“See? She Always Has All These Great Ideas!” The Impact of Common Core State Standards on English-for-Speakers-of-Other-Languages and Mainstream Teachers’ Collaboration and Learning

• In Event: From No Child Left Behind to Common Core: How Do New Standards Affect Practices and Policies for English Learners?

Abstract

Purpose
In this study, we build upon previous research about teacher learning, expertise, and collaboration to examine changes in teachers’ learning, interactions, and practices in response to the implementation of Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Specifically, we examine the teacher interaction and learning that emerged through elementary ESOL and mainstream teacher collaboration as they worked to implement CCSS, and we explore how the liminal space created by the transition to new curricular demands opened opportunities for ESOL specialists and grade-level classroom teachers to learn, interact, and teach in new ways.
Perspective
We use a theoretical framework that conceptualizes teacher learning as social, situated, and distributed (Johnson & Golombek, 2003; Johnson, 2009; Putnam & Borko, 2000), as well as work that frames collaborative teaching as a key opportunity for teacher learning (Doppenberg, Bakx, & den Brok, 2012).
Methods and Data Sources
Participants in this study included three kindergarten teachers, two fourth grade teachers, and five ESOL teachers from a diverse elementary school in a metropolitan area in the mid-Atlantic United States that had just begun to implement CCSS curriculum. The research team used the constant comparative method to identify themes from field notes, audio, and video data of eight classroom observations; transcripts of nine teacher interviews regarding their instruction, work with colleagues, and impressions of CCSS; and field notes from four teacher planning meetings in which teachers discussed how to instructionally carry out the new CCSS-based curriculum.
Results
We found that because all teachers were on new ground in interpreting and understanding the CCSS, this opened up opportunities to build their understanding together. As one ESOL specialist expressed to us, teachers were placed on equal footing as they figured out how to maneuver the teaching of content in the CCSS framework: “It [the CC curriculum] is new and no one knows what they are doing yet.” We observed many instances of teachers’ learning from one another as they co-constructed planning and implementation of lessons. Data from planning meetings indicated that teachers drew on each other’s expertise and ideas, such as an exchange in which an ESOL teacher recommended how to meaningfully integrate writing into a lesson, and a classroom teacher exclaimed to the rest of the group in the planning meeting: “See? She always has all these great ideas!” During co-taught CCSS lessons, the ESOL and classroom teachers regularly built on one another’s ideas in the midst of teaching the lesson, and used the presence of each other to model and externalize learning and processes for students.
Significance of the Study
As teachers across the country work to implement new disciplinary practices that are part of the new standards, it is important that we have strong models of teacher collaboration to support the learning of our nation’s growing numbers of ELs as they encounter the challenging language demands embedded in CCSS content. The findings from this study provide a framework for how ESOL and classroom teachers can approach these challenges together to best support all students.

Authors

• Megan Madigan Peercy, University of Maryland - College Park

• Melinda E. Martin-Beltran, University of Maryland - College Park

• Bedrettin Yazan, University of Maryland - College Park