Empowering teachers’ voices through reflective professional learning support: A high-leverage-teaching-practice (HLTP) approach

• In Event: Empowering Early Childhood Professionals through Innovative Research-Practice Partnerships

Abstract

Background

It is widely acknowledged that teachers’ reflection is an important practice for promoting teachers’ understanding of teaching pedagogies (e.g., Loughran, 2002), construction of teaching self-efficacy (e.g., Hunter, 1990) and continuous growth in professionalism (e.g., Swain, 1998). However, teachers are usually conceptualized as passive receivers in professional learning (PL) rather than active contributors or collaborators, thus ignoring teachers’ perspectives on classroom instruction, teaching beliefs, and classroom teaching experiences. Such conceptualization lacks teachers’ “voices” in PL. This may lead to a disconnect between teachers’ knowledge of newly introduced teaching pedagogies and their actual implementation of teaching practices in classroom. Given the uniqueness of preschool teachers’ classroom responsibilities and early childhood classroom dynamics (Hall-Kenyon et al., 2014), this intervention study, using a high-leverage teaching practice approach (Ball et al., 2009), integrated teachers’ reflective practice into the process of promoting teachers’ effectiveness of literacy teaching practices (i.e., early writing instruction). The intervention’s impact on both teachers’ literacy instructional quality and children’s early literacy and writing skills was examined.

Method

This study used a quasi-experimental design. Fourteen Pre-Kindergarten classrooms from four childcare centers in a southeastern urban area serving children from low-income families (i.e., over 80% of enrolled children receive free meals) were recruited for this study. The 14 lead teachers (all female) and 112 children from their classrooms (eight children per classroom) participated in this study. The majority of teachers were African American (one Caucasian teacher). Participating children were all African American and spoke English as their primary language.
Participated classrooms were assigned randomly to an intervention group, where teachers received PL (one workshop and two reflective onsite mentoring about how to infuse writing instruction into teachers’ existing classroom routine activities), and a comparison group where teachers did not receive the same PL until the end of the data collection. Teachers’ classrooms teaching practices (The Early Language and Literacy Classroom Observation, Smith et al., 2008) and children’s early literacy skills (e.g., early writing and reading skills) were assessed pre- and post-PL implementation.

Results and Discussion

Repeated measure ANOVAs showed that intervention group children achieved significantly higher improvement in writing and reading skills than comparison group children (see Table 1). The quality of intervention group teachers’ writing instruction significantly improved over the intervention period and significantly higher quality than did comparison group teachers, F (1,12) = 26.01, p < 0.001, d = 2.75 . The fidelity data of teachers’ implementation of new teaching strategies was high, indicating teachers’ willingness and motivation to implement new teaching strategies independently. The results and our implementation experience suggested that reflective professional learning approach not only promote teachers’ active learning of new teaching strategies but develop a collaborative researcher-teacher partnership that allows effective individualized professional support for in-service teachers. Such approach may be used to address current challenges of professional learning during the COVID pandemic.

Authors

• Chenyi Zhang, Georgia State University
  Presenting Author

• Gary E Bingham, Georgia State University