior knowledge “Come on Nico, you have to go and fight in the war. Never mind your wife and your kids, your dad, your mum, you have to go … and you and you and you.” The teacher then moved to encourage students to critically think if they were in such a situation by asking “Think about it, what does that mean?”. Responses by students, for example, “I really won’t go” and “I have a family” or “…helping and then they might volunteer again” show that understanding of texts can be enhanced provided the teacher has a planned pattern of instruction to follow. For this teacher, there is a clear pattern of Extended Talk around vocabulary followed by Extended Talk by incorporation and lastly, Extended Talk using critical thinking. In another excerpt this pattern is also present. For example: T: So those are the people that are going to look at how to find if the spider is poison or not, eh? Cos if we look at that word ‘serious infection’ what do you mean by that word? Yes, malo? C: you get sick and you get chicken pox T: very good, very good. Ua a fia lou tino, a? Ua tele le afiaga. Ua lavea oi le mea lea o
le spider, a? You get infected by the spider’s poison, yes Josh? C: what was around you? T: Your po’o around you. Yes, Elizabeth? I like the way you are wait -‐ C: after the spider bite you, you have a red mark on your skin T: a red mark on your skin after the spider bite you. Why did he leave that red mark? Why did the spider leave that red mark on your skin? (long pause) C: um because... T: who can help Elizabeth, Josh? C: it bites you T: yeah, because the spider bit you, eh? And then he left the red mark and the swollen, ua fula lou lima, ua le mafai e gai’oi. Yes Richard? C: inaudible T: they can be killed from it, eh? Because of the...what happened? C: infection T: infection...and? And what else? What’s that liquid that goes in your body that makes it -‐ C: poisonous? T: poisonous, good boy Tommy, well done. The initial discussion was around vocabulary on the words ‘serious infection’ in relation to poisonous spiders. Again, the discussion generated further discussions when the teacher incorporated children’s prior knowledge using Samoan language and commented “ua afia lou tino. Ua tele le afiaga. You get infected by the spider’s poison.” The teacher then moved to critical thinking by asking “Why did he leave that red mark?” to get children to think. In the above two selected excerpts of Extended Talk, a specific pattern of Extended Talk is noted. This is:
1. Extended Talk around vocabulary 2. Extended Talk when incorporation is used 3. Extended Talk when critical thinking is encouraged Given the focus of this paper is Extended Talk, it appears that teachers had taken on board the utilization of students’ oral proficiencies to extend talk during discussions in guided reading lessons, and in their uptake of the professional development the year before, had attempted to apply their new learning, understanding and knowledge to their current practice in order to sustain student achievement.
Moreover, it is important to note there was variabiity amongst teachers in their
instruction depending on the focus of the reading lesson. Nevertheless, their attempts as they are reported here were to ensure that the goal of Extended Talk is the focus for practice for their students at the beginning of the year.
Generally, the student achievement pattern where students are low on reading
comprehension and high on decoding in addition to the patterns evident in teachers’ instructional practice formed the basis of the professional development workshops and the in-‐class facilitations that followed. Professional development workshops For the study reported here, six workshops for teachers were planned and organized for the year. The workshops were based on the feedback at beginning of the sustainability year of instructional practice of teachers and student achievement in English and Samoan. While the achievement of students is not the main focus of this paper, it is worth mentioning here because of the prevailing pattern of low reading comprehension and high decoding which is similar to other profile studies (Lai, McNaughton, Amituanai-‐Toloa, Turner, & Hsiao, 2009) of students such as those in this study. These had identified professional development needs and the workshops were discussed and planned accordingly with teachers based on
the evidence. However, because of the variability noted in teachers’ instruction, it was decided that in order to work closely with each teacher in the in-‐class facilitations, the Teacher as inquiry model would have to be adopted to ensure that each teacher’s needs are addressed if they are to own their own inquiry. The six planned workshops were: 1. Teacher as Inquiry – Understanding Theory 2. Feedback of baseline achievement and instruction 3. Understanding Bilingual Education 4. OTJ (Overall teacher judgement) 5. Teacher as Inquiry – Teacher inquiry research 6. Feedback Instructional practice and Writing moderation In Class Facilitation (ICF): Facilitation was an important part of the professional development of teachers. Facilitation with teachers was dependent on the outcomes of the analysis of baseline instruction and student achievement to identify professional development needs for sustainability. Planning for in-‐class facilitation followed after the results feedback and the learning community discussions around the data and instructional practice were completed. The two facilitators in collaboration with the teachers used the Teacher as Inquiry model to target each teacher’s needs and then planned their inquiry cycle from their achievement and instructional data. It is important to note that the facilitation is not the focus of this paper but is mentioned here nonetheless to provide a scoping context for future reporting. Discussion
We asked the question at the beginning of this paper that given teachers’ new
knowledge and the focus of Extended Talk for students, what were the instructional pedagogical patterns and particularly that of Extended Talk that occurred in the guided reading lessons within teachers’ classrooms at the beginning of the year? We hypothesized
that Extended Talk as a strategy to raise reading comprehension achievement may have been taken up productively by teachers in their attempt to extend their students’ talk not only in vocabulary but also in their overall understanding of texts.
The findings show that generally the majority of interactions between teachers and
students were around the text and that there was high Extended Talk by students. However, there was a distinct pattern of Extended Talk in teachers’ instruction which shows; Extended Talk around vocabulary; Extended Talk when incorporating children’s prior knowledge; and Extended Talk when critical thinking is encouraged. This pattern suggests that teachers had modified their practice to include all other strategies to enhance reading comprehension instruction through Extended Talk. This means that teachers were not teaching in isolation but had integrated their new knowledge and understanding into their pedagogy to sustain achievement of their students. In other words, teachers have found some balance in their instructional practice.
The effectiveness of the in-‐class facilitation during the year will be able to be
reported on when the end of year instructional practice and achievement data are analysed. This is in progress. These will provide detailed evidence of individual teachers’ inquiry focus and evaluation including the overall project. Given the instructional variability across and between teachers, it would be interesting to see what the facilitators did with each teacher and how further new knowledge and understanding had impacted teachers, their students’ achievement and their practice as a result of it.
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