Umbrella action research projects as a mechanism for learning and teaching quality enhancement

ABSTRACT

Umbrella action research projects link together a number of small action research projects under a common organizational and thematic umbrella. This article provides an example of an umbrella action research project, which aimed for teaching quality enhancement. There are two mechanisms by which teaching quality can be enhanced. The first of these is through the improvements initiated in the small projects, which are normally conducted by teachers in the courses they teach. The second mechanism is that of the collective reflective discussions of the whole project team. The collective umbrella that over-arches the individual projects provides a mechanism for participants to collectively transform their understanding of the common thematic issue. There is, therefore, the possibility of an emancipatory transformation, so that the whole achieves more than the sum of the individual projects. This article substantiates the impact of umbrella action research projects by presenting case studies from an overall project that focused on online learning. The cases highlight our reflective discussions on promoting student engagement in online learning. They show how our collective understanding of engagement in online learning was advanced and some of the means tried in the small projects to encourage student engagement. As there is evidence of teaching quality enhancement through the umbrella action research project, we discuss the possibility of redirecting some of the resources currently devoted to quality assurance to quality enhancement through encouraging action research projects.     

Crossing the Disciplinary Boundaries: Professional Development through Action Research in Higher Education

‐ An interdisciplinary action research approach to improve the teaching competences of faculty members of the University of Innsbruck (Austria) proved to be effective in promoting reflective lecturing. After an introductory session individual projects were initiated, in which the participants undertook different approaches to action research by reflecting on their own teaching situation. As an ongoing evaluative process between individual inquiry‐based phases of lecturing and reflective plenary sessions the program tried to offer deeper insights into the participants' own ‘theories’ of what they intended to accomplish in the classroom and how they wanted to achieve these goals. In addition, the cooperative design of the project also fostered the organisational development across the disciplinary boundaries and initiated some institutional changes. The results clearly indicate that involving University teachers as reflective practitioners will help in establishing a culture of self‐evaluation and professional development.     

Role reversal within the mentoring dyad: collaborative mentoring on the effective instruction of English language learners

Two purposes guided this mixed‐methods investigation of the collaborative mentoring of teachers in a large school system in the south‐eastern United States. The first was to examine collaborative mentoring as unstructured peer‐to‐peer coaching that emerged spontaneously as teachers shared experiences about effectively teaching English language learners (ELLs). The second was to examine how licensure courses contributed to the emergence of collaborative mentoring. Data collection consisted of questionnaires, mentoring stories, phone interviews, and electronic surveys. After completing courses, 84 teachers reported significant increases in frequency and duration of interactions for sharing best practices with colleagues. The data analysts identified course components, causal links, and catalysts as having created conditions for mentoring. Of 33 novice teachers recently trained in teaching ELLs, most found themselves mentoring veteran teachers yet untrained in teaching this student group. This unexpected reversal of the traditional novice/veteran roles within mentoring dyads addresses a gap in the educational literature.     

Threats to the validity of science performance assessments for English language learners

In recent years, at the same time that performance assessments in science have become more popular, the number of English language learners (ELLs) (i.e., students whose native language is other than English) served by the U.S. educational system has also increased rapidly. While the research base is growing in each of these areas independently, little attention has been paid to their intersection. This case study of the use of a science performance assessment with 96 ELLs in five high school science classes investigated the face, construct, and consequential validity of this intersection. Qualitative and quantitative data analyses showed that both teachers and students had an overall favorable response to the assessment, although students' English comprehension and expression skills were determining factors for certain items. While most responses were reliably scored, ELL spelling and syntax on certain responses were significant sources of error. The degree of specificity of teachers' guidance also significantly affected students' scores. Recommendations from this study include increasing the clarity of an assessment's design, allowing ELLs more time to complete assessments, and scoring by raters who are knowledgeable about typical patterns in written English for this student population. Furthermore, it is recommended that the use of performance assessments with ELLs be exploratory until such time as their validity and reliability with this population can be more adequately established. J Res Sci Teach 34: 721–743, 1997.     

Teacher agency,positioning, and English language learners: Voices of pre-service classroom teachers

This study explores the identity (re)negotiations and agency of three pre-service classroom teachers who received their ESL (English as a Second Language) endorsement at a research university in the United States. An analysis of interview data and teachers' journal entries, from a narrative positioning perspective, indicates that the teachers took on various, and sometimes conflicting, positional identities in relation to their social context (e.g., mentor teachers, ELLs, etc.). The findings further indicate that those positional identities have shaped teachers' agency and self-reported classroom practices. The analysis presented provides implications for teachers of ELLs and teacher educators.     

Teachers as collaborative learners in clinical supervision: a state‐of‐the‐art review 1

While there is an abundance of rhetoric in the educational literature that exhorts teachers to be more critical and reflective of their teaching, that same body of literature is desperately short on practical advice. This paper specifically addresses a tried and tested process of peer or colleague consultation as a way of enabling teachers to develop the kind of collaborative relationship conducive to interclass visitation, observation and discussion. Accordingly, ‘clinical supervision’ is proposed as a framework within which teachers can begin the difficult task of uncovering the layers of meaning in their teaching, by engaging in ‘frequent, continuous and increasingly concrete and precise talk about their teaching.’

     

Thai pre-service science teachers engaging action research during their fifth year internship

As a key element in teacher education programmes, action research is a learning process in which pre-service teachers inquire, reflect on and improve their teaching practices. This qualitative study sought to understand what enhanced or hindered Thai pre-service teachers' action research projects during their student teaching. This study drew upon written reflections, focus-group interviews and observations of seminar sessions. Data analysis was inductive, involving categorical aggregation followed by a search for correspondence and patterns. The results indicated that the pre-service teachers misunderstood action research, and also held a negative attitude toward it, both of which led them to superficial analyses of practice. They struggled with time limitations, data gathering and interpretation strategies. In spite of the struggles they experienced, these pre-service science teachers did learn more about the action research through collaboratively working with cooperating teachers and university supervisors and on-campus seminar discussions held concurrently with the fifth year internship. Recognizing and understanding the reasons and thinking patterns at the root of these teachers' difficulties with learning about action research can form the basis for reflecting on and rethinking the components of science teacher preparation programmes in Thailand.     

中学反思性英语教学与行动研究

根据反思性教学的特点及英语教学反思的内容,分析行动研究的内涵及中学英语教师开展行动研究的优势,探讨反思性教学与行动研究的方法,有助于中学英语教师进行反思性教学和开展行动研究,从而不断提高教育教学质量,推动基础教育课程改革.     

反思性教学中几对基本关系的剖析

反思性教学作为当前倡导的一种重要教学思想,在落实到行动时产生了不少的困惑,究其根本就是对反思性教学的整体把握还有偏差,因此需要对反思性教学与教学反思、反思性教学与反思实践、反思性教学与行动研究、反思性教学与教师专业发展这样几对基本关系作一个梳理,从而为反思性教学的持续有效开展奠定基础。     

THE CONFIDENCE TO TEACH ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS: EXPLORING COURSEWORK'S ROLE IN DEVELOPING PRESERVICE TEACHERS' EFFICACY

As our schools become increasingly diverse and the effects of immigration can be felt across the nation, some states have mandated that preservice teachers take endorsement courses that focus on teaching English Language Learners (ELLs) with the purpose of ensuring that teachers are able to meet ELLs' social and academic needs. A significant factor in improving instructional practices for ELLs is preservice teachers' confidence in their ability to teach ELLs successfully. What remains to be seen, however, is how best to organize and implement endorsement courses so that they have a positive effect on teachers' confidence to use their new knowledge to teach in effective ways. In this study, we discuss how endorsement curricula can build teachers' self-efficacy for teaching ELLs by not just covering the required content, but by being conscientious in how the curricula are organized and delivered. By providing teachers with the foundational knowledge through the use of meaningful and engaging pedagogical practices, preservice teachers' efficacy and beliefs about instructing ELLs will increase. This, in turn, will provide them with the confidence to teach those who may be very different culturally and linguistically from themselves.     

Using a New Learning Environment Questionnaire for Reflection in Teacher Action Research

This article reports the development, validation and use of an instrument designed to provide teachers with feedback information, based on students’ perceptions, about their classroom environments. The instrument was developed to provide teachers with feedback that they could use to reflect on their teaching practices and, in turn, guide the implementation of strategies to improve their learning environments. To determine the validity and reliability of the new instrument, data from 2043 grade 11 and 12 students from 147 classes in 9 schools were analysed. The Rasch model was used to convert data collected using a frequency response scale into interval data that are suitable for parametric analyses. During an action research process, reflective journals, written feedback, discussions at a forum and interviews with eight teachers helped to illuminate the processes used by teachers during action research. This article reports the views of these teachers in general and examines more closely how one of the teachers used student responses to the learning environment questionnaire as a tool for reflection and as a guide in transforming her classroom environment. This case study helped us to gauge the extent to which action research based on students’ perceptions of the learning environment was useful in guiding teachers’ improvements of their classroom learning environments.     

Envisioning collaboration: including ESOL students and teachers in the mainstream classroom

The inclusion of language learners and the imperative to meet the needs of English language learners in the mainstream classroom call upon teachers of English for speakers of other languages (ESOL teachers) and mainstream teachers to work together; however, little research has been done in US contexts to understand collaborative efforts between ESOL and mainstream teachers. Research thus far has focused on the inclusion of English language learners (ELLs), but this paper argues that we need to look more closely at the inclusion of teachers of ELLs, by examining how three ESOL teachers and three of their mainstream counterparts envision their work as collaborative. We found that when pairs envisioned their work as collaborative, they created a synergy that constructed a broader network of resources for ELLs by bringing together more people, materials, ideas and abilities than either teacher was able to generate alone. This network allowed both teachers in the pair to become part of a larger conversation, and connected both teachers to others who were working to foster the academic success of ELLs.     

幼儿教师反思性教学过程实施的个案研究——以山西省忻州市甲幼儿园为例

关注教师的成长,促进教师专业发展,培养和造就一支高素质高质量的教师队伍成为世界各国共同追求的目标。反思性教学是一种把关注学习和行为变化的思想和行动整合起来的方式,因它是促进幼儿教师专业成长的重要途径而成为当前幼儿教育领域更加关注的焦点。某种意义上说,幼儿教师反思性教学实施的过程也是其专业成长的过程。基于此,研究采用个案研究法,从幼儿教师的真实感受出发,在分析反思性教学过程的基础上,界定了幼儿教师反思性教学过程的内涵,探讨了幼儿教师反思性教学过程的主要环节,在此基础上提出了提高幼儿教师反思性教学过程实施的有效途径,以期为幼儿教师反思性教学过程的实施提供建设性的建议。     

Using action research in middle level teacher education to evaluate and deepen reflective practice

The study examined the role of action research in promoting critical reflective thinking among twenty preservice teachers engaged in a year-long middle level program. Data from collaborative discussions, final written documents, presentations, and follow-up surveys revealed that conducting action research (a) engaged them in inquiry into their own practice, (b) was a means to reflect upon and determine ways to change their teaching practices, and (c) promoted critical reflection in a collaborative learning environment. Results underscore the importance of preservice teachers critically reflecting to gain insights into teaching and student learning as they are engaged in action research.     

反思性教学：大学英语教师成长的有效途径

反思性教学是大学英语教师把教学和科研有机结合起来的有效途径。立足课堂教学实践,通过课前、课堂教学和课后的反思活动,加强科学研究,提高教师素质。坚持写教学目志、认真组织听课活动、细心观看教学录像、积极开展行动研究、虚心接受教学评估,从而促进大学英语教师自身全面发展。     

Inviting conversation: meaningful talk about texts for English language learners

In Canada, as in other anglophone countries, classrooms are becoming more diverse as the number of English language learners (ELLs) increases. More and more teachers are faced with the task of meeting the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse students. In this article, I share excerpts of dialogue between ELL students, native English‐speaking children and their teacher during guided reading events. Excerpts will illustrate how conversations around texts during reading activities can shape and extend the construction of meaning for the benefit of all, but especially for ELL students. Based on Vygotsky's (1986) proposition that learning is socially situated, I suggest four ways for teachers to structure meaningful conversations: through questioning, teaching vocabulary, engaging in collaborative talk and recognising that the culture and identity of the child are important to literacy learning.     

行动研究在农村英语教师专业发展中的作用

随着现代教育的不断发展,"教师即研究者"日渐成为教师专业发展方面的一个重要理念.对于农村英语教师而言,行动研究是教师及时解决自己教学上的问题,提高教育教学质量而进行的一种探索性地有效行动和方法,是教学过程中问题解决的一种特殊形式,是一个能动的、反思性的认知加工过程,具有自主实践性、理论应用性、整体合作性、动态生成性等特点.在此基础上探讨行动研究对促进农村英语教师专业素养的提升,形成专业自信,增强科研意识等方面的作用,以及英语教师进行行动研究的主要途径.     

Can Teachers’ Reflections on Digital and Curriculum Resources Generate Lessons?

This article presents a critical action research study of six participants who reflected on their experiences and practices of digital resources in teaching Grade 12 mathematics Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS). One-on-one semi-structured interviews, reflective activities, and journals were used for data generation to explore these reflections in order to encourage the teachers to reflect. Purposive with convenience sampling was used to select the teachers. The study reveals that ideological-ware (IW) resources and critical reflections are the main ingredients to ensure the success of CAPS implementation. When the teachers critically reflected on their practical use of the digital resources, they overcame the curriculum challenges that affected their teaching practice. This study recommends the promotion of IW resources and critical reflections in order to produce teachers’ reflective framework for teaching. This study consequently concludes that there were limited forms of reflections that were not compulsory to the teachers.     

“How will I get them to behave?”: Pre service teachers reflect on classroom management

This study examines how pre-service teachers think about disconnections between what they believe about teaching, what they learn in their university coursework, and what they observe of behaviour management practices in public school classrooms. Based on the reflective writings of teacher education students at an urban Midwestern university in the United States, this narrative research leads to a deeper understanding of how teacher educators can support and challenge future teachers in their ability to think critically and thoughtfully in developing their identities as future educators.     

How teachers’ beliefs about learning and teaching relate to their continuing professional development

Teachers’ continuing professional development (CPD) can improve teacher quality and teaching practice, yet teachers differ greatly in the extent to which they engage in CPD. In extensive research into which factors affect teachers’ participation in CPD, the effects of teachers’ beliefs have received limited attention, despite their strong influences on people’s working and learning. Teachers’ beliefs about learning and teaching in particular influence their teaching practices. Does a comparable relationship exist between these beliefs and teachers’ own learning or participation in CPD? To explore this relationship, 260 Dutch secondary school teachers completed a survey that focused on the teachers’ student-oriented and subject matter-oriented beliefs, as well as on teachers’ updating, reflective and collaborative activities. Because teachers’ characteristics reflect both belief dimensions, this study relied on cluster analysis, which revealed three distinct belief profiles. These results indicated that teachers’ beliefs about learning and teaching relate to their participation in CPD: the more a teacher’s profile is student oriented and subject matter oriented, the higher his or her participation in CPD. The results have implications for enhancing teachers’ reflections on their beliefs about learning and teaching, in conjunction with participation in CPD.