Personal Journeys: Teaching Teachers to Teach Literacy
Abstract
This study is a description of a teacher research project. The purpose of the project was two-fold. First, I wanted to use it to help me carefully reflect and examine my own teaching, so that I could move past the "naïve" label. Second, I wanted to understand how my instruction impacted my preservice teachers. Results from this teacher research project suggest this reading methods course was effective in adding some strategies to the students' understandings of reading. Students seemed more willing to add reading strategies in areas where they lacked prior knowledge and experiences, such as fluency and assessment, while demonstrating more reluctance to change in areas familiar to them, such as word identification and comprehension. Results imply a need for educators to do more teacher research at the university level and further research into the role prior knowledge plays in the preservice teachers' willingness to adapt new instructional strategies.
Reference
Massey, D. (2002). Personal journeys: Teaching teachers to teach literacy. Reading Research and Instruction, 41(2), 103-125. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19388070209558361
Journal
Reading Research and Instruction
Analysis
Is this article part of a larger project or series of studies?
no
Does this study draw on a large, preexisting data set?
no
Research Approach
Geographic Setting
Institutional Context
Certification Level
Programatic Focus
Research Location Context
Preservice Participants
- Undergraduates (university based program)
Preservice Sample Size
20
Other Participant Data
- curriculum documents and planning books
- Teacher Educators
Duration of Data Collection
Data Sources
- Classroom Discussion
- course materials
- End-of-course evaluations
- fieldnotes
- lesson plans
- Reflective journals
- Researcher journals
Data Analysis Tools
- coding to a prior categories
- Constant comparative analysis
- Document analysis
- Triangulation
Researcher Positionality
- Inside (studying their own practices)
Research Questions
"First, I wanted to use it to help me carefully reflect and examine my own teaching, so that I could move past the "naive" label." (p. 104)
Is this research question explicit from the manuscript? Yes
"Second, I wanted to understand how my instruction impacted my preservice teachers." (p. 104)
Is this research question explicit from the manuscript? Yes
Categories
2PTI Category: Preservice teacher identity, knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, and/or orientation (ikbao) toward literacy or the teaching of literacy.
3CCT Category: Course content -- Content of instruction (including TE's teaching with technology) and the experiences in the course that relate to this content.
6GLP Category: Graduates literacy practices in classrooms
7PTB Topic: Preservice teacher beliefs about students, families communities etc
3CCE Category: Course experiences – the work that is done in a course to promote the content.
7RPR Topic: Reading processes (eg, vocabulary)
1TEI Category: Teacher educator identity, knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, and/or orientation (ikbao) to literacy or teacher preparation in literacy.
6GIL Category: Graduates impact on students’ literacy.
7RES: Research
1TEP Category: Teacher educator practices.