Matching Items (7)
Filtering by
- All Subjects: Professional Development
- All Subjects: English Language Learners
- Creators: Beardsley, Audrey
- Creators: Fischman, Gustavo E
Description
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this descriptive study was to gain an understanding of the confidence level held by third, fourth, and fifth grade teachers as to their preparedness for teaching the cognitive demands of the Common Core State Standards (Arizona's College and Career Ready Standards) to all students, in particular Hispanic students living in poverty, who occupy close to a third of all classroom seats in Arizona. The achievement gap between Hispanic students living in poverty and non-Hispanic students of non-poverty status is one of the largest achievement gaps in Arizona, which has existed with minimal change for more than 12 years. By gaining an understanding of the teachers' confidence in teaching critical thinking skills, further support and professional development is suggested to link a teacher's knowledge to instructional practice that in turn increases the academic achievement of Arizona's poor Hispanic students.
The process of gaining this understanding was by using a multi-dimensional survey with 500 third through fifth grade teachers in two uniquely different, but representative, Arizona school districts. Approximately one-third of those teachers responded to the multi-dimensional survey about teaching the critical thinking (CT) skills of Arizona's College and Career Ready Standards for English Language Arts. The survey asked teachers to rate their levels of preparedness for teaching CT to several types of students, to choose a CT definition, describe the relationship of CT and reading, explain how they teach CT to students who are reading below grade level, express the support they need to teach CT to those students, and rate the effectiveness of several CT classroom vignettes for different types of students. Although the questions involved several types of students, the primary focus was on exploring the teachers' position with teaching CT to Low SES Hispanic students.
A disconnect was revealed between the teachers' perception that they had the ability and knowledge necessary to teach critical thinking skills and their ability to identify ineffective critical thinking instructional practices. This disconnect may be interfering with the link between the professional development teachers are currently receiving to implement Common Core State Standards and teachers actively engaging in learning what is needed to effectively teach critical thinking skills to their students.
The purpose of this descriptive study was to gain an understanding of the confidence level held by third, fourth, and fifth grade teachers as to their preparedness for teaching the cognitive demands of the Common Core State Standards (Arizona's College and Career Ready Standards) to all students, in particular Hispanic students living in poverty, who occupy close to a third of all classroom seats in Arizona. The achievement gap between Hispanic students living in poverty and non-Hispanic students of non-poverty status is one of the largest achievement gaps in Arizona, which has existed with minimal change for more than 12 years. By gaining an understanding of the teachers' confidence in teaching critical thinking skills, further support and professional development is suggested to link a teacher's knowledge to instructional practice that in turn increases the academic achievement of Arizona's poor Hispanic students.
The process of gaining this understanding was by using a multi-dimensional survey with 500 third through fifth grade teachers in two uniquely different, but representative, Arizona school districts. Approximately one-third of those teachers responded to the multi-dimensional survey about teaching the critical thinking (CT) skills of Arizona's College and Career Ready Standards for English Language Arts. The survey asked teachers to rate their levels of preparedness for teaching CT to several types of students, to choose a CT definition, describe the relationship of CT and reading, explain how they teach CT to students who are reading below grade level, express the support they need to teach CT to those students, and rate the effectiveness of several CT classroom vignettes for different types of students. Although the questions involved several types of students, the primary focus was on exploring the teachers' position with teaching CT to Low SES Hispanic students.
A disconnect was revealed between the teachers' perception that they had the ability and knowledge necessary to teach critical thinking skills and their ability to identify ineffective critical thinking instructional practices. This disconnect may be interfering with the link between the professional development teachers are currently receiving to implement Common Core State Standards and teachers actively engaging in learning what is needed to effectively teach critical thinking skills to their students.
ContributorsFast, Deborah (Author) / Fischman, Gustavo E (Thesis advisor) / Harris, Connie (Committee member) / Bader, Beth (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
This multilevel, institutional case study used ethnographic methods to explore the intersections of local language policies and emergent bilingual students’ identities in dual language and structured English immersion (SEI) classrooms at one urban elementary school. Using a sociocultural policy approach as means to explore the ways that educational language policies are appropriated and practiced in schools and classrooms and an intersectional literacy identity framework, I engaged in a multilevel qualitative analysis of one school, two fifth-grade classrooms, and four focal emergent bilingual students. At the school and classroom levels, I sought to understand the ways educators practiced and enacted language policies as well as how they conceptualized (bi)literacy for emergent bilingual students. At the student level, I engaged in identity-text writing sessions designed around student interests yet aligned with the opinion/argumentation writing style the students were working on in class at the time of data collection. Additionally, I conducted one-on-one interviews with the participants at each level of analysis (i.e. school-level, classroom-level, and student-level). The primary data analysis sources included participant interviews, classroom observations, and student identity-text artifacts.
Findings highlight the dynamic in-school and classroom-level realities of emergent bilingual students in an Arizona educational-language policy context. Specifically, at the school level, there was an ongoing tension between compliance and resistance to state-mandated policies for emergent bilingual students. At the school and classroom levels, there were distinct differences in the ways students across the two classrooms were positioned within the larger school environment as well as variation surrounding how language and culture were positioned as a resource in each classroom context. The role of teachers as language policymakers is also explored through the findings. Analysis of student texts revealed the centrality of intersectional student identities throughout the writing processes. The discussion and conclusions more broadly address implications for educational practice, policy, and future research directions.
Findings highlight the dynamic in-school and classroom-level realities of emergent bilingual students in an Arizona educational-language policy context. Specifically, at the school level, there was an ongoing tension between compliance and resistance to state-mandated policies for emergent bilingual students. At the school and classroom levels, there were distinct differences in the ways students across the two classrooms were positioned within the larger school environment as well as variation surrounding how language and culture were positioned as a resource in each classroom context. The role of teachers as language policymakers is also explored through the findings. Analysis of student texts revealed the centrality of intersectional student identities throughout the writing processes. The discussion and conclusions more broadly address implications for educational practice, policy, and future research directions.
ContributorsBaca, Evelyn Concepción (Author) / Jimenez-Silva, Margarita (Thesis advisor) / Artiles, Alfredo (Committee member) / Beardsley, Audrey (Committee member) / Casanova, Saskias (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
As scrutiny of teacher effectiveness increases, there is a greater call for multiple instruments to measure teacher effectiveness and provide robust feedback to support teacher growth and development. Student perception surveys, questionnaires completed by K-12 students about their teachers, have increasingly been used to evaluate teachers and provide feedback. Situated in the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College (MLFTC) at Arizona State University, this action research study used Attribution Theory, Sensemaking Theory, and research on teacher emotion to 1) document the experiences of pre-service teachers as they related to the administration and subsequent results from a student perception survey (SPS), and 2) examine the influence of two online professional development modules created to prepare teachers for the SPS process and make sense of the results. Teacher candidates participated in the SPS process in their final, year-long residency. Results from the mixed-methods study provided evidence that pre-service teachers had both positive and negative experiences that were influenced by the SPS results they received from their students. Also, depending on the results they received, teacher candidates either attributed the cause of the results to themselves or to characteristics of their students. Results from the study also indicate that teacher candidates use few strategies to make sense of the results and used those strategies to varying degrees. Pre-service teachers indicated that they regarded the modules as helpful in the sense-making process. Furthermore, evidence indicates that pre-service teachers value their students’ feedback.
ContributorsVilla, Lessita Ann Lorin (Author) / Jordan, Michelle E (Thesis advisor) / Beardsley, Audrey (Committee member) / Ribbens, Teressa (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
ABSTRACT This study details the pilot of a collaborative peer-coaching model as a form of job embedded professional development, to guide teacher collaboration and planning based on benchmark assessments. The collaborative peer-coaching framework used (including reflection and collaboration about student data, and classroom instruction) was informed by the five propositions outlined by the National Board of Professional Teacher Standards (NBPTS). This intervention included teacher training, discussion (pre and post instruction), collaboration about student benchmark data, and classroom observations with further data collected through surveys and interviews. Using a mixed methods approach to data collection and analysis, I focused on how participants engaged in a collaborative peer-coaching model to guide their instruction based on the use of student data they collected from common benchmark assessments.
ContributorsWright, Kerri M (Author) / Beardsley, Audrey (Thesis advisor) / Serafini, Frank (Committee member) / Reyes, Elba (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
The purpose of the project was to explore the extent to which an asynchronous online professional development (PD) model focusing on instructor presence would improve feedback and interactions with students. The study is grounded in Community of Inquiry theory, which situates learning at the intersection of teaching presence, social presence and cognitive presence. The study aimed to improve student success by empowering instructors to integrate engaging strategies and technology tools into fully online courses. The participants were 4 higher education instructors teaching in fully online degree programs delivered to 160-200 undergraduate students. For eight weeks the 4 instructors participated in the PD. The goals of the PD were to learn strategies for improving instructor presence and integrating student engagement opportunities in a collaborative online format. Data was collected from pre- and post-intervention offerings of the instructors’ courses to determine the impact of participation in the PD. Results suggest that the PD model was an effective intervention to increase presence and engagement. Presence and engagement were found to have increased in participants’ courses. Interactive video was found to serve multiple purposes including increasing instructor presence and student engagement, facilitating feedback between instructors and students, and elevating the level of cognitive presence of students. As a result, instructors and students both indicated a perception of improved interactions and feedback.
ContributorsRomanoski, Matthew Peter (Author) / Fischman, Gustavo E (Thesis advisor) / Wolf, Leigh (Committee member) / Farmakis, Heather (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
Description
Data use in higher education continues to increase as college and university leaders aim to meet accreditor and governmental expectations to use data to improve student outcomes. However, the steady increase in data use over the past decades has not been accompanied by an increase in employee data literacy in order for employees to use the data effectively. Further, inequitable student outcomes continue to persist in higher education, and more specifically at two-year community colleges, as potentially exacerbated by a lack of employee equity-mindedness. These concurrent problems—inadequate employee data literacy and persistent inequitable student outcomes—provide an opportunity to address both with one intervention. In this critical race, mixed-methods, action research study, I piloted an online professional development course, aimed at community college employees with the purpose to build data literacy and equity-mindedness. I used Bandura’s (1989) Social Cognitive Theory as a guiding theoretical framework paired with a quasi-experimental, delayed-start research design to study the effectiveness of the course in building employee data literacy and equity-mindedness, in addition to better understanding the impacts of environmental factors (i.e., organizational culture) on the implementation of the course. Using pre- and post-intervention surveys, pre- and post-intervention knowledge assessments, and post-intervention participant interviews, I determined that the professional development course contributed to improvements in employee data literacy and equity-mindedness. In particular, the course helped increase employee self-efficacy for data use, increased employee knowledge of data use and equity-mindedness, and increased employee intent to use data in the future. I also found that the organization’s culture related to data and equity to be complex and evolving, both hindering and facilitating data use, in general, and data use specifically, to address inequitable student outcomes.
ContributorsMitchell, Dennis Shane (Author) / Beardsley, Audrey (Thesis advisor) / Ott, Molly (Committee member) / Jacobsen, Craig (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
Arizona's English Language Development Model (ELD Model) is intended to increase and accelerate the learning of English by English Language Learners (ELLs), so that the students can then be ready, when they know the English language, to learn the other academic subjects together with their English speaking peers. This model is part of a response to comply with the Flores Consent Order to improve services for ELLs in Arizona public schools. Whether or not it actually has improved instruction for ELLs has been the subject of much debate and, in 2012, after four years of the requirement to use Arizona's ELD Model, the ELL students who were identified as reclassified for the six districts in the study did not pass the Arizona's Instrument to Measure Standards (AIMS) test. The model's requirement to separate students who are not proficient from students who are proficient, the assessment used for identification of ELLs, and the Structured English Immersion four hours of English only instruction are at the nexus of the controversy, as the courts accepted the separate four hour SEI portion of the model for instruction as sufficient to meet the needs of ELLs in Arizona (Garcia, 2011, Martinez, 2012, Lawton, 2012, Lillie, 2012). This study examines student achievement in Reading and Math as measured by AIMS standards-based tests in six urban K-8 public school districts between 2007-2012. This period was selected to cover two years before and four years after the ELD model was required. Although the numbers of ELLs have decreased for the State and for the six urban elementary districts since the advent of the Arizona ELD Model, the reclassified ELL subgroup in the studied districts did not pass the AIMS for all the years in the study. Based on those results, this study concludes with the following recommendations. First, to study the coming changes in the language assessments and their impact on ELLs' student achievement in broad and comprehensive ways; second, to implement a model change allowing school districts to support their ELLs in their first language; and, finally, to establish programs that will allow ELLs full access to study with their English speaking peers.
ContributorsRoa, Myriam (Author) / Fischman, Gustavo E (Thesis advisor) / Lawton, Stephen B. (Committee member) / Diaz, René X (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012