Teacher and Researcher Collaborative Inquiry as Ongoing Professional Development: Enhancing Early Childhood Experiences in Racially, Linguistically, and Ethnically (RLE) Complex Missouri Classrooms Through Translingual Literacies

• In Event: Supporting Classroom Practices for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Children through Teacher-Focused Professional Development 

Abstract

Aiming to enhance the quality of professional practice and to support ongoing professional learning, this study examines the critical components of a teacher and researcher collaborative inquiry model designed to enhance the schooling experiences of children through translingual literacies in Missouri RLE complex (Ball & Jiménez, 2017), early childhood classrooms. Supporting ECEs as translingual curriculum and instruction experts can only serve to enhance the schooling experiences of historically minoritized RLEL who too often encounter early childhood classrooms that subtract them of sociocultural resources.

Through a teacher and researcher collaborative inquiry model of professional learning that includes access to translingual texts and models of instruction, retrospective video analysis of teaching, and collaborative analysis of classroom data, we hypothesize ECE can recognize the expansiveness of RLEL repertoires and support how children utilize translingual literacies as resources that contribute to their positive early schooling experiences.

This qualitative study occurred in one, K-5 school, in a rural suburban, Midwest town with an increasing RLE diverse student population (including children of immigrant families) and predominantly white, English-dominant teacher population. Eight K-3 ECE and their students (approx. 160 students) have contributed data to this study. 35% of the children (age 4 to 9 years old) benefiting from this study are native Spanish speakers who are multi-racial/ethnic or exclusively of Latino descent.

This design-based research (DBR)study is focused on teacher and researcher collaborative inquiry to examine the following: RQ1: What are the critical components of a collaborative inquiry model that contribute to Missouri ECE translingual practices and understandings? and, RQ 2: While participating in a collaborative inquiry, in what ways do ECE’ translingual understandings qualitatively shift over time?

To understand the critical components of the inquiry model (RQ1) and how teachers’ translingual understandings may develop as they participate in the model (RQ2), we have examined over 16 hours of observation data, 120 pages of field notes/analytic memos and 300 pages of transcripts. After a process of data reduction (Saldaña, 2012) and data display (Miles and Huberman, 1994), we identified a more global understanding of patterns and “repeatable regularities” (Kaplan, 1964) both within and across data sources as three domains.

With a focus on teacher well-being in a COVID-19 recovery landscape, initial analysis suggests the following three critical components of the model as most salient: 1. Teacher peer mentoring, affirming, and challenges. We observed complex moments of growth and tension among ECEs that could only unfold in mentoring, affirming, and challenging contexts; 2. Linguistically Diverse Picturebooks as a Tool for Teacher Development. Illustrated and written narratives of translingual literacies elicited discussion of translingual practice and ideological beliefs among ECEs; 3. Role of University Partner to push and nudge. In the context of a reciprocal relationship of leaning, the university partner amplifies voices of color and critical translingual perspectives that helped teachers name the concepts they were raising. Together, these finding highlight the significance of cultivating relationship among partners and the significance of examples of translingual literacies from both texts and partners to help grow ECEs translingual practices.

Authors

• Angie Zapata, University of Missouri - Columbia
  Presenting Author

• Adrianna Gonzalez

• Mary Adu-Gyamfi, University of Missouri - Columbia