Education Commons^™

Learning Through Play At School Ukraine: Final Research Report, Rachel Parker, Amy Berry, Kellie Picker, David Jeffries, Prue Anderson, Oksana Zabolotna

Student learning processes

The Learning Through Play (LTP) at School Research Study Ukraine was a four-year intervention study funded by the LEGO Foundation and implemented by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) and the Ukrainian Educational Research Association (UERA). The intervention was a two-year professional learning program that blended online, and face-to-face learning called the Teacher Innovative Play Program (TIPP). The TIPP was designed based on documented evidence that reports that teachers need opportunities to experiment and reflect to change practice. The study was guided by three research questions which were revised following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russian armed forces …

Understanding The Virginia Literacy Act, Candace Bechtold, Kimberly Bridges, David Naff, Joan A. Rhodes, Valerie Robnolt, Tara Davison, Suzanne Alexandre, Michael Crusco, Karli Johansen, Amber Butler, Allison Yandle, Jennifer Askue-Collins, Jean Samuel, Sharrie Merritte, Regina Frazier

MERC Publications

This research and policy brief from the Metropolitan Educational Research Consortium (MERC) offers an overview of the Virginia Literacy Act. It is structured to explore the following questions: 1) What are the recent trends in reading achievement in Virginia? 2) What are the policy implications of the VLA for Virginia school divisions? 3) What does the research say about Science of Reading (SoR)? 4) What core instructional programs are approved to meet the VLA? It concludes with a series of key takeaways and recommendations.

Learning Through Play At School: Ukraine, 2019-2024, Rachel Parker, Amy Berry, Kellie Picker, David Jeffries, Prue Anderson, Oksana Zabolotna

Student learning processes

The Learning Through Play at School Research Study Ukraine was a four-year longitudinal intervention study funded by the LEGO Foundation and implemented by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) and the Ukrainian Educational Research Association (UERA). The study was implemented between 2019 and 2024, during COVID-19 and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russian armed forces. Despite, at times, insurmountable challenges, the professional learning intervention was successful in supporting most teachers to progress from a surface level understanding of learning through play to a deep level. In addition, almost all children’s literacy and social-emotional skills grew significantly from start …

A Study Of Preservice Teachers' Preparedness To Teach Reading, Kelli Williams-Page

Teacher Education, Educational Leadership & Policy ETDs

Only 35% of fourth graders in the United States can read at the proficient level, and only 34% of eighth graders can read proficiently (National Assessment of Educational Progress [NAEP], 2022). The purpose of this study was to determine how preservice teachers (PSTs) describe their experience of the methodology of teaching reading in their literacy courses. In addition, what specific strategies for teaching reading do PSTs describe as the focus for their teaching reading preparation, and how do PSTs describe the potential of the strategies learned in their coursework to help them teach reading in their future positions? This study …

Narrowing The Achievement Gap: Culturally Responsive Teaching For African American Students, Haylee Batzer

Culminating Experience Projects

It is no surprise to educators that classrooms are filled with children of all different backgrounds. Most teacher preparation programs try their best to prepare educators to teach students of diversity and support inclusion in the classroom. However, educators are still finding themselves lacking the skills needed to incorporate culturally responsive teaching (CRT) into their classrooms. Students of all backgrounds need inclusive practices to be successful. It is important to all students that they feel supported and seen in the classroom, without these practices schools start to see a decline in graduation rates and an increase in dropout rates. Many …

Challenging Vocabulary Words In Graphic Novels: A Multimodal Content Analysis, Karyn Z. Mendez

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Recreational reading is in a decline for upper elementary aged readers, and along with this decline comes consequent declines in students’ ability to make meaning from what they read and their acquisition of different language forms, including the acquisition of new vocabulary words. However, one reading format is increasing in popularity: graphic novels. As graphic novels, along with other texts with both textual and visual elements, become an increasingly prevalent way of reading in the 21st century, it is important to look at the possibilities multimodal texts have for foundational literacy skills, such as vocabulary acquisition. To date, however, the …

Imagination To Innovation: Design Thinking For Young Learners, Lindsey Herlehy, Cassandra Armstrong

Publications & Research

Design thinking is the intersection of engineering design and social-emotional learning. Today’s learners must be empathetic problem solvers capable of defining problems and designing appropriate solutions to meet the needs of the user. In this session, participants will experience design thinking through literature-based scenarios appropriate for early learners. They will analyze and compare their own models to those of others and compose a lesson that will engage students in the design thinking process.

Becoming Knowledgeable Agents Of Change: Early Career Teachers Enacting Inquiry-Oriented Professional Learning, Tracy Harper

Journal of Practitioner Research

In pursuit of more effective professional learning for early career teachers, this paper presents findings from a multiple case study of practitioner inquiry with beginning teachers. The study examined the lived experiences of Kelly, Sally, and Donna as they took up inquiry-oriented professional learning in their literacy classrooms. Over the course of a semester, the teachers identified a problem of practice, co-constructed professional learning plans, explored relevant professional learning, and implemented new literacy practices. The findings demonstrated that the individualized and responsive nature of inquiry-oriented professional learning supported the teachers in developing agency and self-efficacy as they addressed areas of …

Examining Elementary Teacher Perceptions And Experiences Of Transitioning From Knowledge-Based To Inquiry-Based Social Studies Standards, Benjamin Stephen Pinnick

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

Elementary educators are responsible for the earliest years of student learning in a public setting. The amount of content students are expected to master continues to grow in scope, and the methods that are utilized shift to align with educational research and social momentum. After a decade of Common Core policies, social studies education in elementary schools has become a deemphasized subject. Reading and math, as well as science, have taken a greater precedence in today’s classrooms.

Yet, expectations for the creation of knowledgeable and participatory citizens continue to serve as a goal in elementary schools. Conceptualization of citizenship form …

To Be Young, Black, And In The Academy: A Collection Of Lessons, Yetunde Alabede, Jessica Reed, Blake Thompson

Michigan Reading Journal

Literacy, a foundational tool that unlocks opportunities, can be viewed in both narrow and confining lenses. We, doctoral students at Michigan State University, center our own experiences in order to redefine such narratives of what literacy means, can mean, and should mean for students of color throughout the African Diaspora. We explore methods to disrupt, experiences to resist, and questions to challenge the ways that students and educators engage with various concepts of literacy. Though we come from various backgrounds, this manuscript seeks to push forward a dialogue that allows for the multiple literacies that Black children have, language and …

Exploring Ungrading In An Elementary Writing Methods Course, Jen Mcconnel

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

In this reflective piece, I discuss what I learned when I began to implement ungrading practices in my institution's elementary writing methods course. Based on this ongoing experiment, I offer three suggestions for other teacher educators who are intrigued by ungrading but not sure where to start.

7 Hands-On Strategies For Struggling Readers, Elise Murray, Stacey Murray

Kentucky Teacher Education Journal: The Journal of the Teacher Education Division of the Kentucky Council for Exceptional Children

Struggling readers are found in almost every classroom across the world. With differing learning styles and abilities, teachers are encouraged now, more than ever, to be innovative when teaching foundational reading strategies. Within this article, readers are provided with a literature review of research and educational literature that discusses how multisensory, hands-on activities promote engagement and active learning for all students. The recommended seven hands-on learning strategies that can promote learning and support for struggling readers during literacy instruction include Build the Words, Feel the Words, Whole Body Letters, Five Finger Retell, Sight Word BINGO, …

Teaching With The Genius In Mind: Enacting Literacy As A Civil Right, Katie Glupker, Pam Gower, Angela Knight

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

Because literacy is a civil right, educators are responsible for designing and implementing literacy education that is designed with the excellence of all students in mind. In order to learn about ways to ensure that literary practices are equitable for all students, the authors joined an educators’ book club to read Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy by Gholdy Muhammad. Muhammad describes the Black literary societies of the past and challenges educators of today to enhance classrooms by upholding equity and excellence through a five-layered framework: Identity, Skills, Intellect, Criticality, and Joy.

We studied Muhammad’s …

Exploring The Changing Nature Of Teachers’ Pedagogic Identities During The Delivery Of Online Literacy Teaching, Deb L. Brosseuk, Lynn Downes

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

This paper explores the interconnectedness between Australian teachers’ literacy practices and their pedagogic identity during the global pandemic. In doing so, the paper presents pedagogic identity as a dynamic, ever-evolving construct involving teachers and their teaching environment. Findings are reported from a case study of early years and primary teachers. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect qualitative data. From teachers’ self-reported teaching experiences, we identify three orientations to pedagogic identity: The Driver; The Collaborator; and The Apprentice. Drawing on analytic work, the paper finds that the online delivery of literacy teaching brought opportunities for teachers to shift between pedagogic identities, …

Policies, Practices, Places, And People: How Elementary Preservice Teachers Learned Literacy Teaching, Chad H. Waldron

Michigan Reading Journal

This article features cases of how elementary education preservice teachers made sense of teaching literacy. Their contexts for teaching varied in policies, curricula, and demands for their literacy teaching, shaped their learning and understanding of literacy instruction and assessment as beginning teachers. The research featured in this article pushes upon conceptualizations of "good" literacy teaching and how mentor teachers serve a critical role in preparing the next generation of elementary literacy teachers. Recommendations are made on how to best support elementary preservice teachers in literacy instruction and assessment.

What Do You Do When You Don't Know How To Respond? Supporting Pre-Service Teachers To Use Picture Books To Facilitate Difficult Conversations, Kathryn Struthers Ahmed, Nida Ali

Occasional Paper Series

In this paper, the authors – a preservice teacher (PST) and a teacher educator – consider how teacher education might better prepare PSTs to use picture books to facilitate difficult conversations in elementary classrooms. They share missed opportunities from their own experiences in a fourth-grade fieldwork classroom and in a graduate-level elementary literacy methods course where they felt unprepared to respond to students’ comments about “controversial” topics. They reimagine how these experiences might have been transformed to be more educative for PSTs, first by considering how they could have responded more thoughtfully in the moment and then by thinking about …

Imagination At Work: A Book Review Of The Power Of Practice-Based Literacy Research: A Tool For Teachers, Catherine Lammert

Networks: An Online Journal for Teacher Research

This is a book review of of The Power of Practice-Based Literacy Research: A Tool for Teachers.

Sharing Stories: Reflections Of Professors’ Literacy Identities And Beliefs, Christy M. Howard, Ran Hu, Johna Faulconer

Networks: An Online Journal for Teacher Research

Teacher identities and beliefs influence instructional practices. In order to explore this process, this self-study was conducted by three literacy professors from different ethnic backgrounds including one African-American professor, one Chinese national professor and one White professor. The purpose of this study was to examine how professors' literacy identities are shaped and how sharing these identities, experiences and beliefs in meaningful professional dialogues influences instructional practice. We examined the role of our identities and beliefs on our instructional practices using multiple forms of qualitative data such as journal entries, digital stories, and critical group discussions. Despite the range of differences …

Valuing Voices: Construction Of Meaning Through Discursive Interactions During A Critical Service-Learning Partnership, Jane Helen Noble

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

As teacher educators strive to prepare preservice teachers for careers as literacy instructors and advocates of social justice in education, critical service-learning pedagogy has been considered as an approach for teacher education programs. Tenets of academic study, reflective practice, social change, and the development of authentic relationships between universities and communities outline the structure for critical-based field experiences. What are preservice teachers learning in these spaces? How do they grow as part of critical service- learning courses? How do community organizations and members interpret experiences in the partnership, and how do they describe their roles?

This study highlights the voices …

Teacher Expectations, Self-Efficacy, And Collective Efficacy In Three Tennessee Literacy Networks, Amanda Tinker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this quantitative study was to determine if there was a significant difference in the dependent variables- teacher expectations, self-efficacy, and collective efficacy among the three levels of the independent variable- membership in one three literacy networks in Tennessee- Leading Innovation for Tennessee (LIFT), Read to Be Ready Coaching Network (RTBR), and Tennessee Early Literacy Network (TELN)- and if significant correlations existed between the dependent variables for each network. The population consisted of 161 K-3 Tennessee teachers who had been involved in the work of one of the three networks. Participants responded to an online survey via Google …

Yellow Pads And The Return Of The Writer, Gregory Shafer

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

No abstract provided.

“I Notice My Feelings:” Exploring Mindfulness With 1st Graders And Their Families, Katie Schrodt, Zachary Barnes, Megan Devries, Jennifer Grow, Pauli Wear

Networks: An Online Journal for Teacher Research

This paper explores a study completed with 1^st grade students while a five-week mindfulness unit was implemented in their classroom. The paper discusses tactics for teaching mindfulness strategies to students and results observed in the students over the course of the five-week study. It also contains journal entries completed by students and their families both in the classroom and at home.

When Words Do Not Work: Exploring Preservice Teachers’ Confidence In Teaching Reading To English Learners, Christina M. Pavlak, Monica Cavender

Networks: An Online Journal for Teacher Research

This practitioner research study explores what happens when students in a Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program are engaged in a clinical experience at an urban pre-K-8th-grade school with a majority English Learner (EL) population. Specifically examined is preservice teachers’ confidence in implementing strategies to meet the needs of ELs in beginning reading. Data sources included: a survey, a written reflection, weekly lessons plans, blog entries, and informal observations of small group instruction and class participation. Qualitative analysis (Charmaz, 2000, 2003, 2005) was used. Results from this study point to the need for teacher preparation programs to support teacher …

Developing A Clinical Literacy Experience That Improves Outcomes For Students And Preservice Teachers, Susan Keesey, Charley Jo Allen, Madison Loy, Amanda Schaefer

Kentucky Teacher Education Journal: The Journal of the Teacher Education Division of the Kentucky Council for Exceptional Children

Improving literacy outcomes so more students graduate from high school career- and college- ready is critical in today's society. There is a wealth of evidence-based practices for teachers to utilize and yet student literacy outcomes fail to improve. This article provides an example of how a clinical model literacy clinic, housed in a partner elementary school, improved learning outcomes for preservice teachers and the at-risk students they instructed. During this twice weekly, semester-long literacy clinic, the preservice teachers explicitly taught all five critical literacy components to support struggling readers with the focus on using high-leverage practices for instruction. This taught …

Shuffle Lit!: Using Ipod Shuffles To Encourage Literacy Experiences At Home, Ashlee B. Hover

Networks: An Online Journal for Teacher Research

A kindergarten teacher used action research to examine how literature, audio books, homework, and Apple iPod Shuffles can be combined to encourage and improve literacy at home. The research participants consisted of 16 kindergarten students in Middle Tennessee and their parents. The kindergarten students took home a tote bag with the following contents: an Apple iPod Shuffle loaded with many audio stories, six books, two types of headphones, and an iPod listening/reading log. The students took the project materials home for a week to enjoy with their parents and other family members. The parents or siblings recorded the students’ experiences …

Scholastic Liberation: Schools' Impact On African American Academic Achievement, Aaron M. Johnson

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

This article addresses some of the factors that contribute to low achievement observed in African American students. It is common that either schools or school districts are unable to fix the problem or they are unaware about how the beliefs and attitudes about African American students can contribute to their low performance in school. Furthermore, this article encourages school institutions to examine themselves and change school environments to align to the identities of African American students. African American students must be liberated from negative assumptions about them and to do that, individuals and the institution of school as a whole, …

Revisiting A Classic: A Book Review Of Understanding Reading: A Psycholinguistic Analysis Of Reading And Learning, Chris Sclafani

Networks: An Online Journal for Teacher Research

Often, the teaching profession spends a great deal of time looking towards the future, or considering what might be the next big trend that will help students. However, it is sometimes important to reflect back upon the texts and ideas that set the tone for the profession. Understanding Reading: A Psycholinguistic Analysis of Reading and Learning by Frank Smith is a classic text that laid the foundation for teachers of literacy to move from an existence of teaching rules and exceptions to becoming an actively involved participant in the process of building and facilitating comprehension in students of all ages. …

Literacy Tutoring Strategies Of America Reads University-Level Tutors, Mauricio Cadavid

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to explore, study, outline and describe tutoring strategies applied by American Reads (AR) tutors and non-America Reads (nAR) tutors helping young tutees develop early literacy skills. There is limited research on the implementation of effective tutoring strategies during one-on-one tutoring with elementary school children in terms of early literacy development. Most of the literature is split between peer tutoring and program tutoring. This lack of research presents a particular challenge when it comes to identifying an effective tutor and effective tutoring methodologies. Using a qualitative approach, this study utilizes survey data, session recordings, and …

The Impact Of Service Learning On Pre-Service Teachers Preconceptions Of Urban Education, Sherri Weber

Journal of Inquiry and Action in Education

Urban schools, especially those serving high minority, high poverty, and low performing students, are in desperate need of high-quality teachers, yet issues with retention, recruitment, and preparedness plague urban districts (Aragon, Culpepper, McKee & Perkins, 2014). Teacher educators are challenged to prepare teacher candidates to overcome misconceptions about urban schools. This study was designed to explore the effects that one sustained, supervised, course-based service learning experience had on preservice teachers’ preconceptions and attitudes towards urban education. Surveys were administered to 38 teacher candidates before and after their service learning experience at an urban charter school. Results were analyzed using paired …

Impact Of Mindset On Literacy: What Happens To Literacy Skills When A Growth Mindset Is Taught To First Graders, Katherine Saia

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to determine the type of mindsets held by first graders and to determine what happens when they are exposed to ways to have a growth mindset. The goal is to see what happens when children use a growth mindset when asked to engage in challenging literacy activities. First graders were first evaluated using a mindset survey and reading levels were determined. Logic puzzles were given and timed to determine if work effort matched that of the mindset survey. Students showed a change in mindset and growth in reading abilities. Implications for future research are …