Through a Different Lens: Increasing Success for "At-Risk" Learners Through Situated, Collaborative Inquiry

• In Event: Advancing Research and Practice on Self-Regulated Learning Through Productive Partnerships

Abstract

This study examined the professional development (PD) of teachers within Through a Different Lens (TADL). TADL, now in its eighth year, is participatory social change action research (PSCAR) that empowers teacher inquirers as self- and co-regulating professionals. Participating teachers invite a student identified as “at risk” to inform cycles of goal setting, planning, enacting, monitoring, and adjusting teaching practice to remove barriers to success and create strength-based classrooms where students can learn in alternative ways.

PD and educational change literature converge to suggest that we need to redesign learning environments to position students as self-regulating learners, fostering their abilities as citizens in the 21st century (Dumont, Istance & Benevides, 2010). We need to enable all students to succeed in a world with far reaching technological change and profound transformation from industrial to knowledge economies that require self-directed, lifelong learning.

TADL is PSCAR that strives to disrupt normative practices and structures that often frame children from a deficit-based perspective (Wehmeyer, 2018). Globally there are calls for such communities of inquiry where researchers and teachers-as-researchers co-develop, study and document this type of curricular enactment (authors, 2017). This partnership involves university-based researchers collaboratively inquiring with practitioners in ways that catalyze community growth across learners at all stages of development (students, teachers, faculty). It is a collaborative approach to research that equitably involves all partners in the research process and recognizes the unique strengths that each brings, combining knowledge and action for social change (Minkler & Wallerstein, 2002, p. 27).

One hundred and fifty kindergarten to grade 12 teachers participated in year seven of the TADL of whom robust data was collected from 77 teachers. Multiple forms of data were collected in order to: 1) trace whether and how collaborative inquiry fostered teacher learning and practice change; 2) identify links between teaching practices and increased access for students to learn; and 3) trace relationships between TADL, practice change and perceived outcomes for students in participants' classrooms, particularly their most vulnerable learners. Data was collected in the form of participant reflections and interviews, facilitator and researcher field notes, and the collection of artifacts (lesson plans, photos, video, instructional strategies, student exemplars). Data was iteratively analyzed by three researchers.

Teachers made significant shifts in practice in several domains: assessment practices, metacognition/self-regulated learning, social emotional learning, building relationships with students, scaffolding learning, and culturally responsive pedagogy. Overall, we noted that educators benefited from choice and autonomy, just as their students do, and that while teachers inquired with a particular student in mind, they saw benefits for the other students in their classes. We found three themes in terms of student outcomes: affect/engagement, academic confidence/agency, and academic performance. Significantly more students completed and passed courses. However, students tended not to make gains academically without increases in the other two domains.

This PSCAR offers an example of diverse learners co-creating pathways to learning. TADL suggests that when students, teachers and researchers have opportunities to engage in collaborative inquiry they can transform teaching and learning in classrooms.

Authors

• Leyton Schnellert, The University of British Columbia

• Judith King, University of British Columbia

• Todd Manuel, University of British Columbia

• Naryn Searcy, University of British Columbia

• Janice Moase, University of British Columbia

• Shelley Moore, The University of British Columbia