NA
E
K
VOLUME 1, NUMBER 1 / F A L L 2 0 0 8
JOURNAL OF
JOURNAL OF
SCHOOL CONNECTIONS
EDITORS
Jennifer J.-L. Chen, Kean University Diane H. Tracey, Kean University
EDITORIAL REVIEW BOARD
Janice Almasi
University of Kentucky
Raymond Bandlow
Fort Lee Public Schools, New Jersey
Frank J. Esposito
Kean University
Ted Kolderie
Education|Evolving
Diane Lapp
San Diego State University
Kathleen F. Malu
William Paterson University
Monica Miller Marsh
Desales University
Lesley Mandel Morrow
Rutgers University
Susan Polirstok
Dean, College of Education
Kean University
Flora Rodriguez-Brown
University of Illinois at Chicago
Michael Searson
Kean University
Cynthia Shannahan
University of Illinois at Chicago
Tony Xing Tan
University of South Florida
Sharon Walpole
University of Delaware
Xiao-lei Wang
Pace University
Louise C. Wilkinson
Syracuse University
John W. Young
Educational Testing Service
GUEST REVIEWERS
Xiaodong Liu
Brandeis University
Martin Gliserman
Rutgers University
CALL FOR REVIEWERS
The JSC is seeking manuscript reviewers with expertise in a variety of areas in
education. Reviewers’ contribution will help ensure that the articles published are
of the highest quality. To facilitate the process, an electronic copy of guidelines and a
recommendation form will be attached with each manuscript sent for review. Written
feedback from reviewers is expected to be communicated electronically within a month
of a manuscript’s receipt. Acknowledgement of reviewers’ contribution will appea
r
in each issue during tenure of service, and a letter of recognition will be provided at the
conclusion of each academic year. Please see the enclosed information about
JSC. We
invite you to join our Editorial Review Board. If you are interested, please email your
CV indicating your areas of expertise to [email protected]. Thank you for your consideration.
JOURNAL OF
S
CHOOL CONNECTIONS
The mission of JSC is to disseminate original, empirical research and
theoretical perspectives devoted to enhancing student learning and teaching
practices from preschool through high school. It is committed to bridging
theory and practice, and making research findings accessible to teachers,
researchers, administrators, and teacher educators.
JSC is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed publication founded by the College
of Education at Kean University. Published biannually (Fall and Spring),
JSC disseminates empirical quantitative and qualitative studies that explicitly
present a clear introduction, literature review, research design (research
question(s) and methodology), results/findings, discussion, limitations, and
educational implications.
The submission process. Please email an electronic copy of your manuscript
(with all identifying information removed) and a cover letter to [email protected].
The cover letter should state the authors’ names, institutional affiliations, and
contact information (email address, phone number, and address). It should
also contain a statement explicitly certifying that this manuscript has not been
previously published or under concurrent consideration elsewhere. Each
manuscript must be accompanied by an abstract of 100-150 words.
The review process. Manuscripts submitted to JSC for consideration are
first reviewed internally by the editors. Those that meet the initial review
criteria and fulfill the mission of
JSC will be sent out for external peer review.
The criteria for evaluating the manuscripts include: 1) significance of research
and/or theoretical contribution; 2) soundness of the research methodology; 3)
clarity of the writing in English; and 4) adherence to the style guidelines set
forth in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological
Association
(5th ed., 2001). Only manuscripts that meet these criteria will then be blind
reviewed by at least two peers, a process that usually takes 1 to 3 months.
Length of manuscript. A manuscript should be 25-35 pages (including
references, tables, and figures). All manuscripts must be page
numbered and
double-spaced in 12- point font with 1-inch margins all around.
All inquiries should be sent to:
Jennifer J.-L. Chen & Diane H. Tracey, Editors
Journal of School Connections
Dean’s Office, College of Education
Kean University
1000 Morris Avenue
Union, NJ 07083
E-mail: [email protected]
©2008 by Kean University.
JENNIFER J.-L. CHEN
and
DIANE H. TRACEY
Editors’ Introduction 1
SHUI-FONG LAM
and
WING-SHUEN LAU
Teachers’ Acceptance of Peer
Coaching: Impact of Collegiality and
Goal Orientation
3
MARGARET
FREEDSON
Supports for Dual Language
Vocabulary Development in
Bilingual and English Immersion
Pre-kindergarten Classrooms
25
SUZANNE
VISCOVICH,
ROBERT
ESCHENAUER,
RICHARD SINATRA,
and
T. MARK BEASLEY
Connecting Critical Thinking,
Organizational Structures and
Report Writing
63
RACHEL BROWN
Teachers’ Attempts to Teach
Comprehension Strategies Explicitly
During Core Instruction
87
CONTENTS
©2008 by Kean University.
JOURNAL OF
S
CHOOL CONNECTIONS
Volume 1 Number 1 Fall 2008
Editors’ Introduction
Welcome to the inaugural issue of the Journal of School Connections (JSC)!
Launching any scholarly journal is a tremendous undertaking that requires
rigor, commitment, persistence, and time. However, without the necessary
support and collaboration,
JSC would not have been debuted. We are
particularly grateful to President Dawood Farahi of Kean University for his
support, and to Dr. Frank Esposito (former interim dean of the College of
Education) for initiating the idea of establishing a refereed journal that would
advance from a well-established but college-based journal known as
School
Connections (founded by Dr. Dorothy Hennings, a Kean professor emerita).
Hence, it is only fitting that we named this new scholarly publication Journal
of School Connections with the mission to publish high-quality articles
devoted to enhancing student learning and teaching practices from preschool
through high school. We are honored to have been appointed by Dr. Esposito
to serve as founding co-editors of this important journal.
In a knowledge-demanding era, the thirst for wisdom is ever burgeoning. As
a refereed journal,
JSC provides another outlet for intellectual contribution
and knowledge dissemination to reach national and international audiences
of both academics and practitioners. The achievement of this inaugural issue
is a result of a collaborative effort. We gratefully acknowledge our Editorial
Review Board and guest reviewers whose expertise has ensured that
JSC
publishes papers of the highest quality. We also thank our authors whose
scholarly contributions have introduced JSC.
As you will read, the four articles constituting this issue were derived from
quantitative as well as qualitative research using a variety of methodologies, such
as observations and questionnaires. The research findings presented clearly help
advance knowledge of topics bearing great significance to advancing teaching
and learning in the U.S. and elsewhere: from Lam and Lau’s quest to understand
factors contributing to Hong Kong teachers’ acceptance of peer coaching as a
professional development strategy; Freedson’s investigation of the role of literacy
instruction in the early literacy outcomes of young Spanish-speaking, English
language learners from low-income families; Viscovich, Eschenauer, Sinatra
and Beasley’s quasi-experimental study of the effects of various organizational
structures on children’s critical thinking; to Brown’s case study of teachers’ use
of comprehension strategies during core instruction.
As JSC aspires to continue making significant contributions to the education
field by publishing fine articles, we invite you to join our efforts by participating
as an expert reviewer of manuscripts or a contributing author. Your support
as a reader will also play an important role in realizing the mission of
JSC.
Together, we can help advance knowledge and translate research into practice,
thereby enhancing the learning of educators and students alike.
JENNIFER J.-L. CHEN DIANE H. TRACEY
1
Journal of School Connections
Fall 2008, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 3-24
SHUI-FONG LAM
University of Hong Kong
and
WING-SHUEN LAU
Education Bureau, the Government of Special Administrative
Region of Hong Kong
Teachers’ Acceptance of Peer Coaching:
Impact of Collegiality and Goal Orientation
Two studies were conducted to examine how collegiality and goal
orientation affected teachers’ acceptance of peer coaching as a means of
professional development. A total of 335 Hong Kong teachers participated
in these two studies (N = 70 for Study 1; N = 225 for Study 2). The
teachers completed a questionnaire that measured their acceptance of peer
coaching, perception of collegial school culture, and goal orientation. It
was found that collegiality and learning goal orientation were positively
associated with acceptance of peer coaching. Both studies showed that
when teachers perceived higher collegiality in their schools and preferred
learning to performance goals, they were more willing to participate in
peer coaching and evaluated it more favorably.
KEY WORDS: teacher development, peer coaching, collegiality,
goal orientation
To remain viable and productive in a society with constant changes,
organizations and individuals alike depend greatly on the ability to
learn. Schools and teachers are no exception. In 2001, the Hong Kong
government initiated a series of large-scale education reform measures
that cover all stages of education from early childhood to continuing adult
education (Education Commission, 2001). This reform is in line with the
large-scale education reforms that have been developing since the 1990s
in some western (Fullan, 2000) as well as Asian countries (Kim, 2004). It
is propelled by a strong demand from society emphasizing that students
should learn how to meet the challenges of an increasingly knowledge-
3
Lam & Lau
based and fast-changing world. New curricula in Hong Kong are required to
promote not only subject area knowledge but also general skills in students
(Curriculum Development Council, 2001). These skills include collaboration,
communication, and problem-solving skills. Under the mounting pressure
to provide quality education in this era of changes and reforms, schools can
no longer just rely on mechanisms for recruiting competent teachers to meet
new challenges. “Learning for life” is definitely an answer to the challenges
in this time of knowledge explosion and rapid changes. Teachers need to
learn, refresh, and polish their teaching skills continuously.
Among various forms of staff development activities, peer coaching
has been studied and recognized as an effective means to enhance teaching
quality (e.g., Bowman & McCormick, 2000; Gottesman & Jennings, 1994;
Hasbrouck, 1997; Hasbrouck & Christen, 1997; Joyce & Showers, 1983).
Peer coaching is a process of teachers helping teachers to reflect on present
practices, learn new skills, and solve classroom-related problems through
mutual goal setting, classroom observation and collegial feedback (Dalton
& Moir, 1991; Galbraith & Anstrom, 1995). This form of professional
development was first advocated by Showers (1984), who was concerned
about the transfer of professional learning experiences to classroom practices.
Traditional teacher development activities are usually in the form of one-shot
workshops or refresher courses that are conducted outside of the school day.
However, many educational researchers (e.g., Fullan & Stiegelbauer, 1991;
Gottesman & Jennings, 1994; Loucks-Horseley, Hewson, Love, & Stiles,
1998; Mousa, 2002) have been doubtful about the effects of these isolated
professional learning experiences that fail to provide on-site support for
and continual feedback on classroom practices. Brown, Collins and Duguid
(1989) argued that skills and strategies cannot transfer well if they are
not learned in situated contexts. In view of the inadequacies of traditional
professional learning activities, researchers and practitioners need to seek
alternative methods that support a teaching community’s development and
sustain continual professional growth for teachers (Glazer, & Hannafin,
2006). One such alternative is peer coaching.
Peer coaching is different from traditional activities which do not
provide on-site continual coaching. In contrast, it is based on continuous,
collegial interaction and support in the schools. Many researchers have
found that the use of peer coaching could maximize the transfer of
professional learning to actual practice in the classroom (Bowman &
McCormick, 2000; Hasbrouck, 1997; Hasbrouck & Christen, 1997; Joyce &
Showers, 1983; Kohler, Crilley, Shearer, & Good, 1997; Morgan, Menlove,
Salzberg & Hudson, 1994; Showers, 1984; Sparks, 1988). For example,
using a multiple baseline design, Morgan et al. (1997) found that peer
4
Teachers’ Acceptance of Peer Coaching
coaching increased the effectiveness of the pre-service teachers’ teaching
as indicated in students’ mastery of the learning task. Similarly, Kohler and
his colleagues (1997) found that peer coaching helped elementary school
teachers make more improvements in instructional approach and these
improvements were sustained in a follow-up or maintenance condition.
Despite the wide recognition of its effectiveness in teacher development,
peer coaching is often received by teachers with lukewarm support and even
outright resistance. Lam (2001) conducted a questionnaire survey with about
2,400 teachers in Hong Kong and found that over 25% of them indicated that
they did not welcome colleagues observing their classes. There is a subtle
resistance from teachers against having another adult in their classrooms.
Perhaps classroom isolation is one of the most pervasive characteristics
of teaching. Teachers in separate classes are usually isolated and detached
from one another’s work. An interesting remark made by Gottesman and
Jennings (1994) aptly described the isolation mentality of teachers: “Just
give me my students and let me close the door and teach my students” (p.
19). Isolation may protect teachers from inspection and intrusion, but it also
deprives them of the opportunities to reflect on crucial aspects of learning
that they could otherwise learn from and share with one another.
The resistance to peer coaching, ironically, contradicts the
recognition of its effectiveness in teacher development. This irony calls
for attention from educators and researchers who are concerned with
continuing teacher education. Since improving teaching quality is a
pressing concern, there is a need to identify the factors that may influence
the extent to which teachers support the practice of peer coaching so as to
capitalize on its benefits in teacher development. The present two studies
attempted to investigate such underlying factors.
School culture and collegiality
To understand the factors that affect teachers’ acceptance of peer
coaching, we cannot study teachers’ perception and behaviors in a
vacuum and ignore the wider social context of the schools. Hargreaves
(1988) argued that teaching quality is very much a product of the school
context and teacher personal factors. He further pointed out that teachers’
behavior is often affected by the environment around them. According
to Hargreaves, “teachers are actively interpreting, making sense of, and
adjusting to, the demands and requirements their conditions of work place
upon them (p.211).” This suggests that school environment, culture and
atmosphere may have a positive or negative impact on teachers’ behaviors
and responses which in turn affect their teaching performance.
In studying school conditions that foster organizational learning,
5
Lam & Lau
Leithwood, Jantzi and Steinbach (1998) found that a collaborative and
collegial school culture was a significant factor contributing to school
learning. Drawing on intensive case studies of mathematics and English
teachers in American high schools, Little (2003) also found that norms of
mutual support among teachers, informal sharing of ideas and materials,
respect for colleagues’ ideas and willingness to take risks in attempting
new practices were all important aspects associated positively with
teachers’ own learning. The interactions among teachers that focus on
actual classroom performance are potentially the most useful, and yet
also the most demanding because they subject teachers to peer scrutiny.
These interactions place teachers’ self-esteem and professional respect on
the line. If there is a lack of collegiality among teachers, peer coaching
can be a threatening experience. We therefore expect that collegiality is
an important organizational factor that determines teachers’ acceptance
of peer coaching as a means of professional development. When the
collegiality level is high in the school, teachers are more likely to practice
peer coaching. Conversely, when collegiality in the school is lacking,
teachers are reluctant to let other teachers into their classrooms. They will
neither open their teaching for observation and discussion, nor seek help
from other teachers when faced with difficulties and challenges.
Goal orientation
While collegiality is an important organizational factor that fosters the
practice of peer coaching, goal orientation may be an essential personal
factor that determines its acceptance among teachers. As peer coaching
exposes how teachers teach to the scrutiny of their peers, it can impose
tremendous psychological pressure on those who have high concerns
about getting a positive evaluation of their performance. They will spend
much time finding resources and preparing teaching materials in order to
perform better and look good in front of their peers. Lam’s survey (2001)
revealed that many Hong Kong teachers felt the psychological pressure to
perform well when their teaching was being observed by colleagues.
Teachers’ pressure to perform well in front of their peers may be a
consequence of their goal orientation. Dweck and her associates (Cain &
Dweck, 1995; Dweck, 1986; Dweck & Leggett, 1988) posited that people
may have different goal orientations in learning. Some people adopt
performance goals aimed at getting positive evaluations and avoiding
negative evaluations of their work, whereas others may adopt learning goals
targeted at achieving higher levels of competence instead of documenting
them. People who are more performance-oriented tend to avoid challenges
for fear of losing face when they are not sure of definite success (Dweck
6
Teachers’ Acceptance of Peer Coaching
& Legget, 1988, Grant & Dweck, 2003). They perceive negative feedback
as an indication of their low ability and thus will reduce effort and even
withdraw from the activity if they receive negative feedback. On the basis
of the above findings in goal orientation (Cain & Dweck, 1995; Dweck,
1986; Dweck & Leggett, 1988; Grant & Dweck, 2003), we expect that
when performance-oriented teachers are not sure of definite success,
they are more likely to reject peer coaching, which requires them to
be observed and open to others’ comments. In contrast, we expect that
learning-oriented teachers tend to welcome challenges even though they
are not sure of definite success. They tend to perceive feedback, either
positive or negative, as an input for growth and development. Compared
to performance-oriented teachers, they are more likely to persist and strive
under difficult conditions.
Depending on their goal orientation, teachers may perceive peer
coaching as either an opportunity to grow or a burden that requires them
to do much preparation and makes them subject to others’ appraisal or
evaluation. In the present studies, we expected that teachers who espoused
learning goals would accept peer coaching more readily than their
counterparts who espoused performance goals. In other words, acceptance
of peer coaching would be positively associated with learning goals but
negatively with performance goals.
Overview of the two studies
To investigate how collegiality as an organizational factor, and goal
orientation as a personal factor, are related to teachers’ acceptance of
peer coaching, we conducted two studies with teachers in Hong Kong,
a place where large-scale education reform has been launched in recent
years. On the one hand, the reform has highlighted the importance of
professional development and has urged Hong Kong teachers to learn,
refresh, and polish their teaching skills continuously. On the other hand,
the emphasis on accountability has pressured Hong Kong teachers to meet
performance standards and might have thereby encouraged the attainment
of performance goals. In view of these developments, it is meaningful to
examine how teachers in Hong Kong perceive and receive peer coaching
in a society where education reform is intensive.
The present research comprises two studies. The participants of Study
1 were the teachers of two schools that had previously participated in an
action research project on peer coaching (Lam, Yim, & Lam, 2002). These
teachers had tried peer coaching for a year and then were evaluated on this
particular form of professional development at the end of the project. Study
2 was a survey project with teachers who might not have practiced peer
7
Lam & Lau
coaching before. The participants of Study 2 were selected by a random
sampling procedure from various schools in Hong Kong. Although the two
studies targeted different teacher populations, we expected that teachers’
acceptance of peer coaching would be associated with collegiality and
goal orientations. It was assumed that the findings would be robust if both
studies indicated similar patterns of positive association among collegiality,
learning goals, and teachers’ acceptance of peer coaching.
Study 1
Method
In this study, we investigated how collegiality and goal orientations
associated with teachers’ acceptance of peer coaching in two schools that
had implemented peer coaching.
Sample and procedures
The project was initiated by a research team from the University of
Hong Kong and the Education Convergence. The Education Convergence
is an active educational body formed by a group of front-line educators
in Hong Kong. In response to a note of invitation in the newsletter of
the Education Convergence, four schools volunteered to participate in
the project. The research team visited all four schools that had indicated
interest. In each of these meetings, the principal and department heads of
the school were present. Different parties expressed their understanding and
expectations of peer coaching. Eventually only two schools were selected
because of their readiness for peer coaching and their compatibility of
beliefs and values with the other parties of the project. The principals and
department heads of these two schools had gained general support from
their teachers for the project. All the involved parties agreed to develop
peer coaching as a means of professional development detached from staff
appraisal. The principals were not involved in the classroom observation
and no records of the observation were filed in the appraisal or personnel
archives of the teachers.
The participating schools consisted of a primary school with 560
students and 38 teachers, and a secondary school with 900 students and 50
teachers. Both were government subsidized schools with students coming
primarily from low to middle socioeconomic backgrounds. Most of the
students resided in public housing estates.
This was a year-long project with an evaluation at the end of the
school year. The peer-coaching activities taking place in these two schools
were similar to the “lesson study” practiced by many Japanese teachers in
professional development (Fernandez, Cannon, Chokshi, 2003; Lewis &
8
Teachers’ Acceptance of Peer Coaching
Tsuchida, 1998; Shimahara, 1998). In a typical peer-coaching activity, four
or five teachers from the same department (e.g. science or language art)
discussed and reflected on their classroom teaching, designed and planned
teaching materials together, and, finally, were observed by and learned
from one another. These teachers first identified an instructional unit
(e.g. learning how to write expository articles) to study and then jointly
drafted a detailed lesson plan. One of them would teach the lessons to his
or her students, while the others observed. After the instructional unit was
completed, the teachers would meet to discuss their observations and ideas
for how to improve the lessons. This activity was used solely for staff
development purposes and was entirely independent from staff appraisal.
There were 28 peer-coaching activities in the primary school and 17 in the
secondary school during the year. Each peer-coaching activity, as indicated
earlier, comprised collaborative preparation for an instruction unit, in-
class observation of that instruction unit, and review discussion after that
instruction unit was over. The number of peer-coaching activities in each
school was decided by the teachers in consultation with their department
heads. All of the primary school teachers (N = 30) and about 80% of the
secondary school teachers (N = 40) participated at least once in the peer-
coaching activities.
After a year of experimenting with peer coaching as a means of
professional development, a questionnaire survey was conducted with the
teachers from both schools to evaluate the effectiveness of the project. In
the primary school, 30 teachers completed the questionnaires (response rate
= 75%); in the secondary school, 40 teachers completed them (response
rate = 80%). The participants were assured that no personal data would be
collected and that their identities would be kept anonymous. Hence, no
data about the participants’ age and gender were collected for the survey.
However, we did collect information about their teaching experience and
ranks. They had an average of 6.32 years of teaching experience (range =
1-25 years; SD = 6.43 years). About 29% of them held senior positions,
such as department heads, in their schools.
Measures
The questionnaire was written in Chinese and included items that
measured the teachers’ evaluation of the peer-coaching activity, their
willingness to participate, their perception of collegiality in their schools,
and their goal orientation. Except for the measure of goal orientation, the
teachers were requested to indicate, on a 6-point Likert-type scale, their
level of agreement or disagreement with a given statement in each of the
measures (from 1 = Strongly Disagree to 6 = Strongly Agree).
9
Lam & Lau
Perceived collegiality. This scale consisted of 10 items such as “there
are trustworthy colleagues I can turn to for advice if I have problems.”
These items measured friendship, collaboration, trust, and respect among
colleagues. They were adapted from the Social Provision Scale developed
by Baron and his colleagues (1990) and the Collegial Support Index
developed by Schonfeld (1990). The Cronbach’s alpha of this scale in this
sample was .81, indicating a good level of internal consistency.
Teachers’ goal orientation. The goal orientation of teachers was
measured by three hypothetical scenarios adapted from a staff development
program designed by Lam, Law, and Cheung (2000). In each scenario,
the teachers were asked to make a choice that would indicate their goal
orientation. For example, the teachers were asked what action they would
take if they were enrolled in a course on classroom management and the
instructor required them to video-tape one of the lessons they teach for
class discussion. Two choices were available: 1) “To video-tape a class
with a better learning attitude and classroom discipline so as to obtain
some episodes with good teaching performance;” and 2) “To video-tape
a class where the teacher did not have full confidence in managing the
discipline so as to seek the instructor’s and fellow classmates’ opinions for
improvement.” The former choice reflected an orientation of performance
goals, whereas the latter reflected an orientation of learning goals. The
former choice indicated a tendency to sacrifice learning for better
performance and positive evaluations. In contrast, the latter choice indicated
a desire to learn although one’s performance was on the line and negative
evaluations from others might be received. One point was assigned if the
teachers chose an action that reflected the espousal of learning goals, and
no point was assigned if they chose an action that reflected the espousal
of performance goals. The points of the three scenarios were aggregated
to indicate the extent to which the teachers endorsed learning goals versus
performance goals. The scores for this measure ranged from 0 to 3, with
a higher score indicating a higher endorsement of learning goals and a
lower endorsement of performance goals. The Cronbach’s alpha of the
three scenarios was .55 for this sample, indicating an acceptable but not
high level of internal consistency.
Teachers’ acceptance of peer coaching. This construct was measured
by two sets of questions. The first set pertained to the teachers’ evaluation
of the peer coaching activities with which they had experimented in their
schools, whereas the second set was about their willingness to participate
in the activities. To measure their evaluation, the teachers were requested
to indicate to what extent they agreed with the following two statements:
1) “The peer coaching activities have enhanced our teaching quality
10
Teachers’ Acceptance of Peer Coaching
effectively;” and 2) “The peer coaching activities have enhanced our
mutual communication and understanding.” To measure the teachers’
willingness to participate in the activities, they were asked to indicate
their agreement with the following three statements: 1) “Despite the time
constraint and difficulty in scheduling, I am willing to participate in peer
coaching;” 2) “Considering the time I have spent and the psychological
pressure I have encountered, I am still willing to support my school in the
development of peer coaching;” and 3) “Given the freedom to choose, I
shall not participate in similar activities.” The third statement was reverse
coded for the measurement of the construct of teachers’ acceptance of peer
coaching. A negative statement was included in the scale to minimize the
acquiescent response style problem (Ray, 1979). The average rating of
the five statements was used to indicate the teachers’ level of acceptance
of peer coaching. The Cronbach’s alpha of these five statements for this
sample was .85, indicating a high level of internal consistency.
Results
The correlation coefficients among the variables are presented in Table
1. All three variables were correlated positively. The more the teachers
perceived collegiality in their schools and the more the teachers endorsed
learning goals, the more they would accept peer coaching. The correlation
coefficients ranged from .35 to .47, indicating medium-sized effects.
11
1 2 3
1. Perceived collegiality - .14* .19**
2. Teachers’ goal orientation .35** - .26**
3. Acceptance of peer coaching .47** .40** -
TABLE 1. Correlations of the Variables
**p < 0.01 * p < 0.05
Note. The correlation coefficients below the diagonal are results of Study 1
whereas the correlation coefficients above the diagonal are results of Study 2.
To test the predictability of perceived collegiality and teachers’ goal
orientation on teachers’ acceptance of peer coaching, we performed a
multiple regression analysis. The results are presented in Table 2. It was
found that teachers’ acceptance of peer coaching significantly predicted
their perception of collegiality in their schools (β = .38, p < .01) as well
as their goal orientation (β = .26, p < .05). That is, for every one unit
Lam & Lau
increase of acceptance of peer coaching, there would be .38 unit increase of
perceived collegiality and .26 unit increase in learning goals. Teachers who
perceived stronger collegiality in their schools and adopted learning goals
more than performance goals tended to have higher levels of acceptance of
peer coaching, as indicated by their better evaluations of the activities and
higher levels of willingness to participate in peer-coaching activities.
12
Independent Variables B SE B β
Study 1
Perceived collegiality .72 .21 38**
Teachers’ goal orientation
.30 .13 .26*
Study 2
Perceived collegiality .21 .08 .17**
Teachers’ goal orientation
.24 .06 .24**
TABLE 2. Summary of Multiple Regression Analyses for Perceived
Collegiality and Goal Orientation Predicting Acceptance of Peer Coaching
**p < 0.01 * p < 0.05
Note. R2 = .24 for Study 1; R2 = .10 for Study 2.
Discussion
The participants in Study 1 were teachers from the two schools who had
previously experimented with peer coaching. The variation of collegiality,
the organizational factor, was restricted because only two schools were
involved. Moreover, these two schools were different from typical schools
because they had a year-long trial on peer coaching, a
novice form of
professional development that is seldom practiced in Hong Kong. Lam
(2001) found that half of the Hong Kong respondents in her survey indicated
that they had never practiced classroom observation; that is, they had
never observed their colleagues’ teaching and neither had their colleagues
observed them in teaching. For the rest who responded that they had such
practice, their so-called observation was mostly an appraisal activity done
by supervisors about their teaching. Peer coaching is something new and
unfamiliar to most teachers in Hong Kong. To test if the findings of Study
1 could be generalized to other schools that had not experimented with
peer coaching, we conducted a survey with teachers selected by a random
sampling procedure. We would be able to confirm the positive associations
among collegiality, learning goal, and teachers’ acceptance of peer coaching
if the results of Study 2 could replicate those of Study 1.
Teachers’ Acceptance of Peer Coaching
Study 2
Method
In this study, we investigated how collegiality and goal orientations
associated with teachers’ acceptance of peer coaching in a randomly
selected sample of teachers who might not have had prior experience with
peer coaching.
Sample and procedures
The Hong Kong Professional Teachers’ Union is the largest professional
body of teachers in Hong Kong. A sample of 600 teachers was selected
randomly from its membership of 70,000. Questionnaires were mailed
to 300 primary school teachers and 300 secondary school teachers. The
respondents were requested to return the completed questionnaires in the
stamped envelopes provided by the researchers. Anonymity was guaranteed
for the survey. The participants were assured that no personal data would
be collected and their identities would not be known. The response rate
to the questionnaire was 42.5%, and 255 questionnaires were collected.
Among the 255 respondents, 43.3% were secondary school teachers and
56.7% were primary school teachers. Their average teaching experience
was 13.53 years (range = 1-35 years; SD = 9.31 years). About 38% of
them held senior positions, such as department heads, in their schools.
Measures
Except for the measures of teachers’ acceptance of peer coaching, all
measures used in Study 1 were applied again in Study 2. They included
teachers’ perceived collegiality and learning orientation. All the items in
the questionnaire were presented in Chinese.
Unlike the teachers in Study 1, the teachers in Study 2 might not have
experienced peer coaching previously. Many of them might not have
known what peer coaching exactly meant. To avoid any misunderstanding,
peer coaching was defined clearly in the questionnaire instructions. The
following definition was presented to the teachers: “In peer coaching,
teachers talk about and reflect on their classroom teaching, design and plan
teaching materials together, are observed by and learn from one another.
The activity is different from the usual practice of classroom observation
that is for staff appraisal. The focus is not on the performance of individual
teachers but on how teachers can pool their efforts to improve classroom
teaching. The observers and the observed can prepare a lesson together
before the observation and discuss their experience afterwards.”
The teachers were asked to evaluate the viability of peer coaching
in their schools and estimate how successful the activities would be if
13
Lam & Lau
practiced in their schools. Unlike in Study 1, we did not measure teachers’
evaluation of the peer coaching they had practiced in the previous year.
Instead, the teachers were asked to indicate their level of agreement and
disagreement with the following statements: 1) “I doubt if peer coaching
can improve teaching quality in my school;” and 2) “I believe that peer
coaching can enhance mutual communication and understanding among
colleagues in my school.” The first statement was reversed in coding.
To measure the teachers’ willingness, we asked them to indicate their
willingness to participate if their schools launched similar activities. They
were requested to indicate their levels of agreement and disagreement
with the following statements: 1) “If my school tries peer coaching, I
shall support it.” 2) “If my school tries peer coaching, I am willing to
let my colleagues observe my teaching.” 3) “Considering the time I may
spend and the psychological pressure I may encounter, I am still willing to
support my school in the development of peer coaching.” 4) “Given free
choice, I shall not participate in similar activities.” The fourth statement
was reversed in coding. Negative statements were also included in the
scale to minimize the acquiescent response style problem. It is always a
good practice to avoid one-way worded scales (Ray, 1979). The average
score of the above six items was used to indicate the teachers’ acceptance
of peer coaching. The Cronbach’s alpha of these six items in Study 2 was
.92, indicating high internal consistency.
Results
The correlation coefficients among the variables are presented in
Table 1 (see page 11). The coefficients.. The coefficients ranged from
.14 to .26. All of the variables were correlated positively, although the
magnitude was smaller than those in Study 1. To test the predictability
of collegiality and goal orientation, we regressed teachers’ acceptance of
peer coaching on these two variables. The results are presented in Table 2
(see page 12). It was found that teachers’ acceptance of peer coaching was
predicted significantly by their perception of collegiality in their schools
(β = .17, p < .01) as well as their goal orientation (β = .24, p < .01). For
every .17 unit increase of perceived collegiality and .24 unit increase of
learning goals, there would be one unit increase of acceptance of peer
coaching. Teachers who perceived stronger collegiality in their schools
and adopted learning goals more than performance goals tended to have
higher acceptance levels of peer coaching. They had higher expectations
of the activities and were more willing to participate in them. In summary,
14
Teachers’ Acceptance of Peer Coaching
the results of Study 2 replicated those of Study 1 even though the two
studies targeted different populations.
Discussion
Unlike the participants in Study 1, the teachers in Study 2 might
not have had prior experience with peer coaching. Their responses to
the questionnaire concerning peer coaching were based primarily on the
descriptions provided in the instructions. With reference to the hypothetical
scenario that peer coaching might be practiced in their schools, the
participating teachers estimated the effectiveness of this practice and
expressed their willingness to participate in it. The psychological process
involved in Study 2 was prospective instead of retrospective. In contrast,
the participants in Study 1 had practiced peer coaching for a year and
were asked to examine their experiences retrospectively. The participants
in Study 2 were asked to project their thoughts into the future, while the
participants in Study 1 were asked to review their practice in the past.
Despite the differences regarding the subjects’ exposure to peer coaching
as a novice staff development activity, the results of the two studies were
consistent (see Figure 1). They converged to show that teachers’ acceptance
of peer coaching was positively associated with their perception of
collegiality in their schools and their goal orientation.
15
FIGURE 1. The path diagram explaining the impact of perceived
collegiality and goal orientation on teachers’ acceptance of peer coaching.
Note. Coefficients not in parentheses are results of Study 1 whereas
coefficients in parentheses are results of Study 2.
Acceptance of
Peer Coaching
.25* (.24**)
.38** (.17**)
.35** (.14*)
Perceived
Collegiality
Learning Goal
Orientation
Lam & Lau
General Discussion
The results of the two studies were consistent with our hypothesis
that teachers would be more likely to accept peer coaching as a form of
professional development if they perceived strong collegiality in their
schools. This is consistent with the findings of previous studies that
collegial school culture was a significant factor contributing to school
learning (Leithwood et al., 1988; Little, 2003). The findings of the present
studies provide educators with insights about the conditions under which
to implement peer coaching in the schools to render it effective.
Peer coaching is a form of professional development based primarily
on continuous collegial interaction and support. If teachers do not see
collegiality in their schools, they are more likely to reject peer coaching.
As a result, when peer coaching is implemented in a school culture that
lacks collegiality, the chances of its success would be slim. Imposing peer
coaching administratively on teachers in a weak collaborative culture
will only result in contrived collegiality. In his micro-political critique
of collegiality, Hargreaves (1994) pointed out that contrived collegiality
is administratively regulated, compulsory, and implementation-oriented.
Under the conditions of contrived collegiality, teachers are required to
work together to implement the mandates from school administrators.
Instead of being empowered, teachers in contrived collegiality feel
that they are being coerced to conform. Therefore, the so called “peer
coaching” is not a genuine collaboration among teachers, but an empty
shell of administrative formality. In the worst case, it may induce an
administrative apparatus of surveillance and control under the aegis of
professional collaboration (Hargreaves & Dawes, 1990). However, in an
era of rapid educational reforms that value accountability and standards
(Sheldon & Biddle, 1998), there is a strong incentive for school leaders
to promote peer coaching without considering fostering a culture needed
for it to be successful. As stated by Little (1990), attempts at initiating
collaboration will not be successful if the school culture is incongruent
with collaboration. The results of the present studies are reminders of this
reality to educators. Peer coaching, or any other specific forms of induced
collaboration, will not be accepted wholeheartedly by teachers when they
do not perceive their school cultures as collaborative.
Some scholars (e.g., Little, 1990; Leithwood et al., 1988; Ponzio,
1987) have argued that an essential prerequisite for effective peer coaching
is the existence of a set of collegial relationships among teachers who
display qualities of trust, support and sharing. Does this argument imply
16
Teachers’ Acceptance of Peer Coaching
that educators should not initiate collaboration when school collaborative
culture is weak? We think that the answer depends on the deliberate attempt
s
on the part of the initiators. Grimmett and Crehan (1992) posited that any
attempt at initiating collegiality is inevitably contrived because it must
be engineered by some people, mostly administrators, in a place where
collegiality is not yet present. However, they also make a clear distinction
between an administratively imposed type and an organizationally induced
type of contrived collegiality. The former is undesirable, but the latter
could lead to a genuine collaborative culture.
Administratively imposed collegiality consists of “top-down” attempts
to manipulate teachers’ collaborative behaviors directly. Teachers are
mandated to collaborate. In contrast, organizationally induced collegiality
is characterized by “top-down” attempts at fostering “bottom-up” problem-
solving approaches to school improvement. This is achieved through
careful manipulation of the environment instead of teachers’ behaviors
such as compliance. Many strategies can manipulate the environment, for
example by adopting a small-scale trial before any large-scale change,
implementing peer coaching at a slow pace that corresponds with teachers’
acceptance, reducing teachers’ workload so that they have time to engage in
the activities, and ensuring that peer coaching differs from staff appraisal.
So far, the literature on contrived collegiality has mostly been
developed in the western cultures (Grimmett & Crehan, 1992; Hargreaves,
1994; Hargreaves & Dawes, 1990; Little, 1990; Leithwood et al., 1988;
Ponzio, 1987). Nevertheless, it has a certain degree of universality across
western and eastern cultures and seems to apply well in Hong Kong. Like
many western countries, Hong Kong has recently launched a large-scale
education reform. Teacher professional development is inevitably a top
concern and the teachers in Hong Kong are under pressure to engage in
peer coaching if their school administrators are eager to enforce changes.
Without knowing the factors that contribute to teachers’ acceptance of
peer coaching, one may develop contrived collegiality that is not genuine
collaboration among teachers but an empty shell of administrative formality.
Fortunately, the advice of Grimmett and Crehan (1992) about the distinction
between administratively imposed and organizationally induced types of
contrived collegiality also applies well to Hong Kong. With the careful
manipulation of the environment in which the school culture develops,
Lam and her colleagues (2002) successfully helped teachers in two Hong
Kong schools develop practices in peer coaching and turn organizational
induced contrived collegiality into genuine collegiality.
17
Lam & Lau
As shown in the results of the present studies, collegiality is essential
for teachers’ acceptance of peer coaching. However, it does not necessaril
y
mean that it is a prerequisite for the success of peer coaching. The
causality between the collegiality and peer coaching may not be linear.
Clarke and Hollingsworth (2002) argued that teacher changes are a cyclic
process with multiple entry points. They put forward an interconnected
model of professional growth in which circular causality is assumed. It is
possible that changes in school culture may lead to changes in practice of
professional development such as the adoption of peer coaching. Likewise,
it is also possible that changes in practices of professional development
may lead to changes in school culture. Collegiality in the schools may be
enhanced after teachers have experimented with peer coaching. In fact,
most teachers in Study 1 agreed with the statement that peer-coaching
activities had enhanced their mutual communication and understanding
with colleagues. Their average agreement with this statement was 4.99
on a 6-point Likert scale. It was possible that peer coaching had enhanced
their collegiality, which in turn would further facilitate their acceptance of
peer coaching.
In both studies, we found positive path coefficients between teachers’
goal orientation and their acceptance of peer coaching. The results showed
that when teachers endorsed learning goals more than performance
goals, they tended to be more accepting of peer coaching. These results
support Dweck’s (1986) claim that people who endorse learning goals
are more motivated to master new and difficult tasks despite the risk that
their competence may be judged negatively. To open one’s teaching for
observation and discussion can facilitate learning, but it can also incite
insecurity. The insecurity would be most intense for the teachers who
espouse performance goals because they are aimed at gaining positive
judgments and avoiding negative judgments from others. To avoid negative
judgment of their competence, they may choose not to participate in peer
coaching. In contrast, teachers who endorse learning goals are aimed at
increasing their competence. As a result, they would see peer coaching as
an opportunity for learning and thus would be more receptive to it.
Our findings about goal orientation bear similarity to those of
Fernandez et al. (2003), who attempted to develop lesson study among a
group of American teachers. They found that teachers might not benefit
from lesson study if a “researcher lens” was not applied to the examination
of lessons. When teachers play the role of researchers, their goal is to
investigate ways that can improve their lessons so that students can learn
18
Teachers’ Acceptance of Peer Coaching
better. However, Fernandez et al. (2003) reported that a number of teachers
in their study objected to selecting topics commonly taught at their grade
level. They argued that these topics were dry and boring. Instead, they
preferred selecting original topics that might be more entertaining and
perhaps more engaging for their colleagues who would observe the lesson.
Fernandez et al. (2003) commented that the preference of these teachers
indicated that they lost sight of the researcher lens. The presence of the
researcher lens is similar to learning goals in which making improvement
instead of impressing others are the focus. The current findings show that
when teachers are concerned with impressing their colleagues rather than
seeking ways collaboratively to improve their lessons, they are subscribing
to performance goals instead of learning goals.
The interpretation of the results about teachers’ goal orientation,
however, should be made with the caveat that teacher changes are a
cyclic process with multiple entry points. The relationship between goal
orientation and collegiality may be circular. Teachers’ goal orientation can
affect the collaborative culture in their schools but collaborative culture
can also affect teachers’ goal orientation reciprocally. How teachers
behave is often determined by the environment around them (Hargreaves,
1988). Pressure from keen competition and high-stake evaluations may
force teachers to adopt performance goals in lieu of learning goals. Lam,
Yim, Law, and Cheung (2004) found that Hong Kong students adopted
performance goals when they were under the pressure of normative
evaluation. The same psychological mechanism may also apply to
teachers. The results of the Lam’s survey (2001) revealed that over 60%
of classroom observations in Hong Kong were conducted in the format of
supervisors observing subordinates. When classroom observation involves
staff appraisal, teachers may endorse performance goals involuntarily. As
peer coaching is decoupled from staff appraisal, teachers are not pressured
to focus on performance goals. They may favor learning goals more after
experiencing this new form of non-threatening staff development. In the
present studies, teachers’ goal orientation was correlated positively with
perceived collegiality. This shows the intricate relationship between
personal factors and organizational factors.
Limitations and Future Directions
There are several limitations of the two studies. First, both are
correlational with cross-sectional data. According to Clarke’s and
Hollingsworth’s (2002) interconnected model of professional growth, we
19
Lam & Lau
speculated about circular correlations among personal and organizational
factors. However, the results of our studies did not provide evidence of
any causal relationship. Correlational data from cross-sectional studies
can only provide information about the degree of association among
the variables being investigated. To determine changes over time, future
studies may collect longitudinal instead of cross-sectional data. Study 1
had the potential to collect longitudinal data as it was a year-long project
that witnessed the development of peer coaching in two schools. Data
collected in the beginning of project can be compared with those collected
at the end of it. However, to perform lag-time analyses, the anonymity of
the teachers would be compromised because pre- and post- project data
must be matched by identity. To counteract any psychological pressure on
teachers that might jeopardize the development of peer coaching in the two
schools, the research team decided not to collect information about their
identity. In addition, the lack of complete demographic data, such as gender
and age, might limit the interpretation of the results. It is unknown if gender
and age would be correlated with the outcome variables under examination.
Furthermore, it is unclear whether the teachers’ prior experience with their
school principals impacted their acceptance of peer coaching.
Another limitation of the present studies lies in the measures of
variables. All of the data were self-reports from teachers. Self-report
data are not necessarily inferior, particularly when they pertain to the
attitudes, beliefs, and feelings of the participants. In the present studies, it
is legitimate to measure the teachers’ goal orientation and acceptance of
peer coaching by the self-report method. However, the measurement of the
collegiality would have been stronger if it were complemented by methods
other than teachers’ reports. Future studies may consider other methods
such as third-party observations and ratings.
Despite these limitations, the present studies have contributed to the
existing body of knowledge on peer coaching. Both studies produced
similar results, showing that collegiality and learning goals were
associated positively with acceptance of peer coaching among teachers in
Hong Kong. It was found that teachers who perceived strong collegiality
in their schools and adopted learning goals were more inclined to accept
peer coaching, a professional development activity that is based mostly on
continuous collegial interaction and support in the schools. Findings from
our studies are helpful to educators who are interested in developing peer
coaching for more effective teaching in this time of education reform.
20
Teachers’ Acceptance of Peer Coaching
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Lam & Lau
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Shui-fong Lam is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology
at the University of Hong Kong. She obtained her bachelor’s degree and post
graduate diploma in education from the Chinese University of Hong Kong,
master’s degree (counseling psychology) from the University of Texas, and
doctoral degree (school psychology) from the University of Minnesota.
Since 1994, Dr. Lam has been teaching in the Department of Psychology
at the University of Hong Kong. Her research interests lie in achievement
motivation, parenting, and instructional strategies. She is also concerned
with the improvement of psychological services in school system.
Wing-shuen Lau is an educational psychologist in the Education Bureau,
the Government of Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong.
She obtained her bachelor’s degree and master’s degree (educational
psychology) from the University of Hong Kong, post graduate diplomas
in psychology and education from the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Since 2000, Ms. Lau has been working as an educational psychologist
and providing school-based psychology services to students with diverse
needs. She is not only involved in direct services and case work with a
remedial nature but also indirect services and system work with the
purpose to enhance the learning environment for students.
Correspondence should be addressed to Shui-fong Lam, Department of
Psychology, University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong, China. E-
mail: [email protected].
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
This research project was funded by the Quality Education Fund of the
Hong Kong Government and the Committee on Research and Conference
Grants at the University of Hong Kong. We are grateful to Mr. C. T. Chan,
Ms. Y. S. Cheung, Mr. S. Y. Chiu, Mr. K. K. Choi, Ms. Y. Y. Fung, Ms.
P. W. Leung, Dr. A. Ma, Mr. P. W. Tam, Dr. E. Tsang, Mr. M. O. Wong,
and Mr. C. H. Wu for their advice and assistance in Study 1. We are also
grateful to the Education Convergence and the Hong Kong Professional
Teachers’ Union for their assistance in Studies 1 and 2 respectively.
24
25
Journal of School Connections
Fall 2008, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 25-62
MARGARET J. FREEDSON
Montclair State University
Supports for Dual Language
Vocabulary Development in
Bilingual and English Immersion
Pre-kindergarten Classrooms
The links between high-quality preschool language and literacy
experiences and vocabulary growth are increasingly well-documented for
monolingual English-speakers from low-income backgrounds. This article
explores language and literacy instruction and bilingual vocabulary gains
in preschool classrooms serving low-income Spanish-speaking English
language learners (ELLs). Group language and literacy instruction was
observed in six full-day pre-kindergarten classrooms representing three
broad instructional models: predominantly Spanish-language bilingual
instruction, mixed Spanish-English bilingual instruction, and English
immersion instruction. The fall and spring receptive vocabulary of 53
Spanish-speaking 4- to 5-year-olds was measured in Spanish and English
to determine the classrooms in which children made the greatest vocabulary
gains in each language. Children made the greatest Spanish vocabulary
improvements in bilingual classrooms with strong supports for Spanish
language development that included reflective read-aloud conversations
and explicit teaching of Spanish vocabulary. English vocabulary gains
were greatest when teachers scaffolded student participation in English
language instruction and provided Spanish language support. Implications
for practice and future research are discussed.
KEY WORDS:
bilingual, preschool, low-income, Spanish-speaking
English language learners
The last decade has seen the rapid expansion of publicly-funded
preschool services accompanied by growing diversity in the U.S. preschool
Freedson
population. In July of 2007, an estimated 4.9 million children under age
five – nearly one in four – were of Hispanic origin (U.S. Census Bureau,
2007). Among Hispanic children in this age group, a large proportion
comes from homes where Spanish is the primary language spoken and
thus begin school as English language learners (ELLs). Extrapolating from
the available data, ELLs of Hispanic backgrounds represent an estimated
23% of Head Start and 18% of current state pre-kindergarten enrollments
nationwide, and these numbers are projected to increase well into the future
(Collins & Ribeiro, 2004; Hamm & Ewen, 2005). Disproportionately and
persistently high rates of academic underachievement complicate long-
term prospects for this population of young learners (Garcia, Jensen &
Cuellar, 2006). Hispanic children tend to begin school with fewer literacy-
related experiences and skills (Goldenberg, 2001; Lee & Burkam, 2002;
Vernon-Feagans, 2001) and to score well below their non-Hispanic White
and Asian-American peers in reading throughout the school years, ending
up on average about four years behind (August & Hakuta, 1997; August &
Shanahan, 2008; Schnieder, Martinez & Owens, 2006).
Participation in high-quality preschool offers one of the most
potentially beneficial redresses to help close the gap in reading achievement.
Preschool programs that provide rich language and literacy environments
have been shown to enhance acquisition of many early literacy skills that
reliably predict later reading achievement – oral language, phonological
awareness, and print knowledge – with stronger effects observed for
more economically disadvantaged and Hispanic children (Dickinson &
Sprague, 2001; Gormley, Gayer, Phillips, & Dawson, 2005; NELP, 2007;
IRA-NAEYC, 1998; Snow, Burns & Griffin, 1998).
This research examined preschool practices that support Spanish-
speaking ELLs development in one key early literacy domain – vocabulary.
The links between vocabulary size and literacy development are increasingly
well documented in the literature on reading and language development
in monolingual English-speakers (NELP, 2007; Snow, Burns & Griffin,
1998). Children with larger vocabularies typically have more developed
phonological sensitivity as preschoolers (Burgess & Lonigan, 1998) and
better reading comprehension as they progress through the elementary
grades (Hart & Risley, 1995; Snow, Roach, Tabors & Dickinson, 2001).
A recent review of more than 300 empirical studies by the National Early
Literacy Panel produced average correlations between receptive vocabulary
in children five and under and later decoding and comprehension skills of
.35 and .32 respectively (NELP, 2007). Large social class differences in
children’s vocabulary knowledge have been documented starting at age three
and represent a challenge for preschool educators (Hart & Risley, 1995).
26
Dual Language Vocabulary Development
Though far less is known about early literacy in bilingual children, there
is accumulating evidence that oral language skills broadly construed, and
vocabulary specifically, are also foundational to literacy development in
young Spanish-speaking bilinguals (Manis, Lindsey & Bailey, 2004; Rinaldi
& Paez, 2008). Reese, Garnier, Gallimore and Goldenberg (2000) found
that children with greater emergent Spanish literacy skills, including oral
story comprehension, and greater oral proficiency in English at kindergarten
entry, attained higher levels of English reading achievement in middle school,
suggesting that early proficiencies in both languages impact long-term literacy
outcomes. This conclusion is supported by the work of Rinaldi and Paez
(2008) who found that both English and Spanish vocabulary in preschool
predicted English word reading ability in first grade. Not surprisingly,
limitations in depth and breadth of vocabulary are implicated in many of the
difficulties older ELLs experience with English text comprehension (August,
Carlo, Dressler & Snow, 2005). Educational practices that can help close
the substantial vocabulary gaps between low-income, Spanish-speaking
bilinguals and their monolingual peers are therefore worthy of attention
(Snow & Kim, 2001; Tabors, Paez & Lopez, 2003).
One of the primary impetuses for the current preschool expansion is
the potential impact of high-quality preschool experiences on language
and literacy learning. Specific preschool practices linked to better language
outcomes among ethnically diverse, low-income English speakers include
reading books aloud (Arnold & Whitehurst, 1994; Dickinson, 2001; NELP,
2007), vocabulary-rich teacher-child interactions (Dickinson & Smith,
1994), and opportunities for meaning-focused free play (e.g. dramatic
play, playing with blocks, etc.) (Connor, Morrison & Slominski, 2006).
The best-researched of these practices is reading aloud, which has been
shown to have a consistently positive impact on vocabulary acquisition,
particularly when children’s active participation is encouraged using
practices such as dialogic reading (Arnold & Whitehurst, 1994; NELP,
2007) and analytic book conversations (Dickinson, 2001).
Unfortunately, the literature offers far less guidance on effective
preschool literacy practices for ELLs. Existing research on ELL preschool
instruction tends to fall into three categories: 1) experimental or quasi-
experimental evaluation studies focused on language of instruction,
2) qualitative studies of classroom communication, and 3) intervention
studies of specific practices to enhance early literacy acquisition. From the
language of instruction research, there is emerging evidence that bilingual
instruction can enhance children’s language and literacy outcomes in
both the home language and English (e.g. Barnett et al, 2007; Campos,
1995; Gormley, 2007). For example, Barnett et al. (2007) reported on
27
Freedson
an experimental comparison of a two-way bilingual immersion preschool
program in which native Spanish-speaking children alternated weekly
between English and Spanish classroom environments, and a monolingual
English immersion program that used English as the primary medium of
instruction. Barnett et al. found no significant differences between the
two groups of children on measures of English receptive vocabulary or
other English literacy skills, while children in the bilingual program made
significantly greater gains on Spanish language measures. In these and
other such studies (e.g. Campos, 1995; Gormley, 2007; Paul & Jarvis,
1992), however, researchers have focused on general program components
(e.g. use of Spanish instruction measured broadly) rather than on literacy
instruction per se. Such studies shed little light, then, on the specific
classroom literacy practices that account for children’s learning.
Several qualitative studies have addressed this void by offering rich
descriptions of teacher practice. The best-known of such studies, based
on Tabors’ (1997) year-long observation in a Boston-area ESL preschool
classroom, describes the communication strategies with which teachers
supported children’s acquisition of English. These included using
simplified language, extending and expanding children’s talk, and fine-
tuning communication to the child’s level of English proficiency. Because
these studies do not include systematic data on children’s learning, however,
it is impossible to know to what degree the practices they identify actually
support language development.
Several recent intervention studies have demonstrated that, as with
native English speakers, explicit vocabulary discussions and direct
comprehension instruction during English language read-alouds may be
effective supports for English vocabulary acquisition in ELLs, even when
children’s oral proficiency in English is limited (Collins, 2005; Roberts &
Neal, 2004). These interventions were offered only in English, however,
and thus ignore the possibility that children may derive even greater
benefits when some native language support is provided.
Surprisingly absent from the preschool ELL literature are rich
descriptions of the naturally occurring classroom practices of teachers
who effectively support children’s bilingual early literacy development,
combined with measures of children’s learning. Whether some approaches
to the use of Spanish and/or English in the context of specific literacy
practices produce more vocabulary growth than others is as yet unknown.
The current study brings a “language of instruction” perspective to bear on
an examination of early literacy instruction by investigating how effective
preschool teachers of Spanish-speaking English language learners
support children’s learning of vocabulary under a variety of linguistic
28
Dual Language Vocabulary Development
arrangements. Combining data on children’s vocabulary gains over the
course of their pre-kindergarten year in both Spanish and English with
qualitative analysis of group literacy instruction in six classrooms, this
study offers insight into how teachers might best organize instruction to
optimize Spanish-speaking ELL’s vocabulary learning.
Method
Setting and participants
The study was conducted in a large urban, predominantly Hispanic
school district in the southwestern United States where state-funded
pre-kindergarten was available to all 4-year-old children with a primary
home language other than English. Forty-two percent of the district’s
pre-kindergarten children had limited proficiency in English; 91% of
these children spoke Spanish at home. Of the district’s 179 school-based
pre-kindergarten classrooms, 83 were bilingual programs while 10 were
English as a Second Language (ESL) programs, the primary difference
being the availability of a bilingual teacher or lack thereof. The selection
of classrooms for the study began with the nomination by district-level
early childhood supervisors of 10 teachers in both program types who
were perceived to offer high-quality literacy instruction. This procedure
was used in order to control to the degree possible for classroom quality.
Nominated teachers were contacted by phone and asked to describe their
teaching in terms of the approximate amount of English- versus Spanish-
language instruction they provide. From among the eight teachers who
had at least 5 ELL students and who agreed to participate in the study, six
full-day classrooms were selected to represent a range of broad policy-
related models of teacher language use: two bilingual classrooms with a
strong emphasis on Spanish (identified from here forward as classrooms
SB1 and SB2), two bilingual classrooms with a fairly balanced, mixed
use of Spanish and English (MB1 and MB2), and two ESL (English
immersion) classrooms with predominantly English language instruction
(EI1 and EI2). This sampling procedure would allow for the study of
teacher supports for vocabulary learning under a variety of “language of
instruction” arrangements.
The six classrooms were located at four school sites, each in a working
class, predominantly Hispanic neighborhood. Between 78% and 87% of
students at each campus were identified as economically disadvantaged.
Classrooms were of comparable size but differed in student composition
with respect to home language. Classrooms SB1, SB2 and MB2 were
composed of all Spanish-speaking ELLs; classrooms MB1, EI1 and EI2
29
Freedson
each had a cluster of English-dominant or English-only children along with
a cluster of Spanish-speaking ELLs. These differences meant children
in the six classrooms would have differing opportunities to interact with
native-Spanish and native-English-speaking peers, a factor I would need to
consider in my interpretation of findings, though my focus would remain
primarily on teacher practice.
Within each of the six classrooms, potential child participants for the
study were identified based on results of the district-administered Preschool
IDEA Oral English Proficiency Test (Pre-IPT) as limited- or non-English
speakers. All children whose parents returned consent forms were included
in the study. The final child sample, after accounting for the attrition of 5
participants due to family relocation, consisted of 53 Spanish-speaking
4-year-olds of Mexican-descent backgrounds, all of whom qualified for
the free school lunch program under federal poverty guidelines. Table 1
describes teacher and child language backgrounds, official program type
and language of instruction model, and number of child participants for
each of the six selected classrooms.
Child outcomes measures
To measure children’s dual language receptive vocabulary, instruments
were chosen that met three basic criteria: 1) they offered parallel though
not psychometrically equatable versions in English and Spanish; 2) they
were appropriate for use with 4-year-old children, and 3) they were used
in previous research allowing for direct comparison with child outcomes
in other studies. Children’s receptive vocabulary was assessed in English
using the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised, Forms A (pre-test)
and B (post-test) (PPVT-R; Dunn & Dunn, 1981) and in Spanish using
the Test de Vocabulario en Imagenes Peabody (TVIP) (Dunn, Padilla,
Lugo & Dunn, 1986). For each item on these procedurally identical tests,
children are asked to point to the picture among four picture plates that
represents the vocabulary word spoken by the examiner. Scaled (standard)
scores were used in all analyses. It should be noted that age-norms for
both of these vocabulary tests are based on the abilities of monolingual
children, and thus use of the standard scores involves comparison of
bilingual children in the sample with monolingual peers of the same age.
These instruments have nonetheless been used widely in research with
both monolingual English-speakers and bilingual Spanish-speakers. The
PPVT also serves as the principal measure of children’s learning by which
preschool programs funded under the federal government’s Early Reading
First program are evaluated (US Department of Education, 2008).
30
Dual Language Vocabulary Development
31
Classroom
SB1 SB2 MB1 MB2 EI1 EI6
Teacher
language
background
Native English
speaker,
bilingual
Native Spanish
speaker,
bilingual
Native
Spanish-
English
bilingual
Native
English
speaker,
bilingual
Native English
speaker,
some Spanish
proficiency
Native English
speaker,
monolingual
Student
language
background
17 ELL
Spanish
speakers
14 ELL
Spanish
speakers,
2 Spanish-
English
bilinguals
9 ELL Spanish
speakers, 6
native English
speakers,
2 native
bilinguals
18 ELL
Spanish
speakers
9 ELL Spanish
speakers, 9
native English
speakers
8 ELL Spanish
speakers. 10
native English
speakers
or native
bilinguals
Official
Program Type
and Language
of Instruction
Model
Bilingual
(Predominantly
Spanish)
Bilingual
(Predominantly
Spanish)
Bilingual
(Mixed
language)
Bilingual
(Mixed
language)
ESL
(English
immersion)
ESL
(English
immersion)
Child Sample 9 9 9 10 8 8
TABLE 1. Teacher and Student Language Background, Program Type and Child Sample in Six Pre-kindergarten Classrooms
Freedson
Procedures
To measure achievement gains in vocabulary, children were assessed
near the beginning and end of the school year by trained bilingual research
assistants. Assessment sessions were held one-on-one at the school sites
within a two-week period between late September and early October, and
again in mid- to late-May. To foster children’s comfort with the assessment
situation, tests were administered first in the children’s stronger language,
Spanish, then in English. Instructions for the PPVT were presented in both
English and Spanish to ensure that incorrect responses or failure to respond
to particular test items could not be attributed to a misunderstanding of the
task itself.
Teachers’ use of English and Spanish in the context of early literacy
instruction was explored during classroom observations. Five day-long
observations were conducted by me in each classroom at approximately
one-month intervals from November to May. Data were collected in the
form of written field notes and the audio-recording of morning circle time
(a whole-group event that occurred daily in all six classrooms) and any
additional literacy-related group instruction that occurred during the visit.
During classroom visits, the researcher assumed the role of “privileged
observer” (Wolcott, 1988), observing instruction from one unobtrusive
spot in the classroom and interacting with teachers and children as little as
possible. Verbatim transcripts of group instruction in each classroom were
completed shortly after each observation.
Data Analysis
In order to investigate early literacy teaching practices under varying
“language of instruction” arrangements, it was first necessary to validate
use of the three dual language categories that guided the selection of
sample classrooms. This was accomplished using the transcripts of
group instruction completed after the first two observation visits. For
each transcript, each of the teachers’ “public” utterances was coded by
language – either English or Spanish − allowing language of instruction
to be quantified. Utterances in Spanish were tallied and calculated as a
percent of the total teacher utterances for each classroom observation.
Based on this analysis it became clear that the six classrooms could indeed
be categorized according to three language of instruction models: Spanish-
emphasis bilingual instruction (more than 70% Spanish); fairly balanced
bilingual instruction (45-65% Spanish instruction), and predominantly
English instruction (less than 15% Spanish instruction). Language of
instruction coding was completed for each remaining classroom visit,
32
Dual Language Vocabulary Development
Following each classroom observation, written field notes were matched
to verbatim transcripts of instruction to provide as complete a picture of
literacy teaching practice as possible. These composite representations
were then coded using an iterative process by which coding categories were
generated to describe: 1) the nature of the group activity (e.g. reading aloud,
music and movement); 2) the literacy focus (e.g. general language and
comprehension, explicit vocabulary-building, letter-sound relationships);
3) the approach to dual language use (e.g. concurrent translation,
predominantly Spanish - separation of languages, English-only); 4) the
instructional materials used; 5) type of comprehension scaffold (e.g. open-
ended questions; hands-on activity or movement; explaining or defining),
and 6) level of ELL student engagement. These categories were the basis
for development of descriptive profiles of each classroom.
Children’s gain scores representing change between pre-test and post-
test were calculated for receptive vocabulary in Spanish and English. For
both measures, each classroom was given a rank order, ranging from one
(designating the classroom in which children made the greatest vocabulary
gains, on average) to six (designating the classroom in which children
made the lowest vocabulary gains, on average). These rankings were then
used to determine the three higher-achieving classrooms and three lower-
achieving classrooms for vocabulary development in Spanish and English.
Children’s pre-test, post-test, gain scores, and ranking for Spanish and
English receptive vocabulary are presented in Table 3.
33
Teacher’s Instructional Talk
Classroom Total % Spanish Total % English
SB1 73.4 26.6
SB2 86.9 13.1
MB1 66.4 33.6
MB2 53.4 46.6
EI1 13.0 87.0
EI2 0.5 99.5
TABLE 2. Average Daily Percent of Spanish versus English Language
Teacher Talk During Group Language and Literacy Instruction
allowing for
the calculation of an average daily percentage of Spanish- versus
English -
language teacher talk during language and literacy instruction for
each classroom. Results of this analysis are presented in Table 2.
Freedson
34
Spanish Receptive Vocabulary English Receptive Vocabulary
Classroom N Pre-test Post-test Gain Classroom
Rank
Pre-test Post-test Gain Classroom
Rank
SB1 9 93.4 104.5 11.1 3 55.8 72.0 16.2 3
SB2 9 87.2 106.2 19.0 2 58.4 77.2 18.8 2
MB1 9 88.1 95.0 6.9 4 57.6 70.9 13.3 4
MB2 10 79.7 99.3 19.6 1 52.2 52.0 -0.2 6
EI1 8 92.2 86.4 -5.8 6 59.2 78.4 19.2 1
EI2 8 78.5 80.2 1.7 5 48.3 59.6 10.3 5
TABLE 3. Mean Receptive Vocabulary Scores and Classroom Rankings
Higher-achieving classrooms Lower-achieving classrooms
Returning to the classroom profiles and following an analytic strategy
similar to that used by Pressley and colleagues in their study of effective first
grade reading instruction (Wharton-McDonald, Pressley & Hampston, 1998),
I was able to determine instructional supports for vocabulary development
found in all six classrooms, as well as the ways in which teachers varied
in provision of those supports. Examination of the profiles coupled with
more in-depth examination of classroom discourse in the higher- and lower-
achieving classrooms was then used to identify possible explanations for the
greater effectiveness of some teachers over others.
Results
Common features of instruction across classrooms
Instruction in the pre-kindergarten classrooms in the study had
numerous features in common. In all six classrooms, teachers provided a
significant amount of teacher-directed instruction with a focus on language
and literacy. This instruction was conducted exclusively in a whole-group
setting in all but one classroom and was organized around several core
activities, each with the potential to contribute to children’s language
development. These included a morning greeting and calendar routine,
music and movement time, a teacher-led book reading session, explicit
phonics instruction of some kind, and independent center play. Within
the context of these activities, all six teachers selected materials based
on particular themes or topics of study and addressed to varying degrees
the domains of language and literacy outlined in voluntary state pre-
kindergarten curriculum guidelines, including vocabulary development.
In this section, I briefly describe each of these core activities and the
dimensions along which instruction varied within each.
In all six classrooms, teachers began each day gathering children for
a morning circle. This activity involved some type of greeting routine,
management of class business (such as taking attendance and assigning
classroom jobs), and updates to calendar and weather charts. In each
classroom, teachers orchestrated these activities in a highly ritualized
manner and emphasized basic concepts such as days of the week, numbers,
and weather terms. Teachers differed, however, in their approach to the use
of English and Spanish, in the relative emphasis they placed on language
versus print skills, and in the strategies they used to both encourage and
scaffold children’s active participation.
In all six classrooms, teachers also engaged children in language
learning through the singing of songs, fingerplays and chants. Selections
included greeting songs, nursery rhymes, calendar or weather songs, and
Dual Language Vocabulary Development
35
Freedson
concept songs (e.g. alphabet, numbers, body parts) from various children’s
collections. While singing, teachers highlighted key vocabulary through the
use of gestures and movements. They differed to some degree in their choice
of language, with teachers in bilingual classrooms more often including
Spanish or bilingual songs than English immersion classroom teachers.
More than any other activity, however, music and movement was used by all
six teachers to build English language skills, even in the classrooms where
teachers otherwise emphasized Spanish language development.
Reading aloud occurred daily in each classroom and served as the
focal activity around which many language learning opportunities were
organized. All six teachers chose theme-related books, used an animated
reading style, helped children connect their own life experiences to book
topics, and stopped on occasion while reading to discuss new concepts
and word meanings. Teachers differed, however, in the amount of
time devoted to reading, the types and quality of books they read, the
language of instruction, the teaching strategies they used to scaffold
ELL’s comprehension and build vocabulary, and in the level of student
engagement among ELLs that resulted.
All six teachers provided explicit instruction in letters, letter-sounds,
and decoding. This instruction sometimes took the form of phonological
awareness training, with children clapping syllables or identifying
beginning sounds in familiar words. In several bilingual classrooms
children recited a daily alphabet chant using a Spanish-language phonics
chart and completed simple worksheets. Some teachers used a letter-of-the
week approach, providing multiple, hands-on opportunities for children
to learn letter names and sounds. Others focused more on teaching these
skills in context, for example, helping children apply knowledge of letters
and sounds to reading and writing simple words in the morning message.
In some classrooms, children were taught letter names and sounds
exclusively in Spanish or exclusively in English, while in others they were
given opportunities to learn alphabet skills in both languages.
Finally, children in all six classrooms spent a portion of the day
engaged in free play at independent centers. Most classrooms included
centers for dramatic play, block play, book-reading, puzzles and games,
emergent writing and art, and science exploration. Because the focus of
this study was group instruction, however, children’s independent play
will not be discussed at greater length.
In the sections that follow, I identify the three classrooms that were
most effective in supporting children’s gains in Spanish and English
receptive vocabulary and describe characteristics of literacy instruction
that distinguished these higher-achieving classrooms from their less
36
Dual Language Vocabulary Development
effective counterparts. Key characteristics of literacy-related instruction
in each classroom are summarized in Table 4 (See Appendix A).
Higher-achieving classrooms: Spanish receptive vocabulary
The greatest gains for Spanish receptive vocabulary were made by
children in classrooms MB2, SB2, and SB1, where standard scores on the
TVIP improved by an average of 19.6, 19.0 and 11.0 points respectively.
These gains represent dramatic vocabulary growth for an 8-month period,
and brought children, most of whom began the school year nearly a full
standard deviation or more below age norms for Spanish vocabulary,
to meet or exceed those norms by year’s end (average post-test TVIP
scores in Classrooms MB2, SB2, and SB1 were 99.3, 107.3, and 104.5,
respectively; the population average is 100). By contrast, children in
lower-achieving classrooms (MB1, EI1 and EI2) gained no more than 7
points on this measure, on average, and, in the case of the two English
immersion classrooms, either made no progress or loss ground relative to
age norms.
In addition to the practices that teachers in the higher-achieving
classrooms MB2, SB2, and SB1 held in common with the other pre-
kindergarten teachers, there were several features of language and literacy
instruction in these classrooms that distinguished them in ways that may
account for children’s substantial growth in Spanish vocabulary.
Lots of read-aloud time
The coding of teachers’ instructional talk by activity indicated that
teachers in the higher-achieving Spanish vocabulary classrooms (MB2,
SB2, and SB1) devoted a greater proportion of instruction to reading aloud
and discussion of books - 25%-34% of observed instruction - compared
with 19% or less in lower-achieving classrooms. These teachers read to
their students more often (usually at least two books per day), and spent
more instructional time engaged in before-, during- and after-reading
discussions than teachers in the lower-achieving classrooms.
Language of instruction
The teachers in classrooms MB2, SB2 and SB1 were all bilingual and
provided students with a significant amount of instruction in Spanish. At
the same time, these teachers’ dual language practices differed in several
noteworthy ways. First, the proportion of Spanish language talk they used
during language and literacy instruction ranged from a high of 87% in
classroom SB2 to just 53% in classroom MB2. Second, while the teacher
in SB2 was a native Spanish speaker of Mexican descent, the teachers in
37
Freedson
SB1 and MB2 were native English speakers of European descent who
had learned Spanish as adolescents or adults. This difference was reflected
in the quality of teachers’ Spanish-language vocabulary, grammar, and
pronunciation, with the native speaker modeling a more lexically rich
Spanish with more native-like pronunciation than her counterparts. Finally,
teachers varied in the models of dual language instruction they enacted.
In classroom SB2, the teacher practiced a strict separation of languages,
choosing either all Spanish or all English for particular activities but
rarely mixing languages. In classroom MB2, the teacher used a concurrent
translation approach, translating most of her talk during book-reading and
other instructional activities either from English to Spanish or Spanish
to English, one utterance at a time. The teacher in classroom SB1 chose
something of a middle path: She used a sequential bilingual approach
during explicit vocabulary instruction and calendar time (for example,
conducting each segment of the calendar routine first in Spanish, and then
in English), and later shifted to a Spanish-only approach for the more
cognitively challenging task of book-reading and related discussion.
While interesting, these differences were apparently less important
for children’s language learning than the mere provision of significant
amounts of Spanish language instruction in all three higher-achieving
classrooms (MB2, SB2, and SB1). By contrast, the two lowest-achieving
classrooms on this measure were the English immersion settings (EI1 and
EI2) where the teacher spoke little or no Spanish. The remaining features
of instruction in the three higher-achieving Spanish vocabulary classrooms
must be considered in light of their occurrence through a largely Spanish-
language medium.
High quality Spanish language reading materials
While all teachers attempted to choose books preschool-aged
children would find engaging, teachers in the three higher-achieving
Spanish vocabulary classrooms (MB2, SB2, and SB1) read children high
quality Spanish-language books from a wide variety of genres, including
translations of classic English-language children’s literature and content-
rich informational texts. In classroom SB2, for example, during a thematic
unit on bugs, the teacher read Eric Carle’s La Oruga Muy Hambrienta
(The Very Hungry Caterpillar) in the morning, followed by the reading of
an informational big book on spiders, Como Viven Las Arañas (The Life of
Spiders) in the afternoon. In classroom MB2, children read Ruth Krauss’
The Carrot Seed, followed later that morning by Eric Carle’s informational
story The Tiny Seed, both of which the teacher translated page by page into
Spanish. These selections afforded children immersion in both the literary
38
Dual Language Vocabulary Development
language and rich vocabulary of high-quality storybooks and exposure to
related content and vocabulary in non-fiction texts.
By contrast, teachers in lower-achieving Spanish vocabulary
classrooms (MB1, EI2 and EI1) either relied primarily on Spanish-
language predictable books and language experience charts containing a
limited breadth of vocabulary, or used books exclusively in English that
afforded children few opportunities to broaden their repertoire of words
and concepts in Spanish.
Instructional talk focused on building comprehension
Teachers in all three higher-achieving Spanish vocabulary classrooms
(MB2, SB2, and SB1) used instructional talk during Spanish-language
or bilingual read alouds to build comprehension and reinforce children’s
learning. They asked a combination of closed- and open-ended questions,
made comments, and offered explanations that served at once to scaffold
and closely monitor children’s understanding of key details from the text,
but also to encourage analysis of character’s feelings, story events and
new information. The following Spanish-only dialogue is an example of
one such language-rich exchange from Classroom SB1. Here the teacher
used both known-answer and predictive-interpretive questions, as well as
explanation of key plot details, to help children comprehend a scene from
a Spanish translation of the children’s classic, Curious George:
T: El libro dice: “Los bomberos asaltaron a las bombas de incendio y las
escaleras. Ding dong, ding dong. Bajense todos. A prisa, a prisa.”En
donde están saliendo? (The book says, “The firemen grabbed their
firehoses and ladders. Ding dong. Everyone down. Quickly, quickly!”
Where are they going?
)
C1: A la casa de Jorge. (To George’s house)
C2: Está quemandose? (Is it on fire?)
C1: No!
T: Piensen que está quemando de verdad? (Do they think it’s really
on fire?)
Cs: Si. (Yes!)
[After the firefighters discover that George’s house is not really on fire.]
C: Estan enojados. (They’re angry.)
T: Porqué están enojados? (Why are they angry?)
C: Ellos pensaban que estaba quemandose pero no era cierto. (They
thought it was burning but it wasn’t true.)
39
Freedson
T: Verdad? Porque el estaba jugando con el telefono, verdad. Qué pi
-
ensan que van a hacer los bomberos ahora? (Right, because he was
playing with telephone, wasn’t he. What do you think the firemen are
going to do now?)
Of particular note in the above sequence is the ease with which
children ask questions and share ideas about the story, likely a result
of the opportunity they had to do so using their stronger language, but
also of the regularity with which book conversations occurred in these
classrooms. During most observation sessions, ELL children in the
higher-achieving Spanish vocabulary classrooms were highly engaged
during book-reading, so eager to comment or respond to questions that at
times chaos ensued, requiring teachers to issue constant reminders of the
rules of participation.
In lower-achieving classrooms EI1 and EI2, by contrast, children’s
participation in sophisticated book conversations was hampered by their
limited English abilities. In the lower-achieving bilingual classroom
(MB1), on the other hand, children’s participation in analytic book
discussions was hampered not by language but by the types of materials
read. For small-group literacy instruction, this teacher typically chose
either predictable books too restricted in story elements or informational
content to generate the kinds of higher-level conversations we see
above, or language experience charts that were limited in complexity by
children’s own 4-year-old Spanish language abilities, and thus afforded
few opportunities for comprehension building.
Teachers in the higher-achieving Spanish vocabulary classrooms (MB2,
SB2, and SB1) also supported comprehension by making children conscious
of their own learning. During the shared reading of a Spanish-language
informational text about spiders, for example, the teacher in Classroom
SB2 read a passage that explained how spiders suck the blood of insects
they trap rather than eating them. The teacher followed this passage by
pointing out to children that “ya aprendimos algo que no sabiamos”
(now
we learned something we didn’t know), encouraging children to repeat in
Spanish the gruesome yet fun new fact they had learned. Similar kinds of
metacognitive teacher talk have been associated with language and literacy
gains among young English-speaking monolinguals (Dickinson, 2001).
Explicit discussions of Spanish vocabulary
Teachers in the higher-achieving Spanish vocabulary classrooms
(MB2, SB2, and SB1) placed a consistently strong emphasis on Spanish
vocabulary development across all classroom activities and particularly in
40
Dual Language Vocabulary Development
the context of book-reading. While all six teachers also supported learning
of English vocabulary, these three teachers engaged children in explicit,
Spanish-only or bilingual discussions of new words and concepts. During
read-alouds, they used teaching strategies that included both higher-
level discussion of word definitions and less complex labeling talk in
which children were asked simply to name or describe objects in book
illustrations. The following is an example of definitional talk, in which
the teacher in classroom SB2 uses a think-aloud strategy to guide children
toward an understanding of the word ‘enemigos’ (enemies).
T: [Reading from the informational text on spiders]. “Tienen enemigos
las arañas.” ¿Qué quiere decir ‘enemigos’? (“Spiders have enemies.”
What does ‘enemies’ mean?)
C1: Pajaros. (Birds.)
T: Enemigos son pajaros? (Enemies are birds?)
C2: No, los pajaros comen las arañas. (No, birds eat spiders.)
T: Entonces, si yo veo este retrato, veo que el pajaro está comiendo una
araña y yo sé que no está jugando con la araña, verdad? (So, if I look
at this photo, I see that the bird is eating a spider, and I know it’s not
playing with the spider, right?)
Cs: No.
N: Yo no sé qué son enemigos pero si yo miro y leo aqui, me doy cuenta
de que el pájaro no es amigo de la araña. Vamos a verla ahorita. “Las
avispas son enemigos de las arañas.” Las avispas son amigas? (I
don’t know what “enemies” are but if I look and read here, I realize
that the bird is no friend of the spider. Let’s read more. “Wasps are
enemies of spiders.” Are wasps their friends?)
In another classroom, the teacher previewed theme- or book-related
words before reading. During one observation, she gave definitional clues
to help children guess the “Christmas” words on her list (e.g. North Pole,
polar bears, reindeer). Each word was printed in Spanish and English,
color-coded by language, and accompanied by a drawing.
In Classroom MB2, the teacher’s vocabulary talk was less complex,
involving more naming and describing of objects in book illustrations than
giving definitions, but nevertheless densely packed with opportunities
for both word-learning and comprehension-building, as in the following
discussion from the reading and translation of The Carrot Seed:
T: Dice, “A carrot came up.” Es una zanahoria, verdad? La zanahoria...
la parte anaranjado es el raiz, verdad? It’s the root of the plant. Y aqui
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Freedson
están las hojas. Y cómo creen que siente este niño ahora? (It says, “A
carrot came up.” It’s a carrot, right? The carrot... the orange part is
the root, right? And here are the leaves. And how do you think the boy
feels now?)
Cs: Bien!
(Good!)
C: Feliz (Happy.)
T: Porqué?
(Why?)
C: Porque creció la zanahoria. (Because the carrot grew!)
T: It was a carrot. Mira qué tan grandote es. It’s huge! It’s enormous!
Just as the little boy had known it would. El siempre sabia que su za
-
nahoria iba a crecer. (...Look how huge it is! It’s huge! It’s enormous!
He always knew that his carrot was going to grow.)
Finally, in those instances where teachers lacked knowledge of a word
in Spanish, they often enlisted students’ help to resolve their uncertainties.
This practice brought Spanish vocabulary learning into children’s conscious
awareness while positioning the teacher as a second language learner,
thereby establishing children’s status as Spanish-language experts.
Higher-achieving classrooms: English receptive vocabulary
The greatest gains for English receptive vocabulary were made by
children in classrooms EI1, SB2, and SB1, where standard scores on the
PPVT improved by an average of 19.2, 18.8 and 16.0 points respectively.
These gains were comparable in magnitude to the Spanish vocabulary gains
made by children in the higher-achieving Spanish vocabulary classrooms
(MB2, SB2 and SB1) and, in two of three cases, occurred in the same
classrooms (SB2 and SB1). Although these gains are substantial, because
the children in the study began the school year so much further behind age
norms in English than in Spanish, their gains were not sufficient to bring
children on par with native English speakers.
It should be noted that in all but one of the six classrooms, children
made significant gains in English vocabulary according to criteria set by
the U.S. Department of Education, at least seven points on the PPVT.
Interestingly, it was the concurrent translation bilingual classroom (MB2),
the classroom with the highest Spanish vocabulary gains, in which
children made no measurable progress in English vocabulary relative to
age norms.
Language of instruction
Classrooms in which children made the greatest English vocabulary
gains varied widely with respect to language of instruction. Classroom
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Dual Language Vocabulary Development
EI1 was an English immersion setting in which the teacher used English
for the vast majority of group instruction (87% of all teacher utterances
were in English). However, unlike the teacher in classroom EI2 (a lower-
achieving English vocabulary classroom) who spoke exclusively in
English, this teacher also wove the use of Spanish into her instructional
talk. During music and movement time, she included songs with Spanish
lyrics. During the calendar routine, she asked her Spanish-speakers how
to say the day of the week or date in Spanish. And in the context of
book-reading and other group activities, she occasionally translated key
phrases or asked children “how do you say x in Spanish?” The teacher’s
use of Spanish, though limited, served several purposes: 1) it signaled the
worth she attributed to her ELL students’ home language; 2) it scaffolded
children’s participation in instructional conversations, and 3) it positioned
ELL students as language “experts” capable of helping both the teacher and
the English-only students in the classroom learn Spanish. The following
brief excerpts illustrate this approach:
Excerpt 1 [Introducing a new book]
T: Does anybody have a guess what this book could be about?
C1: I know what it is!
C2: I know what it is!
T: Raise your hands without screaming out.... Maria... qué es este libro?
What do you think this book is about? Maria?
C3: Animals
T: Animals. Very good. This book is about animals. It’s called “Peek-a-
Boo at the...
Cs: Zoo!
Excerpt 2 [From a lesson on sorting]
T: Let me show you what I have today. Do you know what this is?
[showing children plastic apples, oranges, grapes, and bananas]
Cs: Fruit
T: Fruit. Cómo se dice en español?
C1: Fruta
C2: Fruta
T: Fruta. Okay. We need to sort it, okay. We need to put it in groups that
look the same. Necesitan grupos con la misma cosa. We’re gonna put
it in groups that have the same thing.
Interestingly, the other two higher-achieving English vocabulary
classrooms were both predominantly Spanish-instruction bilingual settings.
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The teachers in classrooms SB2 and SB1 used English for just 13% and
26% of instructional talk, respectively. While limited in quantity, English-
language instruction in these classrooms was organized strategically to
maximize children’s literacy-related language learning. For example, in
classroom SB2 the teacher used English for afternoon science or social
studies lessons related to the current theme. In adherence to this teacher’s
preferred “separation of languages” model, these lessons covered content
in English which overlapped with that of the Spanish-language story
and information books the class had read in the morning. This approach
harnessed children’s conceptual familiarity with content they had already
explored in Spanish, affording opportunities to revisit or expand children’s
background knowledge while building English-language vocabulary.
In Classroom SB1, English language learning was infused into a wider
array of instructional routines, directly adjacent to (but not concurrent
with)
the teaching of the same content in Spanish. For example, the teacher
conducted each segment of the highly repetitive calendar routine first in
Spanish, and then in English. She also taught theme-related vocabulary,
introducing and discussing each word first in Spanish, and then in English.
Rather than simply translate each utterance, however, she raised children’s
conscious awareness of learning concept labels in two languages using the
“en ingles se dice” (in English we say) or “¿Cómo se dice .....en ingles?
(How do you say that in English?) form.
By contrast, teachers in the bilingual classrooms where English vo
-
cabulary gains were more limited −classrooms MB1 and MB2− provided
English language instruction primarily within the context of a concurrent
translation model. Books in English or Spanish were translated one line
or page at a time; the calendar routine was translated one utterance at a
time, and so forth. This approach likely had the unintended consequence
of training children to limit their attention during English language teacher
talk in anticipation of the Spanish translation that was sure to follow.
High-density English-language vocabulary instruction
Teachers in all three higher-achieving English vocabulary classrooms
(EI1, SB2 and SB1) provided a density of opportunities for English
vocabulary learning. While book reading was a primary vehicle for
teaching new words in all three classrooms, teachers took advantage of
every activity context to draw children’s attention to words and to explain
word meanings. In classroom SB1, the teacher orchestrated a discussion of
eight to ten theme-related words that included definitions and synonyms in
44
Dual Language Vocabulary Development
Spanish as well as English translations before reading aloud each morning,
and then revisited related words and concepts in English using a photo
library each afternoon. In classroom SB2, the teacher used a combination
of English-language concept songs (e.g. songs about body parts, action
words, etc.) and big books with science or social studies themes to support
learning of both more and less common words gleaned from the songs or
texts. And in classroom EI1, the teacher emphasized vocabulary learning
during English-language phonics instruction, giving meaning-based clues
to help children guess words beginning with particular letter sounds.
Throughout the instructional day, teachers missed few opportunities to
explain concepts, define words, and raise children’s awareness of their
own English language word learning.
Multiple scaffolds to support comprehension
and acquisition of English
Teachers in the higher-achieving English vocabulary classrooms (EI1,
SB2 and SB1) used multiple scaffolds to support ELL’s comprehension of
instructional content in English and English language acquisition. These
scaffolds included: 1) translating key words or content into Spanish; 2)
modeling of word-meanings using actions, gestures, and facial expressions;
3) encouraging children’s mirroring of teacher movements to reflect
English language talk; 4) applying real-life objects or pictures referents;
5) using simplified language, repetition, and expansion of children’s
talk;
6) using praise and non-threatening corrective feedback; 7) focusing talk
on the present activity context (rather than distant or abstract topics)
and meaningful topics to children (e.g. family); 8) carefully sequencing
teacher talk to break learning into small, comprehensible steps; 9) targeting
questions to the English language abilities of individual ELL children, and
10) refocusing and drawing individual ELL children into instructional
activities by name. While some of these strategies were used by teachers
in all six classrooms, teachers in the higher-achieving classrooms used
most or all of them, often enacting several strategies simultaneously.
During one lesson in Classroom SB2, for example, children listened to
a tape recording of an English-language story with highly repetitive text
(We’re Going On a Bear Hunt), while the teacher read along from an
accompanying big book. As she read, she pointed to the illustrations and
modeled each action in the story as the children mirrored her movements.
The teacher also explained key words and phrases from the text in Spanish
and corrected children’s movements when necessary.
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The following excerpt from Classroom EI1 provides an example of these
many overlapping scaffolds from a predominantly English-language classroom
context. The teacher used instructional talk that was carefully sequenced and
highly explicit. She focused on concrete and meaningful referents (e.g. the
sky seen through the classroom window, Mommy, birthdays) and created
frequent, well-structured spaces for ELL children’s participation targeted at
individual levels of English ability. For example, she provided one child
with a brief oral list of options from which to choose and another with a
yes or no question. She also expanded on children’s utterances and built
extensive repetition into instruction in the form of patterned questions and a
repetitive song. Furthermore, she translated a few key phrases into Spanish
and constantly referred to individual ELL children by name, offering praise
and drawing them into the instructional conversation.
[From the morning calendar routine]
T: Somebody has a...
Cs: Birthday
T: A birthday... and she’s raising her hand. Who has a birthday on that
day?
Cs: Alex
T: Alex. I think we might have to celebrate Alex’s birthday on Friday.
Alex, we’ll have to talk to Mommy about that. Alex, do you know
what you would like to bring on your birthday? Cupcakes, a cake, ice
cream? What would you like to bring?
C: Cake.
T: Cake. Sounds good to me. Maybe we’ll have a cake on Alex’s birth
-
day. Are you all ready to sing the weather song?
Cs: Yes.
T: I need somebody up here to help me lead the weather song.
C: Me, me, me
T: [Picks an ELL child who didn’t raise her hand] Tomasita. Go look
outside. Let’s see Tomasa. Is it raining outside? You know what. Let’s
ask Tomasa if it’s cloudy outside.
Cs: Is it cloudy outside? [No response from child]
T: Let’s ask Tomasa is it foggy outside?
Cs: Is it foggy outside?
C: No
T: Is it snowing outside? [Pointing to the picture on her weather
wheel?]
Cs: Is it snowing outside?
C: No
46
Dual Language Vocabulary Development
T: Is it sunny?
Cs: Is it sunny?
C: [Shakes head]
T: No sun. No hay sol. No. Is it cloudy outside?
Cs: Is it cloudy outside?
C: [Nods yes.]
T: Está nublado. Okay. C’mon up here Tomasa. Let’s sing to Tomasa.
You ready to sing to her and she’s gonna tell us what the weather is
like today. Here we go.
All: [singing] What’s the weather like today, like today, like today. What’s
the weather like today? Today is...
C: Cloudy
T: Cloudy. Very good. And up here we’re already on cloudy so we’re
not going to change it.
During a subsequent read-aloud, this teacher played a tape of animal
sounds, had children guess the animal, pointed to illustrations of the
animal, and had children act out the animal with body movements, all of
which ensured the active participation of ELL students.
Interestingly, children in the other English immersion classroom (EI2)
made far more limited English vocabulary gains, despite the relatively
greater proportion of English language instruction to which children were
exposed. In this classroom, the teacher used many practices known to
support language development in native English speakers. She engaged
children in high-level instructional conversations about lexically rich
storybooks. She explained book content, asked both closed- and open-
ended questions, expanded upon children’s talk, and provided feedback.
The following is an example from her discussion of the book Whale Song,
by Diane Sheldon:
T: [Reading the last line of the book]. “Then far away on the breath of
the wind she heard...Lily....Lily... The whales were calling her name.”
Did you hear the whales? That’s why some people call it singing.
They don’t really say words but it sounds like music. Why do you
think the whales were singing?
C1: Cause they were saying ‘Thank you.’
T: What does the little girl give to the whales? Do you remember?
C2: A flower.
T: She had dropped that flower into the ocean. So Laura thinks that the
whales were singing as a way of telling her, ‘Thank you.’ What do
you think?
C3: I think because she’s believin’ in the whales, probably they just gave
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her a present for the whales to show up.
T: Oh, you think that the present that they gave her was just showing up
because she waited and waited, didn’t she. She dropped her flower
and then she went down and waited until it got dark. And she didn’t
see any whales. But they came during the night.
While the above conversation was both analytic and interactive, none
of the child comments was made by an ELL student. Instead, many of the
Spanish-speakers in this classroom were observed during this activity and
others to be largely disengaged from instruction, possibly due to difficulties
comprehending the teacher’s complex English language talk, and the
teacher did little to refocus them. Despite the presence of many elements
known to support vocabulary development in native-English speakers, the
teacher’s read-aloud talk in Classroom EI2 offered relatively few of the
scaffolds necessary to ensure participation and learning by ELL
students.
Discussion
As growing numbers of Spanish-speaking English language learners
enter publicly-funded preschool programs, how to best organize preschool
instruction to support emerging bilingual children’s literacy success is
being increasingly debated by researchers, policy-makers, and practitioners
alike. Missing from the literature to guide this debate has been systematic
research on the everyday instructional practices of preschool teachers who
effectively support literacy-related learning in this population of young
children. The present study sought to address this gap by investigating
the practices of preschool teachers who provide varying combinations
of English and/or Spanish language and literacy instruction, and the
receptive vocabulary growth of their Spanish-speaking ELL students in
both languages. The study’s findings point to several conclusions about
effective preschool vocabulary supports for young bilingual learners.
Children who experienced the greatest gains in Spanish receptive
vocabulary were privy to a set of instructional practices that have much
in common with preschool practices known to support English vocabulary
development in native English speakers. They were read to often, and were
read high-quality books of diverse genres that exposed them to the literary
language of classic children’s storybooks and informational texts. They
were also exposed to instructional talk and engaged in book conversations
that fostered both basic comprehension and higher-level analysis of book
content. This finding is convergent with the far more extensive research
literature on the contribution of literacy practices such as analytic book
conversations and dialogic reading to vocabulary development in preschool
48
Dual Language Vocabulary Development
children from low-income English-speaking backgrounds (Dickinson, 2001;
Hargrave & Senechal, 2000; NELP, 2007; Whitehurst, et al., 1994). It is also
consistent with the early childhood read-aloud practices highlighted in the
IRA-NAEYC Joint Position Statement, Learning to Read and Write (1998),
which recommends that teachers “ask predictive and analytic questions”
and foster conversations that induce higher-level thinking (p.7).
Unique to the present study was the finding that in order for these
practices to support Spanish vocabulary development in young ELLs, a
substantial portion of teachers’ instructional talk must be in Spanish, though
it need not be exclusively so. Also unique to this study was the finding
that children made the greatest Spanish vocabulary gains in classrooms
where teachers provided a great deal of incidental exposure to and explicit
discussion of Spanish vocabulary, particularly in the context of Spanish-
language book-reading. Children in classrooms whose teachers enacted
these practices experienced average improvements in standard TVIP scores
of between 11.0 and 19.6 points, gains that are quite large
compared with
those reported in other recent preschool studies of Spanish-speaking ELLs
(Barnett, et al. 2007; Winsler, Diaz, Espinoza & Rodriguez, 1999). Given
emerging evidence that the early Spanish literacy skills of Spanish-speaking
ELLs, including Spanish vocabulary, are associated with both short- and
long-term English reading achievement (Reese, Garnier, Gallimore &
Goldenborg, 2000; Rinaldi & Paez, 2008), this finding should certainly
give pause to those who would advocate for an English-only approach to
preschool literacy instruction.
Interestingly, a somewhat different set of instructional practices was
associated with the largest vocabulary gains in English. Children’s PPVT
standard scores improved the most not in the ESL classroom with the
most cognitively challenging book discussions or the most semantically
rich teacher talk, as the literature on high-quality language and literacy
preschool environments would lead us to expect (Dickinson & Sprague,
2001), nor was it the classroom in which the teacher spoke the greatest
amount of English overall. Rather, the greatest improvements occurred
in the ESL classroom in which the teacher provided the most strategic
and multi-layered scaffolding of English language and literacy instruction.
In addition to the occasional use of Spanish translation, these scaffolds
included the use of gestures, objects and pictures, simplified language and
repetition, talk focused on topics related to the present activity context,
repetition and the expanding of children’s talk, the targeting of questions at
or just slightly above the English language abilities of individual children,
and provision of feedback. These types of scaffolds are a central feature
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Freedson
of some widely recommended language and literacy practices, such as
Whitehurst and colleagues’ dialogic reading model (Whitehurst et al., 1994)
but not necessarily of others, as seen in the highly analytic and interactive
book discussions in Classroom EI2, which nevertheless tended to exclude
participation of ELL students. It is noteworthy that similar scaffolds were
identified by Tabors (1997) as facilitative of English language acquisition.
By providing empirical evidence of children’s actual vocabulary growth,
not measured in Tabors’ research, the current study has helped validate the
contribution of such scaffolds to children’s English language learning. The
current study also points to the value of using Spanish in English immersion
classrooms in a manner that goes beyond the “low-level communicating”
during the first weeks of school that Tabors (1997) observed, to actually
support children’s comprehension of instruction on an on-going basis.
Of relevance to the language of instruction debate is the finding that
two of the three classrooms that produced the greatest English vocabulary
gains were bilingual classrooms with the highest overall proportions of
Spanish language instructional talk. While teachers in these classrooms
also provided multiple scaffolds to support children’s participation in
English language literacy activities, it is nonetheless remarkable that
children should have learned as much English as they did given their limited
exposure to English relative to other classrooms. Amount of exposure
to a second language is known to be one factor that explains children’s
progress in second language acquisition (Tabors & Snow, 2001). These
results contribute to the growing body of evidence that preschool language
and literacy environments rich in Spanish language teacher talk can foster
the learning of English by Spanish-speaking ELLs as well as or better
than English-only environments, provided children also experience some
support for English acquisition, while also fostering children’s ongoing
development of Spanish (Barnett et al., 2007; Campos, 1995).
The potential impact of English immersion preschool experiences on
the home language skills of English language learners has been the subject
of ongoing controversy. Some researchers have suggested that language-
minority children who attend either monolingual English or bilingual
preschool programs rapidly lose proficiency in their native language (Wong
Fillmore, 1991) while others argue this is not the case (Winsler, Diaz,
Espinosa & Rodriquez, 1999). This study provides further evidence that
language minority children from Spanish-speaking backgrounds are not
likely to gain, and may well lose proficiency in Spanish receptive vocabulary
when placed in a predominantly English language preschool setting (see
also the findings of Barnett et al., 2007). It is also noteworthy that the
50
Dual Language Vocabulary Development
concurrent translation bilingual classroom produced the most limited English
vocabulary gains of all the classrooms in the study. The shortcomings of
concurrent translation vis-a-vis English acquisition have been noted in prior
research with elementary-aged Spanish-speakers (Legaretta, 1979; Ulanoff
& Pucci, 1999) but never before with preschool children.
Limitations and Conclusions
The use of qualitative analysis of preschool language and literacy
instruction combined with quantifiable measures of children’s vocabulary
learning has provided insights into effective language and literacy preschool
practices for Spanish-speaking ELLs not found in prior research. Mixed
methods studies of this nature offer a much needed inside-the-classroom
perspective on how sometimes subtle differences in teachers’ instructional
use of language – be it their approach to the use of English and Spanish or
their scaffolding of children’s comprehension of storybooks – may impact
bilingual children’s language and literacy development in both languages.
Findings from this study must be considered in light of several limitations,
however. First, though it seems certain that differences in language and
literacy instruction did impact children’s learning, because my classroom-
level analyses were descriptive in nature, it is not possible to determine
which combination and to what degree the varying dimensions of
instruction identified in the study contributed to the differential gains in
ELL children’s dual language vocabulary growth. Experimental studies
that compare the impact of key early literacy practices (e.g. analytic
discussions of story content, explicit vocabulary discussions) when offered
under differing language of instruction arrangements should be pursued to
shed further light on the effects of varying instructional configurations on
children’s bilingual literacy development. In addition, the study did not
explore children’s home literacy environments, precluding explanation of
differences in learning as a function of their out-of-school experiences.
Finally, because the student composition in the six classrooms differed by
home language, analyses focused on teachers’ instructional talk alone did
not account for the impact of children’s exposure to varying amounts of
English and Spanish in their interactions with peers. The fact that all of
the students in the three higher-achieving Spanish vocabulary classrooms
were Spanish-speakers, for example, may help explain children’s greater
Spanish vocabulary improvements in those classrooms. Only research
designs which either match classrooms by student composition or
statistically control for exposure to peer language will allow us to determine
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Freedson
the contribution of instructional differences alone.
The study nevertheless identified potentially critical instructional
supports for Spanish-speaking preschool ELL’s vocabulary development. It
also shed light on the manner in which these supports may differ depending
whether the program goal is English language learning or truly bilingual
development, and whether instruction is offered in English, Spanish, or some
combination of the two. Given the role bilingual vocabulary development
likely plays in Spanish-speaking children’s literacy success, the evidence
provided in this study is particularly important. Policy-makers and teacher
educators committed to enhancing preschool quality for this population
of young learners can use such evidence to prepare teachers with a full
repertoire of strategies to support ELL’s bilingual vocabulary learning,
and thus help ensure that children have a solid linguistic foundation with
which to face future educational challenges.
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Freedson
56
Classroom Literacy Activities Language of
instruction
Literacy Focus
and Discourse
Environment
Comprehension
Scaffolds
Instructional
Materials
SB1 Morning greeting /
calendar
Music & movement
Shared writing
Reading aloud
Skills worksheets
Phonics instruction
(Letter of the Week)
Explicit vocabulary
instruction
Assigned center play
D.E.A.R. time
Predominantly
Spanish; Mixed
language use
(sequential) during
calendar, music
& movement, and
vocabulary lessons;
Spanish-only
instruction during
read-alouds and
phonics instruction
73% Spanish-
language teacher talk
Teacher-centered,
didactic, theme-
based whole group
literacy instruction;
semantically
rich, cognitively
challenging Spanish-
language teacher talk;
some child-initiated
talk; extended read-
alouds with closed
and open-ended
comprehension
questions, vocabulary
discussions;
opportunities for
Spanish-language
peer interaction
during group time
and independent play
Closed & open-ended
questions
Physical movement
with English songs
Some translation of
English
Teacher modeling
Pointing to book
illustrations
Vocabulary charts
Repetition
Refocusing children
during English
instruction
Teacher and student-
made calendar charts:
bilingual/color-coded
Teacher-made
vocabulary charts:
bilingual. color-coded
Spanish language
storybooks (
translations of
English-language
classics) and
informational texts
phonics worksheets
TABLE 4. Characteristics of Language and Literacy Instruction in Six Pre-kindergarten Classrooms
Serving Spanish-Speaking English Learners
APPENDIX A
Dual Language Vocabulary Development
57
Classroom Literacy Activities Language of
instruction
Literacy Focus
and Discourse
Environment
Comprehension
Scaffolds
Instructional
Materials
SB2 Morning greeting /
calendar
Phonological
awareness training
Morning message
with embedded
phonics instruction
Music & movement
Books on tape
Reading aloud
Self-selected center
play
Predominantly
Spanish; strict
separation of
languages; English
language instruction
during music &
movement and
afternoon science and
social studies lessons;
87% Spanish-
language teacher talk
Semantically and
grammatically rich
Spanish-language
teacher talk; open-
ended discussion
of vocabulary and
book themes during
read alouds, focus
on comprehension,
metalinguistic
development and
Spanish language
print skills in contexts
of use; opportunities
for child initiated talk
and Spanish-language
peer interaction
during group times
and independent play.
Predictable routines
Closed & open-ended
questions
Physical movement
with English songs
Occasional
translation of English
Teacher modeling
Meaningful content
connections
Pointing to
illustrations
Repetition
Refocusing children
during English
instruction
Spanish language
storybooks
(translations of
English-language
classics) and
informational texts,
many in big book
format; teacher
and student-made
comprehension charts
(Spanish); children’s
name-cards for
phonemic awareness
and phonics
instruction; dry-erase
board for morning
message
Freedson
58
Classroom Literacy Activities Language of
instruction
Literacy Focus
and Discourse
Environment
Comprehension
Scaffolds
Instructional
Materials
MB1 Morning greeting /
calendar
Music & movement
Shared reading of big
books
Phonological
awareness training
Shared writing /
News of the day with
embedded phonics
instruction
Individual language
experience
Assigned and self-
selected center play
Alphabet worksheets
Mixed language
use with whole
group (concurrent
translation) for
music & movement,
calendar, science &
math;
Spanish-only small
group literacy
instruction with
ELLs for read
alouds, phonological
awareness and
phonics instruction,
shared writing
66% Spanish-
language teacher talk
Carefully scaffolded,
though less
semantically rich
Spanish language
teacher talk;
opportunities for
child-initiated talk
during book reading
and shared writing,
independent play;
emphasis on oral
vocabulary and
expressive language
development
in Spanish;
phonological
awareness and
embedded phonics
instruction
Predictable routines
Closed & open-ended
questions
Physical movement
with English songs
Meaningful content
connections
Occasional
translation of English
Pointing to book
illustrations
Repetition
Spanish-language
big books with
predictable formats
(English-language
versions used with
English speakers)
Child-dictated
language experience
charts (Spanish
or bilingual,
depending on activity
context). color-
coded by language;
multicultural
children’s literature
with Hispanic themes
Dual Language Vocabulary Development
59
Classroom Literacy Activities Language of
instruction
Literacy Focus
and Discourse
Environment
Comprehension
Scaffolds
Instructional
Materials
MB2 Morning greeting /
calendar
Music & movement
Reading aloud
Self-selected play
at literacy-enriched
centers
Book-making and
craft projects
Explicit instruction
in letters, numbers,
colors, shapes
Mixed language
use (concurrent
translation) during
most instruction,
slightly favoring
Spanish; teacher
translation of
English-language
books; all readiness
skills, including
phonics taught in
both languages
53% Spanish teacher
talk
Language and
comprehension focus
during theme-related
read alouds;
Emphasis on
bilingual vocabulary
development;
Use of close-ended
questions and oral
cloze strategy to label
book illustrations;
Limited emphasis
on alphabet
skills; Extended
opportunities for
Spanish-language
peer interaction
during center play
Predictable routines
Closed & open-ended
questions
Physical movement
with English-
language songs
Concurrent
translation of English
Pointing to book
illustrations
Repetition
Spanish- and
English-language
versions of classic
children’s storybooks
and informational
texts; Spanish
language phonics
chart; teacher-made
calendar materials:
bilingual, color-
coded by language;
overhead projector
for alphabet
instruction
Freedson
60
Classroom Literacy Activities Language of
instruction
Literacy Focus
and Discourse
Environment
Comprehension
Scaffolds
Instructional
Materials
EI1 Morning greeting /
calendar
Music & movement
Reading aloud
Explicit instruction
in letters, numbers,
colors and shapes
Assigned independent
center play
D.E.A.R. time
Predominantly
English with
occasional translation
of key words and
phrases; teacher
requests for Spanish-
language vocabulary
from children; mixed-
language table and
center groupings
Emphasis on
traditional readiness
skills and English
vocabulary
Letter-of-the-
week approach
to phonological
awareness and
phonics instruction
Highly explicit
teacher talk using
simplified language
and carefully
sequenced instruction
Thematic approach
Predictable routines
Closed or known-
answer questions
addressed to
individual ELL
levels of English
proficiency
Physical movement
with English-
language songs
Occasional
translation of English
Teacher modeling
Pointing to book
illustrations
Repetition, extending
ELL talk
Refocusing children
during English
instruction
English language
storybooks related to
theme;
English-language
calendar materials;
Interactive phonics
board
Dry-erase board for
skills instruction
Dual Language Vocabulary Development
61
Classroom Literacy Activities Language of
instruction
Literacy Focus
and Discourse
Environment
Comprehension
Scaffolds
Instructional
Materials
EI2 Morning Greeting /
calendar
Music & Movement
Morning message
with embedded print
concepts & phonics
skills
Content/theme-
related lessons
Reading aloud
Shared writing
Graphing activities
Self-selected center
play
English only; mixed-
language table and
center groupings
Semantically rich,
extended teacher
talk with emphasis
on building
metacognition
Analytic book
conversations
Emphasis on theme-
related content
vocabulary
Highly scaffolded,
embedded
phonological
awareness and
phonics instruction,
Some cooperative
learning
Predictable routines
Many open-ended
questions
Physical movement
with English-
language songs
Teacher modeling
Pointing to
illustrations in books
Vocabulary-rich
English language
story and information
books related to
theme; English-
language calendar
materials and other
functional print charts
(e.g. jobs chart);
interactive phonics
board; dry-erase
board for morning
message and alphabet
skills instruction
Freedson
62
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Margaret Freedson, Ed.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Department
of Early Childhood, Elementary and Literacy Education at Montclair
State University and a Policy Research Fellow at the National Institute
for Early Education Research (NIEER). A former bilingual elementary
teacher, Dr. Freedson has worked extensively with state governments
and school districts in Texas and New Jersey to enhance the quality of
preschool services for linguistically diverse children. Her current research
and writing focus on bilingual literacy development, language and literacy
practices in early childhood classrooms, and the preparation of teachers to
effectively serve young English language learners.
Correspondence should be addressed to Margaret Freedson, Department
of Early Childhood, Elementary and Literacy Education, Montclair State
University, University Hall 3220, Montclair, NJ 07043, USA. E-mail:
[email protected].edu.
63
SUZANNE VISCOVICH
Homestead School
ROBERT ESCHENAUER
St. John’s University
RICHARD SINATRA
St. John’s University
and
T. MARK BEASLEY
University of Alabama at Birmingham
Connecting Critical Thinking,
Organizational Structures and Report Writing
KEY WORDS: Critical thinking, organizational structures, I-Chart,
graphic organizer, outline, assessment
This quasi-experimental study was conducted with six fifth grade
classes to determine the connection of three organizational structures to
critical thinking while performing a report writing task. Each class was
randomly assigned to one of three instructional conditions: traditional
outline, graphic organizer, and inquiry chart (I-Chart). Each participant
completed a research report on a famous American which served as a
Phase One assessment. Following instruction on one of the organizational
structures, a Phase Two assessment research report was completed. Using
a rubric formulated by the New York State Education Department, a team
of practitioners graded both reports. An ANOVA was done on the gain
scores from Phase One assessment to Phase Two assessment. The I-Chart
group’s gains in critical thinking were significantly higher than those
for the outline and graphic organizer groups. However, a questionnaire
completed by the students revealed the I-Chart group rated the likelihood
of using it again significantly lower than the outline group.
Journal of School Connections
Fall 2008, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 63-86
Viscovich, Eschenauer, Sinatra, & Beasley
Proficient writing for middle school and young adolescent students is
currently a national concern. Recent reports indicate that writing well is
not occurring in our nation’s schools even while good writing is essential
for our students to achieve in the global workforce (Biancarosa & Snow,
2006; Graham & Perin, 2007, National Commission on Writing, 2003;
2005). The writing exam results of the 2002 National Assessment of
Educational Progress (NAEP) revealed that 69% of 8th -grade students
and 72% of 4th grade students performed at or below the basic level of
writing while 22% to 26% achieved at the proficient level and only a few
wrote at the advanced level of writing (Persky, Daane, & Jin, 2003).
Writing proficiently is especially important when done in tandem
with reading. When students write while engaged in reading, they show
evidence of critical thinking about what they read (Biancarosa & Snow,
2006). For over two decades, researchers and literacy educators noted
that when students write while processing textual material, they are better
able to understand unfamiliar content, learn new information, and reveal
more complex thoughts (Newell, 1984; Newell & Winograd, 1989; Riley
& Reedy, 2005; Spivey, 1990). While the practice of using text sources
is a very common way that writing proceeds as well as a very common
reason to engage in reading, not much research attention has focused on
composing from sources (Spivey, 1990).
In the school arena, composing and writing based on informational
sources are usually featured as the research report. In contrast to the story
framework or the narrative structure which is generally well developed
among elementary school children (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987; Feathers,
1998; Green & Sutton, 2003; Sinatra, Blake, Guastello, & Robertson, 2007;
Scardamalia & Breiter, 1986; Venezky, 2000), upper elementary school,
middle school, and young adults must now engage in even more mindful
organizing, composing, and recursive writing/reading processes. They are
confronted with a task that involves both brainstorming and thoughtful
planning (Flower & Hayes, 1980; Page-Voth & Graham, 1999; Troia,
Graham, & Harris, 1999); researching and synthesizing information from
sources (Graham & Perin, 2007; Gunning, 2003); weighing the relative
importance of ideas (Klein, 2000; McKenna & Robinson, 2002); organizing
the information prior to and during the writing (Meyer, 2003; Meyer & Poon,
2001; Riley & Reedy, 2005; Sinatra, 2000); and completing the report in the
expository mode of discourse (Pieronek, 1994; Ruddell, 2005). In order to
reveal knowledge and to show that they understand, students must rework
and synthesize source information into their own language, group details,
and communicate through writing the ideas and information they have
internalized (Gunning, 2003; National Commission on Writing, 2003).
64
Connecting Critical Thinking
Educators have also acknowledged that writing is a means by which
students reveal their abilities to think critically (Dixon, Cassady, Cross,
2005; McKeachie, Chism, Menges, Svinicki, & Weinstein, 1994). Critical
thinking may be likened to directed, purposeful thinking as contrasted to
that which is routine and not grounded in goals or a purpose (Halpern,
1984). Ennis’ view (1987, 1989) of reasonable and reflective critical
thinking included components of formulating a key question or issue,
noting similarities and differences, summarizing, and posing questions
of clarification. Purposeful goal-directed activity in the report writing
process is that of planning (Troia, Graham, & Harris, 1999) facilitated
by the effective use of an organizational structure or schema to guide the
plan while composing and writing. However, to complicate the research
report genre and methodology, teachers and students do not seem to share
the same collective notion of the structure and the research processes
involved in arriving at the finished product (Beach, 1983; McMackin,
1994; Pieronek, 1994; White & Greenwood, 1995).
Nevertheless, national and state standards continue to acknowledge the
research report to be a high-priority literacy task. Five of the 12 national
English language arts standards specifically ask students to communicate
effectively through writing: create, research, and discuss texts; and use a
variety of sources to gather and share information (National Council of
Teachers of English and International Reading Association, 1996). Two of
the four English Language Arts (ELA) Standards of New York State ask
students to think deeply; form relationships and generalizations; gain,
interpret, and transmit information; and analyze ideas, information and
issues (New York State Education Department, 1996, 2005). Achieving these
standards becomes a complex task with which many students require help
(Laase, 1996), in that they need to be shown how to develop their thinking
abilities to organize expository/informational content on paper (Meyer,
2003; Sinatra, Blake, Guastello, & Robertson, 2007). In short, engagement
in the research report not only encourages critical thinking about a topic
under study but also provides a procedural way to connect and apply reading
skills to reference sources (Roe, Stoodt-Hill, & Burns, 2007).
Related Research on Organizational Structures
Through the years student writers have been encouraged to use various
organizational structures to help them in the planning and writing process.
These have included linear- and nonlinear - organizational patterns
reflecting how different content - specific patterns of knowledge and
conceptual structures are organized (Hyerle, 1996). Such structures have
been known as outlines, graphic or visual organizers, and inquiry charts.
65
Viscovich, Eschenauer, Sinatra, & Beasley
The outline. The outline has been used as a traditional structure to
harness vast amounts of information for reading and writing purposes
(Hyerle, 1996). Informational texts display the outline structure in the
Table of Contents, and many word processing programs contain an outline
feature or capacity (Gunning, 2003; Roe, Stoodt-Hill, & Burns, 2007).
An important feature of outlining is weighing the relative importance of
ideas and classifying concepts into categories and subcategories (Gunning,
2003; McKenna & Robinson, 2002) while giving attention to logical
presentation of expository prose prior to writing (Pieronek, 1994). To
achieve this logical presentation, the degree of importance given to ideas
and concepts is done by letters, numbers, and indentation of entries (Roe,
Stoodt-Hill, & Burns, 2007).
Graphic Organizers. The graphic organizer has served as a non-
linear structural outline and planning alternative to the traditional outline.
Also known as semantic and concept maps, the graphic organizer is a
visual diagram or model representing how key concepts and supporting
information are related and connected to each other (McKenna &
Robinson, 2002). Students have been taught and encouraged to use the
visual plan to assemble information from text and show it in an organized
pattern that represents a “whole” (Sinatra, 2000) while vividly displaying
key concepts that jump out from the page (Robinson, 1998).
Such visual maps and organizers have been used as prewriting plans
(Ruddell, 2005), as organizational frameworks for the production of
compositions and reports (Wong, 1997), and as a decision-making strategy
for making thinking visible (Beyer, 1998). Researchers have reported that
students with and without learning problems have improved in reading
comprehension, planning for writing, and quality of writing when they
have been shown how text ideas are organized in narrative and expository
readings and when they have been provided with visual models of text
organization (Blake & Sinatra, 2005; Davis, 1994; Guastello, Beasley, &
Sinatra, 2000; Swanson & DeLaPaz, 1998; Vallecorsa & deBettencourt,
1997; Wong, 1997). While conceding that traditional outlining and concept
mapping are somewhat similar in their representation of concepts, Ryder
and Graves (2003) pointed out that an important distinction between the
two is that because the maps are more visual in form, they can display
multiple and coordinating relationships through graphic symbol usage and
users can display information from their background knowledge.
Inquiry Chart (I-Chart). Hoffman (1992) proposed an organizational
structure called the inquiry chart or I -Chart for use by elementary level
teachers as they assisted their students in exploring ideas related to a
central topic. Essentially the chart was constructed as a grid system on a
66
Connecting Critical Thinking
sheet of paper. Across the top of the grid key questions related to the topic
were posed and down the left column the reference materials were listed
that provided information in answering each question (see Appendix B).
Hoffman (1992) combined features of Ogle’s (1986, 1989) K-W-L
(what students Know, what they Want to know, and what they
Learned)
chart and McKenzie’s (1979) data charts into the I-Chart. Ogle’s chart
enabled students to record and examine the relationship between prior
knowledge and newly acquired knowledge, whereas McKenzie’s chart
allowed students to record and compare information among various
resources. Hoffman (1992) contended that students could use the I-
Chart framework to develop written reports, and that concepts such as
organization and paragraph structure, so difficult for many students to
grasp, are readily learned through support of the I-Chart.
Moreover, according to Hoffman (1992), the I-Chart nurtured critical
thinking through its inquiry process of question answering. A unique
feature of the I-Chart is that it gives students the opportunity to compare
answers from various sources as well as to compare information with
their prior knowledge. The I -Chart procedure is organized around three
phases: planning, interacting, and integrating/evaluating. The first phase
involves note-taking, whereas the latter two require both exploration of
prior knowledge and beliefs as well as comparison and evaluation of
information that might be conflicting (Hoffman, 1992).
While the I-Chart strategy is grounded in theory regarding its influence
on critical thinking, the use of prior knowledge, and metacognitive
awareness, no published research providing evidence of its usefulness
existed until Randall (1996) attempted an action research project with her
eighth graders. Using a modified I-Chart procedure with an interdisciplinary
unit on the environment, she found that the procedure allowed students to
visualize the task confronting them, provided a tool for the organization of
formal research, and guided them to continuously evaluate their progress.
Initially, McKenzie (1979) reported that teachers and librarians claimed
that the quality of pupil reports was vastly improved when students used
research charts such as this as an intermediate step between the assignment
and writing up the report. To date, this claim has only been discussed in
theory and not as empirical research to determine the effectiveness of such
chart use as an organizer for research reports.
Rationale
A review of the research revealed no empirical studies that investigated
the effects of comparing the I -Chart with other planning and organizational
techniques on students’ thinking processes while engaged in report writing.
67
Viscovich, Eschenauer, Sinatra, & Beasley
Furthermore, a secondary search of three well-known data bases revealed
no empirical studies or dissertations on the use of outlines as an aid in
the writing of the research report although the strategy has been well
documented by literacy authors (Anderson & Armbruster, 1984; Gunning,
2003; Kiewra & Robinson, 1995; McKenna & Robinson, 2002; Pieronek,
1994; Roe, Stoodt-Hill & Burns, 2007; Ryder & Graves, 2003; Santa,
Havens, & Maycumber, 1996). The National Reading Panel (National
Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000) did include 11
empirical studies on graphic organizers in their scientific review of the
research literature on text comprehension and noted that children who
would benefit most from graphic organizer instruction needed to have skill
in both writing and reading. Thus the purpose of this present investigation
was to determine the effectiveness of three organizing tools; the traditional
outline, the graphic organizer, and the inquiry chart (I-Chart), in helping
fifth-grade students think critically while preparing and writing the research
report, a task designated by the school district as an important reference
point in each child’s reading and writing growth.
Research questions
Three major research questions were generated as follows with some
containing sub-questions.
1. Are there variations in the critical thinking abilities of fifth-grade
students as a function of different organizational structures use?
Based on the components of the modified New York State scoring rubric,
the following sub-questions were generated: Are there differences in
understanding, analysis, and idea development among fifth-grade
students when they use one of the three organizational structures?
2. Is there an ability for critical thinking by organizational structure
interaction?
Sub-questions were generated for low-ability writers and high-ability
writers as they applied critical thinking abilities when using one of
three organizational structures: Are there differences in critical thinking
abilities among fifth-grade between low-ability writers and high-ability
writers when they use one of the three organizational structures?
3. What are students’ perceptions regarding the three organizational
structures on their thinking and writing abilities?
68
Connecting Critical Thinking
Method
Research design
A quasi-experimental, nonequivalent control design was used in this
study. Six of the seven heterogeneously grouped fifth-grade classes that
participated in the study were randomly assigned to each of the three
instructional conditions. To eliminate teacher bias, the seventh class, the
primary researcher’s own class, did not participate in the study. The six
participating classes made up three groups of equally distributed students.
They were equally distributed based on the previous year’s teachers’
rankings of the children’s ability based on classroom performance and
the fourth-grade ELA assessment (1999). The principal then separately
compiled all of the teachers’ high, medium, and low students and randomly
distributed the children of various abilities to each of the seven classes
to make classes of equally-distributed heterogeneous groupings. The six
participating classes received instruction in identical content over the
duration of the study according to the instructional condition to which
they were assigned. The primary researcher taught the three groups in all
six classes according to the appropriate instructional condition over a three
week period.
Participants
This study was conducted in a grades 2 – 5 elementary school in an
affluent suburb on Long Island, New York. This school was chosen because
it was both accessible and because many of the students had demonstrated
high competency with writing, a condition that would impact the writing
of the research report. One hundred and forty three students were invited
to participate in the study but only 135 returned the necessary consent
forms. Eight of these students did not complete either the Phase One or
Phase Two report and were therefore eliminated from the study. Of the 127
predominantly Caucasian fifth-grade students who participated, 103 were
of average to high average ability in writing competency based on the fourth
grade New York State English Language Arts (ELA) Testing Program
(New York State, 1999). These students scored at level “3” (acceptable
writing standard) and a level “4” (advanced writing proficiency). Of the
remaining students, 18 were enrolled in the remedial reading program and
6 others were identified as resource room students. The remedial reading
and resource room students scored at or below level “2” (below acceptable
standards) on the New York State ELA
testing procedure.
69
Viscovich, Eschenauer, Sinatra, & Beasley
Measures
Two measures were used to obtain quantitative and qualitative data.
To evaluate the students’ critical thinking abilities, the researchers used
a modification of the Scoring Rubric for New York State Elementary
English Language Arts Assessment (New York State Education
Department, 1996, 2005). This four-point rubric was used to assess
how well students engaged in critical thinking. This rubric evaluated
students’ critical thinking processes in the three areas of understanding,
analysis, and idea development while engaged in the task of reporting
about a famous person of American history (see Appendix A). Included
in the weighted areas of the rubric were the thinking skills of evaluating
critical information, elaboration, interpretation, analysis, and drawing
meaningful connections.
A second instrument, a student questionnaire, was designed to assess
students’ attitudes and perceptions regarding the three organizational
structures. The first part of the questionnaire contained three questions,
each of which was rated on a four-point Likert scale containing choices
(1) not at all helpful, (2) somewhat helpful, (3) very helpful, and (4)
extremely helpful. The three questions were: (1) How helpful was the
organizational structure you used for your thinking while researching and
writing your report? (2) How helpful was the organizational structure you
used for actually writing your research report? (3) How likely is that you
will use this organizational structure again to help you write a research
report? The second part, requiring a written response, asked students to
explain how their organizational structure helped with their thinking and
writing of the research report.
Study variables
The dependent variables in this study were the scores on the critical
thinking rubric: (a) understanding, (b) analysis, and (c) idea development.
The major independent variable was the organizational instructional
condition: (a) outline (see Appendix B), (b) graphic organizer (see
Appendix C), and (c) I-Chart (see Appendix D). The research report
for all three groups was famous Americans in history, a topic that
complemented the New York State social studies curriculum as well as
the school district’s portfolio criteria.. The district had designated the
research report to be included as a benchmark portfolio item in each
student’s cumulative fil
e.
70
Connecting Critical Thinking
Procedure
On days one, two, and three, all three groups were given three separate
packets containing identical information on the famous American, Charles
Lindbergh, and were asked to write a report on him. The packets held
an encyclopedia citation, an internet article, and a book, and were 2, 2,
and 16 pages respectively. No instructions were given on preplanning.
Students worked on these reports during these three days only for the
40-minute period each day that the researcher was present. Students did
not have access to any resources on Charles Lindbergh other than the
identical packets provided to each student by the researcher during the
40-minute period. The completed Charles Lindbergh reports served as the
Phase One assessment. On the fourth day, the researcher again provided
the students in all three groups with the aforementioned information on
Charles Lindbergh. She modeled how to transform this information into
a research report using each group’s respective structure. The researcher
intentionally used the Charles Lindbergh information again because the
students were familiar with the material and would be able to contribute
to the modeling. Students also received instruction in differing levels
of questioning. Students were shown that a literal question dealt with
information explicitly stated in text sources, whereas a higher-level thinking
question required students to think critically about information stated and
inferred in text sources. The completed organizational structures shown in
Appendix B were created by the primary researcher with each respective
group on Day 5. The structures served as a model of how to create topics
and questions and how to utilize the structure as a thinking and organizing
tool for the writing of a research report.
In addition, on the fifth day, students were allowed to select the name
of a famous American from a list of 25. The list included such famous
Americans as Elizabeth Blackwell, Amelia Earhart, Benjamin Franklin,
Martin Luther King, Jr., Helen Keller, John F. Kennedy, and Eleanor
Roosevelt. During days 6-15, students researched information regarding
their chosen famous American, arranged that information into their
respective organizational structure, and used their completed structure to
write the research report. The completed Charles Lindbergh reports served
as the Phase One assessment. The completed famous American research
reports served as the Phase Two assessment.
Two days after the intervention was completed, students were given
the questionnaire to determine if and how their respective structure aided
them in their thinking, organizing, and writing of the report. The prim
ary
researcher was present while each class completed the questionnaire and
71
Viscovich, Eschenauer, Sinatra, & Beasley
assisted while reading and explaining each question and answering student
questions. The results of the questionna
ires were subsequently analyzed.
Scoring procedures
The students’ Phase One assessment and Phase Two assessment
research reports were graded anonymously by a team of practitioners
comprised of the primary researcher, the school reading specialist, and a
fifth-grade teacher, according to the three areas of critical thinking rubric
(New York State Education Department, 1996, 2005). All three raters had
been involved the previous year in the mandatory training of the holistic
scoring of the New York State ELA Assessment Program. The primary
researcher graded all 254 research reports using the critical thinking
rubric and the two other raters graded about 50-60 research reports each,
half in collaboration with the primary researcher and half on their own.
The voluntary nature of the scoring of all of this study’s research reports
demanded a great deal of time which cooperating teachers distributed in
the best interest of the study. Inter-rater reliability was assessed at .923
.
Results
The Charles Lindbergh research report was used as the Phase One
assessment for each of the three conditions. An ANOVA was conducted
on the Phase One assessments for overall critical thinking ability (
F = .691,
p = .503), and for the analytic components of understanding (F = 1.91, p =
.15), analysis (
F = .247, p = .781), and idea development (F = 1.152, p =
.319). In each case, the results indicated no significant difference among
the Phase One assessments.
To examine the effect of the three organizing structures on the critical
thinking of fifth-grade students writing a research report, a one-way
analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted on the gain scores of each
of the dependent variables. The gain score analysis was chosen because
the research questions focused directly on growth between the Phase
One and Phase Two assessments. The independent variable, organizing
structures, included three levels: outline, graphic organizer, and I-Chart.
The dependent variables included the gain scores, i.e., differences between
the Phase One and Phase Two assessments for critical thinking ability,
and for the analytic components of understanding, analysis, and idea
development. For each measure, post hoc multiple comparisons using the
Tukey HSD were used to identify significant differences among the specific
organizational structures. Cohen’s
d, with pooled standard deviations, was
computed on the gain scores as a measure of effect size.
The results of score gains among the overall critical thinking variables
are summarized in Table 1. The results indicated that students in the three
72
Connecting Critical Thinking
instructional conditions scored similarly on the critical thinking Phase One
assessments. However, on the critical thinking Phase Two assessments, the
I-Chart group scored higher than either the graphic organizer or the outline
group. The Gain Score Analysis (
F= 20.43, p <.05) suggested that there is
a significant difference among the three instructional conditions. Tukey’s
HSD test for pair wise comparisons shows that the I-Chart group gained
significantly more on critical thinking than both the graphic organizer and
outline groups. Cohen’s d was also computed (
d = 1.14) and indicated that
the I-Chart group gained more than 1 standard deviation above the other
two groups combined. The outline group evidenced the smallest gain of
the three instructional groups.
73
Critical
Thinking
Phase One
assessment
Phase Two
assessment
Gain
Variable
M (SD) M (SD) M (SD)
Outline
(n = 35)
2.04 (0.49) 2.06 (0.68 ) 0.02 (0.59)
Graphic
Organizer
(n = 43)
2.15 (0.45) 2.05 (0.52) -0.09 (0.47)
I-Chart
(n = 49)
2.14 (0.37) 2.69 (0.63) 0.55 (0.50)
TABLE 1. Phase One Assessment, Phase Two Assessment, and Gain
Scores for Critical Thinking Variable
The results of three components of the critical thinking rubric are
summarized in Table 2. Students in the three instructional conditions
scored similarly on understanding on the Phase One assessment, but on
Phase Two assessment, the I-Chart group scored higher on understanding
than either the graphic organizer or the outline group. The Gain Score
Analysis (
F= 7.25, p <.05) indicated a significant difference among the
three instructional conditions. Tukey’s HSD test for pair wise comparisons
revealed that the I-Chart group gained significantly more on understanding
than both the graphic organizer and outline groups. Cohen’s d was also
computed (
d = .79) and suggested that the I-Chart group gained almost
4/5 of a standard deviation more than the other two groups combined.
The graphic organizer group evidenced the smallest gain of the three
instructional groups in the component of understanding.
Viscovich, Eschenauer, Sinatra, & Beasley
Students in the three instructional conditions scored similarly on
analysis on the Phase One assessment but on the Phase Two assessment, the
I-Chart group scored higher on analysis than either the graphic organizer or
the outline group. The Gain Score Analysis (
F= 24.56, p < .05) pointed to
a significant difference among the three instructional conditions. Tukey’s
HSD test for pair wise comparisons revealed that the I-Chart group gained
significantly more on analysis than both the graphic organizer and outline
groups. Cohen’s effect size (
d = 1.25) indicated that the I-Chart group
gained 11⁄4 standard deviations more than the other two groups combined.
In the analysis component the outline group evidenced the smallest gain of
the three instructional groups.
On the idea development component of the critical thinking rubric,
similar results were found. Students in the three instructional conditions
scored similarly on idea development of the Phase One assessment, but on
the Phase Two assessment, the I-Chart group scored higher than either the
74
Rubric Element
Instructional Condition
Outline
Graphic
Organizer
I-Chart
M (SD) M (SD) M (SD)
Understanding
Phase One
assessment
1.83 (0.51) 2.06 (0.57) 2.07 (0.59)
Phase Two
assessment
2.06 (0.78) 2.14 (0.60) 2.64 (0.75)
Gain 0.24(0.70) -0.08 (0.59 ) 0.56 (0.58)
Analysis
Phase One
assessment
2.29 (0.67) 2.24 (0.47) 2.21 (0.38 )
Phase Two
assessment
2.06 (0.65) 2.07 (0.59) 2.90 (0.61)
Gain - 0.24 (0.74) - 0.17 (0.68) 0.68 (0.67)
Idea
Development
Phase One
assessment
2.00 (0.59) 2.14 (0.53) 2.12 (0.44)
Phase Two
assessment
2.06 (0.78) 1.95 (0.72) 2.52 (0.74)
Gain .06 (0.78) - 0.19 (0.67) 0.41 (0.67)
TABLE 2. Phase One Assessment, Phase Two Assessment, and Gain
Scores for Critical Thinking Rubric Elements
Connecting Critical Thinking
graphic organizer or the outline group. The Gain Score Analysis (
F= 8.32,
p < .05) pointed to a significant difference among the three instructional
conditions. Tukey’s HSD test for pair wise comparisons suggested that
the I-Chart group gained significantly more on idea development than
both the graphic organizer and outline groups. Cohen’s effect size (
d =
.68) indicated that the I-Chart group gained almost 7/10 of a standard
deviation more than the other groups combined. The graphic organizer
group evidenced the smallest gain of the three instructional groups on idea
development.
Regarding the second research question, it appears that the students
in the I-Chart condition evidenced gains regardless of their ability. The
gain scores of the other instructional conditions were dependent on ability
level (see Figure 1). When using the outline approach, low achieving
writers evidenced a decrease in their scores while average to proficient
writers evidenced a positive gain. Average to proficient writers made less
improvement while low achieving writers evidenced higher gain scores
when using the graphic organizer.
75
FIGURE 1. Interaction of instructional condition and ability of writers.
Viscovich, Eschenauer, Sinatra, & Beasley
In order to determine students’ perceptions regarding the three
organizational structures on their thinking and writing abilities, the
questionnaire was administered to all 127 students and their responses
were analyzed. For question 1: How helpful was the organizational
structure you used for your thinking while researching and writing your
report? the I-Chart group (
M=3.22, SD= 0.68) rated their organizational
structure significantly higher [F=6.905, p<.001] than the graphic organizer
(M=2.81, SD= 0.66) and outline (M=2.74, SD= 0.61) groups. For question
2: How helpful was the organizational structure you used for actually
writing your research report? the difference in ratings was not [
F<l]
statistically significant. For question 3: How likely is it that you will use
this organizational structure again to help you write a research report?
there was a significant [
F = 4.311, p =.015] difference. Tukey’s HSD
showed that the outline group (M = 2.83, SD= 0.86) rated this likelihood
significantly higher than the I-Chart group (
M = 2.32, SD= 0.91), whereas
the graphic organizer group ( M = 2.70, SD = 0.74) was not statistically
different from either one of the other two groups.
In summary, the results revealed that although the students in all three
groups scored similarly on the critical thinking Phase One assessment, the
I -Chart group gained significantly more than both the outline and graphic
organizer groups on critical thinking and in all categories of the critical
thinking rubric. That is, the I-Chart participants scored significantly higher on
understanding, analysis and idea development on the Phase Two assessment.
Discussion
In this study, the I-Chart group’s gains from Phase One assessment
to Phase Two assessment on critical thinking and virtually all of their
respective categories were significantly higher than the gains for the outline
and graphic organizer groups. The significantly higher gains in all of these
areas could be a result of the I-Chart’s unique structure and characteristics.
First, resources listed down the side with cells corresponding to each
question filled in according to each resource could have led to improvement
in the idea development realm of critical thinking. While filling in the cells,
students had to extract information about every question from every single
resource, thus providing them with more facts and details to be included
in their reports. This premise is supported by the significant difference
between the I-Chart group’s and the outline group’s responses to Question
Three on their questionnaires and by the I-Chart group’s written statements
on their questionnaires. Question 3 asked how likely it would be that
students would use this organizational structure again to help them write
a research report. The I-Chart group rated the likelihood of using their
76
Connecting Critical Thinking
organizational structure again significantly lower than the outline group
(F = 4.31, p = .015). Their reasoning was evident in two of the questionnaire
responses where ten students of the 49 explained that it took too long to fill
in the whole chart, and eight students complained about having to write
the same information over “so many times.” In fact, one student claimed
that the I-Chart “gave me headaches” and another stated that repeating
the information “was a waste of time.” Still others exclaimed that they
would not use it again unless they had a lot of time to complete it, “like a
month!” One student went so far as to say that (s)he would only use the
I-Chart under one circumstance, “if it counts A LOT for my grade.” While
they complained, the students in the I-Chart group were directed in their
thinking to answer the questions from multiple sources but this task may
have proved to be too repetitive and too time consuming in reporting the
researched information.
Secondly, the guiding questions listed across the top of the I-Chart might
have caused higher gains in the
understanding and analysis categories of
critical thinking insofar as they required the addressing of questions rather
than the recording of information. Students might have delved more deeply
into the material, gaining understanding, making judgments, and giving
opinions. One I-Chart student stated the following on his/her response
in the questionnaire, “The I-Chart helped me to think while researching
because when I read the resources, I had to think what was important, and
when I put down all the information, it helped me verify facts.” Another
student asserted that if there were more than one answer, “I would have
to think about which answer would go in the report.” The open-ended
questions on the questionnaire required that students explain how the
organizational structure helped them with their thinking and writing of the
research reports. Thirteen students in the I-Chart group maintained that
the I-Chart enabled them to write “a lot of different information,” “a ton of
data,” “more than I thought I needed.” One student admitted, “I couldn’t
have written as much without the 1- Chart.” The children’s responses
quoted above support the premise that the significant difference in gains
among I-Chart, graphic organizer and outline groups could be due to the
fact that the I-Chart students had no choice but to include a multitude of
information from various resources whereas the others could have gotten
away without doing so.
Conflicting information between resources about a question in close
proximity to each other on the I-Chart might have led to increases in the
analysis sphere of critical thinking, making it easier for students to find
conflicts between and make comparisons across resources because the
information was visually obvious by being listed in the same column. One
77
Viscovich, Eschenauer, Sinatra, & Beasley
student wrote this in his response, “All the information was in one column,
making it easy to compare.” Another added, “for example, if one book said
the person was born in 1960 and another said 1920, 1’d compare and see
how many books said 1960 and how many said 1920.”
While students in all three groups had access to the same informational
sources, students in the outline and graphic organizer groups may have
been placed in situations whereby they were limited or constricted in
their abilities to develop ideas, analyze and evaluate source materials.
As a structural aide, the outline has posed problems for some students
as it requires them to take time to plan and think through the logical
arrangements of a text while representing meaning in the outline structural
form (Anderson & Armbruster, 1984). Students in the outline group may
have profited from planning and idea developing if they were shown how to
increase indentation and make additional entries on the Charles Lindbergh
model. More in-depth explicit teaching and practice in the shell structure
formation of letters and numbers may be needed (McKenna & Robinson,
2002). This kind of instruction may be especially helpful to middle school
students as they become initiated into the report writing process.
Previous researchers had noted that the graphic organizer has been an
effective tool in improving student planning, idea development, and writing
(Blake & Sinatra, 2005; Guastello, Beasley, & Sinatra, 2000; Hyerle, 1996;
Reynolds & Hart, 1990; Sinatra, 2000). The present investigation did not
reveal these benefits for this organizational structure. In this study, students
had to use the model structure of the graphic organizer done on the life of
Charles Lindbergh to develop ideas and create topics for explanation about
a second famous American gathered from a variety of text sources. Like
the outline group participants, the graphic organizer students may have felt
limited by the organizer structure itself in that it only revealed so many
topic and sub-topic categories in its model planning form. By showing
students, especially those somewhat talented in writing ability, how to
expand the organizer model with additional topic and sub-topic categories
of information, students may have been sufficiently motivated to research,
connect and analyze information, and write more about a famous Ame
rican.
Limitations
The results of this quasi-experimental, nonequivalent control design
may only be generalized to similar populations as the sample (i.e.,
primarily white fifth-grade students in an affluent elementary school, since
there was no random selection of subjects). Attrition was a threat to the
internal validity of this study. Eight students, seven of whom were in
the graphic organizer instructional group, were eliminated after the study
78
Connecting Critical Thinking
began because they failed to complete either the Phase One or the Phase
Two assessment research reports. This attrition potentially affected the
results. Thus due to the difference in sample size, the effects of the I-Chart
were potentially overestimated.
Moreover, because the task in this study required such writing skills
as developing and organizing a topic, elaborating with content, and
appropriately using language and writing conventions, teacher differences
may have impacted the students’ writing outcomes. Teachers may have
different opinions regarding the use of a rubric in scoring organization and
development of a paper and the weight given to content, language, and
mechanics. Another potential problem involves differences in how raters
use rubrics to score students’ pre- and post-written assessments. Although
inter-rater reliability is established prior to a study, differences in rater
thinking that may emerge during a study can adversely affect findings.
Implications
The I-Chart has proven to be an effective organizational structure to use
for the sample in this study. It appears that the nature of the I-Chart makes
it a highly effective tool for improving the writing of fifth grade students’
research reports, and especially for improving these students’ critical
thinking when researching and writing their reports. Its effectiveness needs
to be investigated with various grade levels and with different populations
of students, particularly low-achieving, special education, and students
experiencing difficulty in achieving quality written products in order to
validate and generalize the findings of this study.
Furthermore, it is important that this study be replicated with additional,
repeated trials through modeling and practice with different populations in
order to assess the differential effectiveness of the instructional strategies.
Perhaps the continued successful use of one organizational structure would
facilitate students’ incorporating the use of that planning tool into their own
style of planning and report writing. Such incorporation could prompt students
to do more than just research information, rather, it could lead them to start
thinking critically about how to organize and analyze the information.
The use of small, cooperative learning groups has been shown to be
e
ffective in other areas of literacy, primarily reading comprehension (National
Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000). Small group
configurations composed of students researching information and planning
for writing warrant further investigation. Given the fact that there is limited
research on the I-Chart, future researchers can also focus on small groups
of students interacting to complete the I-Chart. Whether such interaction
and completion of the I-Chart would lead students to
become better critical
thinkers and writers remains to be determined in future investigations.
79
Viscovich, Eschenauer, Sinatra, & Beasley
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Spivey, N. N. (1990). Transforming texts: Constructive processes in
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Swanson, P. N., & DeLaPaz, S. (1998). Teaching effective comprehension
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Intervention
in School and Clinic, 33, 209 - 218.
Troia, G. A., Graham, S., & Harris, K. R. (1999). Teaching students with
learning disabilities to mindfully plan when writing.
Exceptional
Children, 65,
235 - 252.
Vallecorsa, A. L., & de Bettencourt, L. U. (1997). Using a mapping procedure
to teach reading and writing skills to middle grade students with learning
disabilities. Education and Treatment of Children, 20, 173 - 188.
Venezky, R. (2000). The origins of the present-day chasms between adult
literacy needs and school literacy instruction. Scientific Studies of
Reading, 4, 19 - 39.
Von Dongen, R., & Westby, C. E. (1986). Building the narrative mode of
thought through children’s literature. Topics in Language Disorders,
71, 70 - 83.
White, G., & Greenwood, S. C. (1995). Book report policies and
practices: Implications for middle-level readers. The Clearing
House, 68, 181 - 184.
Wong, B. Y. L. (1997). Research on genre-specific strategies for enhancing
writing in adolescents with learning disabilities. Learning Disability
Quarterly, 20,
140 - 159.
Viscovich, Eschenauer, Sinatra, & Beasley
84
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Suzanne Viscovich received her Doctorate in Instructional Leadership
from St. John’s University in 2000 and earned the Outstanding Dissertation
Award from the College Reading Association. She is currently Principal
of a primary school on Long Island.
Robert Eschenauer holds a Doctorate in Counseling and an Advanced
Certificate in School Psychology. He has been involved in public education
for 38 years serving as teacher, administrator and clinician, and in higher
education for over 20 years. Currently he is Director of the Counselor
Education Program at St. John’s University.
Richard Sinatra is Professor, Director of the Reading and Writing Education
Center, and Chairman of the Department of Human Services and Counseling
at St. John’s University, Queens, New York. He has been an educator for over
45 years, serving as a junior high and elementary school teacher, a reading
specialist, a district reading coordinator, and university literacy professor.
He has authored and co-authored books, and many book chapters, journal
articles, and has been a literacy consultant to many school districts.
T. Mark Beasley holds a Doctorate in Educational Psychology from
Southern Illinois University-Carondale. He has been involved in higher
education for 14 years and is currently as Associate Professor and Graduate
Program Director in the Department of Biostatistics at the University of
Alabama at Birmingham.
Correspondence should be addressed to Robert Eschenauer, Department
of Human Services and Counseling, St. John’s University, 8000 Utopia
Parkway Jamaica, NY 11439, USA. E-mail: [email protected]
Connecting Critical Thinking
85
Quality 1 2 3 4
Understanding
• Presents information
with limited or no
explanation
• Presents some
information explaining
about the famous
person, but may
be missing critical
information
• Includes critical
information
explaining about the
famous person with
some elaboration and
explanation
• Includes a broad range
of critical information
explaining about the
famous person
Analysis
• May contain factual
errors and/or
misinterpretations
• May contain a
completely literal
interpretation of text
• Contains some
evidence of
interpretation and
analysis
• Goes beyond the
factual information
presented in the text to
interpret and analyze
Idea
Development
•
Develops ideas in
fragmentary manner
without using
supporting details from
the text and/or includes
random information
and personal details
unrelated to the topic
• May be off-topic or
task completely
•
Draws little or no
meaningful connections
• Ideas are stated simply
with few supporting
details from the text
• May wander from the
topic or task
• Draws few meaningful
connections
• Develops ideas clearly
with some supporting
details from text
• Draws some
meaningful
connections
• Develops and
elaborates ideas
clearly and fully using
many supportive and
relevant details from
the text
• Draws meaningful
connections between
ideas
APPENDIX A
Critical Thinking Rubric*
* Modified from the Scoring Rubric for New York State Elementary English Language Arts Assessment (New York State
Education Department, 1996, 2005).
Viscovich, Eschenauer, Sinatra, & Beasley
86
I-Chart
Charles
Lindbergh
What were
the significant
events in his
early life?
How did these
early events
influence his
accomplishments?
What were his
career and fame
accomplishments?
What
were the
significant
events in
his later
years?
How would
history and
our lives be
different if
he had not
lived?
What I
Know
World
Book
Encarta
Internet
Audio-
Visual
Library
Book
Summary
APPENDIX B
Outline
Charles Lindbergh
I. Early Years
A. Significant
Events
B. Influence
on Later Life
II.
Accomplishments
A. Career
B. Fame
III. Later Years
A. Significant
Events
B. How
Remembered
IV. Impact on the
World
APPENDIX D
APPENDIX C
Graphic Organizer
87
RACHEL BROWN
Syracuse University
Teachers’ Attempts to Teach Comprehension
Strategies Explicitly During Core Instruction
Although many calls exist in professional texts and literacy research to
teach comprehension strategies explicitly, this type of instruction often
receives scant attention in schools. One possible reason for this state
relates to the challenges posed by this instruction. This study explored two
professional development approaches designed to support teachers during
their initial learning of a framework known as transactional strategies
instruction (TSI), which features explicit strategies instruction. Over the
course of a semester, sixteen teachers in four elementary schools received
one of two types of professional development: 1) annotated model lessons
drawn from professional literature, or 2) small-group coaching provided
once per month. Qualitative analysis revealed several challenges teachers
faced as they attempted to integrate TSI with their core reading instruction.
In addition, data analysis led to the identification of specific integration
patterns that described teachers’ trajectories in learning TSI.
KEY WORDS:
reading, comprehension strategies, instruction, teaching
strategies
The explicit teaching of a small set of powerful strategies is
considered a vital component of comprehension instruction (NRP, 2000;
Pressley, 2002). Given this fact, basal publishers have rushed to include
comprehension strategies instruction in their delivery programs. Yet, to
date, widespread observations of elementary instruction indicate that
effective comprehension instruction is not regularly observed in schools,
whether (or not) teachers use basals for core reading instruction (Pressley,
Wharton-McDonald, Mistretta, & Echevarria, 1998; Taylor, Pearson,
Clark, & Walpole, 2000).
Previous research has revealed considerable information about
the nature of skilled comprehension and effective strategies instruction
(NRP, 2000). For one, proficient readers are metacognitive, motivated
readers (Pressley & Afflerbach, 1995). They evaluate texts and respond
to them, not just intellectually, but also emotively and aesthetically (Duke
Journal of School Connections
Fall 2008, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 87-104
Brown
& Pearson, 2002). Good readers also enact comprehension strategies
by actively predicting, questioning, clarifying, visualizing, determining
importance, summarizing, and connecting to prior knowledge. What is
more, skilled readers orchestrate their use of strategies, taking into account
their interests and prior knowledge when responding to text cues.
Teachers can promote effective strategies instruction through a
research-supported model that promotes gradually releasing responsibility
for strategies use over time (Pearson & Gallagher, 1983). During
initial instruction, teachers provide explicit declarative, procedural and
conditional information, which addresses what the strategy is, why it is
beneficial, and when, where, and how to use it under diverse conditions
(Almasi, 2003; Duffy, et al., 1986). In addition, teachers model personal
use of strategies while talking through their thinking. For example, a
teacher might read aloud the first few paragraphs of a text, explaining
how the text triggered a memory, which paralleled an experience of the
main character. This teacher then describes several ways in which the
recollection helped her better understand the character’s feelings. By
making connections to prior knowledge as well as revealing how the
strategy aided her comprehension, the teacher models the benefits of using
a strategy in a particular circumstance.
As teachers shift responsibility for the use of strategies to students,
they engage in shared modeling and practice. The process continues with
teachers employing various scaffolds to guide students’ use of strategies as
they construct well-supported interpretations of text. As students assume
greater control, teachers provide increased opportunities for students to
apply strategies with diverse genres and materials -- when reading with
others, reading alone, or engaging in spirited text talk.
However, research shows that explicit teaching of strategies is
multifaceted, and thereby challenging at times (Brown, 2008; El-Dinary,
2002; Hilden & Pressley, 2007). This complexity, at least in part, may
account for why this instruction remains underprovided in schools. Another
reason for the scarcity of effective strategies instruction is that basal series
do not adopt research-based guidelines for teaching multiple comprehension
strategies explicitly, despite their publishers’ insistence that they do.
Dewitz (2006) explored the manner in which five basal series
instantiated research-based guidelines. Dewitz and his colleagues found
that, although comprehension strategies instruction was incorporated in
each one, a stark discrepancy existed between the way publishers integrated
explicit comprehension strategies instruction and the way researchers
characterized effective instruction since the late 1980’s (NRP, 2000). These
programs, to varying degrees, fell short in at least three critical areas (Dewitz,
2006, 2007). First, they presented the strategies independently, in isolation
from one another. This rendering departed markedly from the depiction
of proficient readers in research; that is, skilled readers use strategies
88
Integrating TSI with Basal Instruction
flexibly as a coordinated set when responding to text cues and personal
resources (Pressley & Afflerbach, 1995). Second, while all five programs
emphasized the teaching of declarative strategic knowledge (i.e., what the
strategy is), they were far less explicit in explaining how and when to use
strategies. Third, the basal programs fell short in delivering instruction that
corresponded to the gradual release of responsibility model.
Another reason for the absence of explicit strategies instruction in
school may be the lack of sound and compelling professional materials
for teaching them in various contexts. Published strategies-based texts
like Mosaic of Thought (Keene & Zimmerman, 2007), Strategies that
Work (Harvey & Goudvis, 2007), do not support the explicit teaching of
strategies within basal programs. Rather, they focus on how to integrate
strategies within a reader’s workshop format.
The degree to which strategies instruction in basals coincides with
research-based recommendations is no small matter, especially in this era
of No Child Left Behind. With the increase in basal instruction arising from
this legislation, teachers may benefit from learning how to compensate
for the less than stellar comprehension instruction recommended in these
programs. In this light, I explored how teachers might learn to teach
strategies more explicitly and effectively when basal instruction is a
primary part, if not the mainstay, of a reading program.
The research described here is nested in a quasi-experimental
professional development study conducted in 2006-2007. This year-long
study focused on how intermediate elementary teachers could be prepared
to teach complex, multiple comprehension strategies well to their students
in the context of ongoing instruction. This article represents the first
analysis of that broader study.
This investigation extends the results of earlier programmatic
research on an instructional framework known as transactional strategies
instruction (TSI; Brown, Pressley, Van Meter & Schuder, 1996; Pressley,
et al., 1992). Described in detail in the National Reading Panel Report
(2000), the approach prepares students to use a small set of research-
validated comprehension strategies that are instrumental in fostering
reading comprehension (e.g., making connections, predicting, questioning,
visualizing, summarizing). Students also are taught to respond personally
and aesthetically to the texts they read. The ultimate goal of TSI is to teach
students to use strategies independently to construct solid understandings
of both fiction and nonfiction texts.
To prepare students to become more self-directed strategies users,
teachers adopt a “gradual release of responsibility model”, where the
learning of less skilled readers is supported by the teacher and more capable
peers. Since learning links directly to the social context in which it occurs,
the approach is informed by Vygotskian socially mediated learning
theory
(1978). For one, changes in a student’s thinking are linked to the interactions
89
Brown
that occur among readers of varying abilities and experiences. Second, the
construction of meaning takes place during collaborative discussions of texts.
The notion here is that active participation by various readers can lead to
deeper text understandings than when students interpret texts on their own.
Method
Participants and context
Setting and participants. This study was conducted in four elementary
schools in a small urban-suburban school district in New York State during
academic year 2006-2007. Approximately 25% of the population qualified
for free or reduced-price meals. The majority of students in these schools
were White (about 90%), with Native Americans, Africans, Asians and
Hispanics comprising the rest of the population. After recruiting meetings
were held at each of the schools, 7 fourth- and 9 fifth -grade teachers joined
the study (see Table 1 for information on participants). The teachers ranged
in age from 26 to 57.
90
Teacher School Age Grade Gender Years
Teaching
Condition
T1 1 32 4 F 10 Materials
T2 1 52 4 F 21 Materials
T3 1 40 5 F 14 Materials
T4 1 38 5 F 7 Materials
T5 1 56 5 M 35 Materials
T6 2 52 5 F 15 Materials
T7 3 53 4 F 30 Coaching
T8 3 47 4 F 7 Coaching
T9 3 57 4 F 35 Coaching
T10 3 56 5 F 36 Coaching
T11
3 33 5 M 2 Coaching
T12 3 55 5 M 34 Coaching
T13 4 26 4 F 4 Coaching
T14 4 43 4 M 13 Coaching
T15 4 39 5 F 9 Coaching
T16 4 56 5 F 15 Coaching
TABLE 1. Teacher Demographics
Integrating TSI with Basal Instruction
As part of the larger study, teachers at each school were assigned to
one of two conditions, a professional materials group or a coaching group.
Teachers in the materials group received copies of the Comprehension
Toolkit (Harvey & Goudvis, 2005), a set of resources designed to support
strategies-based instruction for 3rd through 5th graders. This kit was
written by Harvey and Goudvis, authors of a popular text on comprehension
strategies instruction, Strategies that Work (2007). In addition to
an explanatory overview, this package included 26 comprehensive
model lessons for each of seven comprehension strategies: monitoring
comprehension, making connections, asking questions, inferring meaning,
determining importance and summarizing/synthesizing.
In comparison, the coaching teachers received support in the form
of three coaching sessions that were approximately forty-five minutes in
length in the spring. Separate coaching sessions were held in each school;
teachers met as a group after school with either a doctoral research assistant
or me. The coaching sessions were spaced at approximately monthly
intervals and were scheduled at the convenience of teachers.
Data sources. Teachers’ reading instruction was observed and audio-
taped at least 3 times over the course of the study. On average, these
observations ranged from 30 to 40 minutes in length. A doctoral research
assistant or I took extensive field notes during each lesson. Afterwards, we
revisited those notes to add detail and to ensure clarity; audiotapes of these
tapes were available to support this process. Although lesson observations
were the primary data sources, additional information was collected in
the form of teacher response logs (i.e., comments or questions teachers
recorded in writing or emailed me periodically to track their thinking),
notes written down after conversations with teachers, and responses to
items in a year-end questionnaire. These multiple methods allowed for
triangulation of data.
Procedures. In the fall, the first lesson observation, a baseline, was
conducted for all teachers. Once these observations were completed,
teachers attended two after-school orientations by condition, where they
were introduced to explicit strategies instruction. Content coverage in these
initial sessions was identical, with the exception of logistical information that
varied according to treatment. For example, in the second workshop for the
materials condition teachers, one copy of The Comprehension Toolkit was
distributed to teachers at each grade level in each school after the published
materials were overviewed. Teachers were told to apply this resource in any
way that they felt best supported their strategies-based teaching.
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Brown
In the spring, lesson observations were conducted by either the
doctoral research assistant or me. Teachers were observed three times,
with the exception of one individual who was observed only twice due
to scheduling difficulties. To the extent possible, classroom visits were
counterbalanced such that the doctoral student and I took turns observing
each teacher.
Topics in the first coaching session included a review of each strategy
and conditional information about when, where and why to use them, a
description of various techniques to scaffold students, and a discussion of
ways to encourage students to use strategies to support their interpretive,
critical and personal responding (i.e., asking students open-ended question
such as “What are you thinking?” instead of using low-level comprehension
questions following reading, such as “What part of his family did he leave
or come to?” or “How long did the Pony Express take to deliver the mail?”).
In the second session, the doctoral research assistant or I coached teachers
in how to make improvements to their explicit explanations and modeling,
using feedback from lesson observations to frame this support. The third
session was devoted to explaining, modeling and providing practice
for teachers in how to adapt basal instruction to better promote explicit
strategies instruction. Although teachers in the coaching condition were
not provided with any published materials, they were encouraged to take
notes, which they could refer to during subsequent instructional planning.
Teachers also were provided with handouts that highlighted key points
raised in sessions.
The study concluded in late May to early June with teachers completing
an end-of-year questionnaire. This questionnaire included open-ended
questions about teachers’ beliefs and practices concerning comprehension
instruction and assessment, feedback on the professional development
approach in which they participated, and Likert items that addressed
aspects of teachers’ comprehension strategies instruction (see Appendix A
for several sample items).
Results
Three observations per teacher were included in this analysis. For all
teachers, the baseline and first spring observation were analyzed. Except
for the one teacher for whom only two other observations existed, one of
the two remaining lessons was selected purposefully for analysis. That is,
each observation write-up was read through from beginning to end. Then,
whichever lesson of the two was deemed to be stronger in terms of explicit
92
Integrating TSI with Basal Instruction
strategies-based instruction was selected for analysis.
I adopted a “constant comparison” approach (Strauss & Corbin,
1990) for this qualitative, case analysis that informed and complemented
the broader quasi-experimental study. In the first phases of analysis,
categories for coding emerged through recursive scrutiny of the data.
Once the coding scheme was established, it was used to code the lessons.
In the next phase of analysis, I identified two key themes by examining
the relationships among categories and subcategories. The first related to
challenges teachers faced as they attempted to teach strategies explicitly
and the second focused on integration and development patterns.
Unquestionably, teachers encountered challenges as they attempted
to integrate explicit strategies instruction with their basal instruction.
The most prominent challenges involved: a) finding time for strategies
instruction, b) responding to political mandates, c) distinguishing between
skills and strategies, and d) dealing with various aspects of the gradual
release of responsibility model.
Carving out time for learning and teaching explicit strategies
instruction
The approach to explicit strategies instruction adopted in this study
entailed not only teaching strategies explicitly but also providing time
for students to practice those strategies during collaborative, interpretive
discussions of text. Given the multi-faceted nature of this instruction,
teachers had difficulty finding time to incorporate TSI as well as discerning
how to mesh this approach with everything else they needed to cover in
their reading curriculum, including basal instruction. A comment in one
of the coaching teacher’s response logs summarized this situation: “I do
feel frustrated because we are being pulled in too many directions.”
One way that materials teachers dealt with the complexity of TSI
integration (and constraints on their time) was to open up one or two slots
in their weekly literacy block to accommodate The Comprehension Toolkit
lessons. Although not optimal, this decision saved teachers from expending
considerable time in figuring out how to incorporate explicit strategies
instruction with ongoing instruction. Even one of the teachers who fared
well with explicit strategies instruction found it initially hard to integrate it
with core instruction: “I did not do it [seamlessly integrate explicit strategies
instruction] directly this year....I overlapped the language whenever I could.
I could not do both... some of the basal parts had to go....”
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Brown
As evident in the statement above, sometimes instructional time was
gained by dropping aspects of basal instruction. At other times, aspects of
TSI were condensed or eliminated. For instance, although teachers usually
made time for explicit explaining and/or modeling, the most neglected
dimension of explicit strategies instruction tended to be interpretive
discussion. In fact, few teachers ended up allotting time for students to use
their strategies to jointly construct or defend interpretations. No sooner
would students begin to explore an interesting nugget during reading
than the lively exchange of ideas would be quashed due to basal pacing
constraints. Thus, teachers often felt compelled to cut discussion short to
stay on track with daily lesson plans. To compact time, teachers drew on
various strategies: they read the text themselves rather than turning reading
over to students, they furnished their own text interpretations rather than
soliciting students’ ideas, they asked tightly-controlled questions to guide
students toward particular interpretations, or they curtailed discussion
when students tried to explore worthwhile ideas in greater depth.
Political mandates
In addition to staying on track, teachers often felt pulled between their
notions of effective instruction and their basals’ requirements for content
coverage and pacing. Repeatedly, teachers across schools raised concerns
about using basals as the primary means of reading instruction. Teachers
revealed this information in one-on-one discussions, small-group coaching
sessions, response log entries, and questionnaire responses. For example,
in the spring, teachers in one school expressed their dissatisfaction that
they would have to step up their “fidelity to the core” in the coming year.
Exasperated, these teachers worried that their instruction with novels
would disappear.
Furthermore, teachers in at least two schools did not want to give
up literature circles since they believed this collaborative structure
benefited students (“We are not allowed to use literature circles any
more...unbelieveable.”). Finally, one teacher expressed her dismay in a
response log entry: I feel “frustrated” due to the District’s rather inflexible
policy of “fidelity to the core,” of the basal. We’re lockstepped into a
sequence of comprehension skills that may or may not be appropriate for
the material being covered.” For all these teachers, “fidelity to the core”
meant following basal instruction precisely as specified, using only texts
that came bundled with the package -- a notion they intensely resisted.
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Integrating TSI with Basal Instruction
Negotiating differences between skills and strategies
Throughout the study, the distinction between skills and strategies
baffled teachers. Skills, which are routines performed the same way each
time, are learned through repetition. In contrast, strategies are goal-directed
actions that readers consciously and deliberately apply to solve problems
and meet the challenges of demanding texts which are read for specific
purposes. A more elaborated description of the differences between skills
and strategies can be found in Afflerbach, Pearson, and Paris’ Reading
Teacher article (2008).
Teachers often used the labels of skills and strategies interchangeably,
despite attempts to clarify meanings and eliminate confusions during
workshops and coaching sessions. For instance, more than once teachers
dubbed the basal skill of generalizing a strategy during conversations or
teaching. However, teachers never referred to specific strategies as skills.
Perceiving relationships between skills and strategies was problematic
too. For instance, several teachers did not realize that they could link the
skill of drawing conclusions to the strategy of inferring, even though both
of these required students to produce information not stated directly in a
text. Teachers also did not see that skills and strategies instruction differed
according to how heuristics were used in the classroom. That is, teachers
often employed “think maps” (i.e., text representational schemes), KWLs
or Q-A-Rs more to facilitate understanding of text content than to promote
students’ strategic self-regulation. In a notable example, students in several
classes learned the skill of filling in Venn Diagrams to compare information
when directed to do so. However, teachers did not explain how students
could adopt this approach to make connections between stories, situations,
or characters (e.g., text-to-text connections) when reading on their own.
Transitioning via the Gradual Release of Responsibility Model
(GRRM). Moving students progressively toward independent strategies
use challenged teachers. Sometimes individuals forgot to provide explicit
explanations or failed to do so consistently. However, despite intermittent
or patchy explanations, teacher seemed to scaffold their students’ short-
term use of strategies more easily. Common scaffolds included clarifying
confusions through responsive explanations, cuing strategies use, using
concrete examples to simplify abstract concepts, re-modeling, and using
sticky notes to record students’ thinking.
Following Comprehension Toolkit models, teachers in the materials
condition frequently moved their students toward independent practice within
specific lessons. They accomplished this by guiding students during sha
red
95
Brown
practice in a whole group setting before releasing them to apply the strategy
while reading in dyads or independently. However, only a few teachers in
either condition showed evidence of gradually releasing responsibility for
strategies use over time and across lessons. Few teachers also learned to
explicitly teach one strategy while emphasizing its use within the context
of other strategies. In effect, they found it difficult to highlight a particular
strategy while modeling its role within a repertoire of strategies.
Basal instruction, of itself, hindered explicit strategies instruction.
For instance, teachers spent so much time on pre-teaching vocabulary
and activating background knowledge prior to reading that less time
was available for explicit modeling, scaffolding, and strategies-based
discussion during reading. In a telling example, students spent an entire
class sorting words about basketball into several categories and then
discussing personal experiences playing or observing the sport – all in
isolation from text reading. As an alternative, this teacher could have
created space for explicit strategies instruction during actual reading by
condensing preparatory time.
The difficulties that teachers experienced with basal integration became
even more pronounced when juxtaposed with other program components.
This became evident through analysis of both observations and teachers’
responses to questionnaire items. For instance, teachers blended strategies
instruction much more fluidly when teaching novels, such as when they
engaged in interactive read-alouds (“Read-alouds were the easiest, the
most wonderful way/place to use strategic instruction”). In addition,
strategies-based teaching sometimes paired more naturally with literature
circles since teachers had experience preparing students for discussion
roles such as connection makers, text visualizers, or content summarizers.
However, including literature circles in core instruction did not ensure
ease in teaching strategies explicitly. One teacher who experienced great
difficulty with strategies instruction utilized literature circles. In contrast,
others, who did not adopt the approach, demonstrated far greater growth
as strategies-based teachers.
Patterns of integration and development
Whereas the first theme dealt with challenges teachers experienced,
the second one related to patterns of integration and professional growth,
including actions teachers took to help themselves learn to teach strategies
explicitly. For one, teachers scaffolded their learning by utilizing provided
models. In the Comprehension Toolkit condition, the teachers initially
96
Integrating TSI with Basal Instruction
found it too hard to integrate explicit strategies initially with their ongoing
instruction. Therefore, after conferring amongst themselves, teachers
decided that they would select a lesson from the Toolkit and append it to
their instruction. Instead of applying the lessons learned from the Toolkit,
they literally chiseled out time from their ongoing instruction and inserted
the modeled lesson as a supplementary, discrete element in their teaching.
As proof that teachers selected specific days of the week to cover the
Comprehension Toolkit curriculum, teachers made sure they would teach
those lessons on days when they knew that I or research assistant would
observe their teaching. Consequently, these strategies lessons remained
intact and, for the most part, disconnected from basal -- or any other
reading instruction.
The materials teachers were not the only ones who initially relied on
models. During a coaching session, teachers in one school observed a live
model of how to integrate visualizing with basal instruction. After that
session, I was told that the teachers collectively decided to try this basal-
integration lesson with their students, teaching it during an upcoming
observation. Similar to the materials teachers, an early integration strategy
for these coaching teachers was to simply slot in modeled instruction in
their own teaching, with little personalization or modification. However,
unlike the materials teachers, observations indicated that these teachers
attempted to integrate the visualizing strategy with the remainder of their
lesson, after first replicating the model.
This
episode demonstrated another strategy teachers used to scaffold
themselves. At times, teachers in each group decided to work together,
either in or across schools (for individuals in the same condition) in order to
deepen their understanding of or practice in explicit strategies instruction.
Integration prototypes. Part of this analysis entailed identifying
teachers’ professional development along a continuum of proficiency in
strategy teaching over time. Three lesson transcripts for each teacher were
evaluated holistically on the basis of several criteria related to explicit
strategies instruction (i.e., emphasizing strategies instruction, using a
gradual release of responsibility model for teaching, promoting socially
mediated learning, and fostering interpretive discussion).
Our approach to triangulation involved achieving greater precision in
rating than by having a single person interpreting findings. Initially, three
reviewers read through each transcript independently, considering the
criteria above, and made independent judgments about each lesson. Then,
we discussed each lesson in turn, expecting to negotiate differences to reach
97
Brown
consensus about development/integration patterns. Since our opinions
were surprisingly consistent, only two of us, the research assistant and
I, continued to rate the remaining transcripts. Via this process, teachers’
professional development was described as falling along a continuum of
integration from low to high, reflecting the way their facility with explicit
strategies instruction grew over time. Within this continuum, prototypical
patterns of change and integration were identified. To highlight differences
among teachers in terms of integration, the raters came up with qualitative
labels for the observed patterns. These are described below.
At the lower end of the strategies integration scale, the raters portrayed
one teacher in the coaching condition as a chunker. That is, from baseline
through the third observation, this teacher tended to teach strategies
instruction as a separate block without attempting to merge it with basal or
any other reading instruction. Also on the lower end of the scale was the
manual swapper. During the baseline lesson, this materials teacher taught
directly from the teacher’s edition of the basal. As time progressed, this
individual essentially swapped the Comprehension Toolkit manual for the
basal teacher’s edition when it came to teaching comprehension strategies.
However, even these teachers demonstrated some proficiency in strategies
instruction, although their development was constrained by the manner in
which they implemented strategies instruction.
Several teachers’ progress fell in the middle part of the continuum.
Known as
transitioners, 8 teachers dabbled with various aspects of
explicit strategies instruction. Either they progressed in one dimension
or demonstrated several precursor moves, but remained inconsistent in
their attempts. Another observed pattern in the middle part of the scale
was the generalizer. From the baseline observation onward, this teacher
was highly explicit – whether teaching skills or strategies. The tendency
to teach both strategies and skills was evident, not just in observations,
but also in one response log entry in which the teacher mentioned that
she felt she needed more “modeling” of one of the basal comprehension
skills, which is generalizing. However, while explicit with both skills
and strategies, this teacher made uneven progress in other dimensions
of TSI such as releasing control to students to practice strategies during
interpretive discussions.
Two threshhold crossers, higher on the continuum, integrated several
aspects of explicit strategies instruction successfully. Strongest of all, 3
teachers qualified as consistent, capable practitioners. During observations,
these individuals made the most progress in teaching strategies explicitly,
as an integrated set, using the gradual release of responsibility model in
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the context of rich, varied text discussions.
Discussion
This case study documented the challenges and changes teachers
experienced as they integrated strategies instruction in reading programs
that featured basals as a core, instructional component. This work both
confirmed findings from previous studies on explicit strategies instruction
and extended that research base.
Similar to teachers in previous TSI teacher studies, these participants
faced several challenges. For instance, teachers had concerns about the
instructional decisions they made, the texts they used, the time they required
for teaching strategies explicitly, and the ways they integrated various
instructional approaches (Benson-Griffo, Kohansal & Pearson, 2007, El-
Dinary, 2002; Hilden & Pressley, 2007). Yet, despite these challenges,
several teachers demonstrated that explicit strategies instruction can be
integrated effectively with basal instruction and that learning to do so can
be accomplished, with varying degrees of proficiency, over the course
of one year. This outcome is significant because previous studies have
indicated that it can take up to three years for educators to learn to become
highly capable and committed explicit strategies teachers (Brown, 2008).
Past studies also have revealed that TSI is not universally embraced
or practiced effectively by all teachers who attempt its use (El-Dinary,
2002). Although researchers in earlier studies detailed several factors for
lackluster acceptability, they did not explore patterns that described how
teachers, new to the approach, integrated TSI within the context of an
existing program (i.e., chunker, manual swapper, transitioner, generalizer,
threshold crosser, and consistent, capable practitioner).
Although teachers started their professional development together
(and even though some of them experienced the same professional
development condition), there was little uniformity in integration. Of
the 10 coaching and 6 materials participants, two teachers, one from each
condition, developed least in TSI learning. Their lesser progress related,
at least in part, to the fact that they missed at least one critical component
of professional development (i.e., one could not attend the second of two
initial workshops, and the other was absent from two coaching sessions).
In the next and largest contingent of teachers, transitioners, 6 were in the
coaching group and 2 were in the materials groups. Finally, of the five
teachers who made the most progress (2 threshold crossers and 3 capable
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Brown
practitioners) three were materials teachers and two were coaching
teachers. Thus, across both conditions, participants demonstrated great
variability in instructional practices, with representatives from each group
exhibiting both high and low levels of proficiency in teaching TSI. Future
analysis of the data will explore whether the number of teaching years may
play a role in influencing the teachers’ practice with TSI.
When viewing total progress, the teachers who worked with the
Comprehension Toolkit seemed to make more progress over time.
However, this growth needed to be evaluated relative to teachers’
proficiency at baseline. When taking this information into account, both
groups of teachers appeared to benefit from their respective professional
development experiences. Thus, this study showed that initial workshops
combined with either the provision of small-group coaching or annotated
model lessons did support teachers’ initial attempts at teaching transactional
strategies instruction. Yet, most teachers still had far to go in integrating
the various dimensions of the framework with their core instruction rather
than treating it as an “add-on”.
Overall, the observational analysis provided a lens through which to
better understand differences in teachers’ progress. That is, the findings
suggested that teaching practices evolved relative to multiple dimensions and
interacting factors, both within the teacher and in the external environment.
Internal factors included a teacher’s depth of knowledge about TSI as well
as that individual’s ability to translate that knowledge into practice. Factors
external to teachers included the type of professional development in which
they participated, the features of their ongoing reading programs, and the
school/district mandates with which they complied.
The interplay between these internal and external factors had much to
do with the basal integration. For instance, managing the tensions between
learning explicit strategies instruction and following a basal’s curriculum
and pacing guidelines was not easy. For successful integration to occur,
teachers, at a minimum, had to know which strategies to teach in which
contexts to which students. They needed to know specific information
about when, where, and why to use the strategies. They also had to provide
explicit explanations, to model their strategic thinking, and to scaffold
students’ understanding and application of the strategies. At times, they
had to curtail their teacher talk to provide students with opportunities to
construct and defend text interpretations in collaborative discussions.
Keeping track of all these factors constituted an immense juggling act.
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Integrating TSI with Basal Instruction
Yet, for integration to occur successfully, teachers also had to remai
n
cognizant of the basal’s scripted lessons and pacing guidelines.
Another compelling finding was that knowing why, when, where and
how to make modifications to basal instruction was more difficult than
integrating strategies instruction with other reading program components.
Teachers in both conditions generally had fewer difficulties integrating
explicit strategies instruction when they taught with non-basal texts
and with literature circles. We (i.e., the doctoral research assistant and
I) speculated that it was easier for teachers to teach strategies explicitly
in these circumstances because: 1) the teachers did not have to comply
with scripted guidelines, and 2) other aspects of the instructional program
seemed a more natural fit with strategies instruction.
At least in the foreseeable future, teachers will continue to face
challenges when learning TSI. Most probably, basal programs will
continue to figure prominently in the classroom; and, it is unlikely that
publishers will revise their programs to align more closely with research-
supported guidelines at any time soon. With strict adherence to “fidelity
to the core,” teachers also may be limited in their attempts to blend more
effective teaching of comprehension strategies with their basal instruction.
As such, more research is needed to understand how to support teachers
as they provide multi-componential strategies instruction in a period of
heightened attention to standardization and accountability.
Additionally, given the variability in learning and the complexity
involved in TSI, this research suggests that manipulating the type of
professional development teachers receive (such as being coached in
person or being provided with high-quality model lessons) is insufficient.
Professional developers of complex instructional frameworks, such as TSI,
need to consider an array of internal and external variables that mediate
teachers’ learning.
Until such time that comprehension strategies instruction in basals
improves, teachers will require help to “operate at [the] nexus of tensions
between external reform forces pushing for standardized mandated
change and an internal, grassroots approach to changing comprehension
instructional practice” (Benson-Griffo, Kohansal & Pearson, 2007, p.
125). Without it, excellent strategies instruction may remain largely
absent in schools and students may miss the opportunity to engage
in comprehension instruction that fosters independent, strategic and
motivated reading.
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Integrating TSI with Basal Instruction
Brown
APPENDIX A
Sample Items from the End-of-Year Questionnaire
Open-ended Items:
How do you define reading comprehension?
What knowledge do you need to have to teach reading comprehension
well to students?
What is the difference between a comprehension skill and a
comprehension strategy?
How do you believe comprehension should be taught?
Please name the comprehension strategies you taught this year.
In what ways did you find it difficult to integrate explicit strategies instruction?
Likert-style Items:
I find that explicit strategies instruction is compatible with the way I taught
comprehension before the study.
Strongly Agree Somewhat Agree Somewhat Disagree Strongly Disagree
I do not feel I really know how to teach comprehension strategies explicitly.
Strongly Agree Somewhat Agree Somewhat Disagree Strongly Disagree
I found explicit strategies instruction challenging to integrate
with basal instruction.
Strongly Agree Somewhat Agree Somewhat Disagree Strongly Disagree
I found explicit strategies instruction challenging to integrate with read-alouds.
Strongly Agree Somewhat Agree Somewhat Disagree Strongly Disagree
To what extent does explicit strategies instruction correspond to your
beliefs about the way comprehension should be taught?
Extensively Moderately Somewhat Very Little
To what extent was explicit strategies instruction integrated with your
everyday comprehension instruction since January?
Extensively Moderately Somewhat Very Little
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Rachel Brown, a former middle school learning specialist, is an Assistant
Professor and Director of the Literacy Master’s Programs in the Reading
and Language Arts Center at Syracuse University. She conducts research
and publishes in the area of comprehension strategies instruction, self-
regulated learning, and literacy and technology.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
Many heartfelt thanks are extended to Vicki McQuitty, a doctoral student
in the Department of Teaching and Leadership, Syracuse University, who
served as research assistant on this project.
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