My AR Genesis
Throughout my coursework at the University of San Diego, there was one class that always peaked my interest no matter how many deadlines or requirements my Masters/Credential program required my full attention. That class dealt with teaching strategies for English language learners (ELLs). When the opportunity came to find an area of interest for my Action Research I knew that I wanted to focus on an area where my interventions would benefit both ELL and non-ELL students.
Since my ELL students were on the more proficient side of the reading, writing and comprehension, I decided to implement written dialectical journals with them. Based on the teachings of the above mentioned course with Dr. Viviana Alexandrowicz, I knew I had to create a stress free environment. Not only would this help my ELL students but the entire class as well. The goal of these "informal" dialectical journals is to create a stress free atmosphere which would lower what Stephen Krashen calls an "affective filter". The lower the affective filter of a student, the more likely they will produce what they are capable of, whether it be memory recollection on a test or grammatical skills. In this case, the lower the affective filter the more I hope they will participate in my interventions.
The emphasis on journal writing across curriculum has been lauded and widespread and many teachers have implemented them based on their success, without a working understanding of the reasoning for their use. Consequently, if teachers emphasize content-only instruction and do not understand the value of response journals to begin with, they will likely experience difficulty encouraging their students to “buy in” (Zancanella, 1991). Accordingly, in order to implement or reinvigorate a dialectical journal program supported by these findings, it is necessary to understand the theory and research upon which the study is based and examine the “why’s” before implementing the “how’s”. Teachers must understand the purpose and value of dialectical journals if they are to implement these findings and unlock the powerful higher level thinking processes that these journals address.
Since my ELL students were on the more proficient side of the reading, writing and comprehension, I decided to implement written dialectical journals with them. Based on the teachings of the above mentioned course with Dr. Viviana Alexandrowicz, I knew I had to create a stress free environment. Not only would this help my ELL students but the entire class as well. The goal of these "informal" dialectical journals is to create a stress free atmosphere which would lower what Stephen Krashen calls an "affective filter". The lower the affective filter of a student, the more likely they will produce what they are capable of, whether it be memory recollection on a test or grammatical skills. In this case, the lower the affective filter the more I hope they will participate in my interventions.
The emphasis on journal writing across curriculum has been lauded and widespread and many teachers have implemented them based on their success, without a working understanding of the reasoning for their use. Consequently, if teachers emphasize content-only instruction and do not understand the value of response journals to begin with, they will likely experience difficulty encouraging their students to “buy in” (Zancanella, 1991). Accordingly, in order to implement or reinvigorate a dialectical journal program supported by these findings, it is necessary to understand the theory and research upon which the study is based and examine the “why’s” before implementing the “how’s”. Teachers must understand the purpose and value of dialectical journals if they are to implement these findings and unlock the powerful higher level thinking processes that these journals address.
There is much research on how increasing teacher-student communication can produce greater student productivity. This research has also included the importance of connecting learning experiences to students’ lives so that they are able to make personal connections with the academic content (Pomeroy, 1999). In my own classroom setting, I have noticed a great disparity between the effort, productivity and achievement levels amongst students. I am particularly interested in seeing how utilizing dialectal journals will impact the productivity of my English Language Learners, who make up the majority of students in my class. “Ungraded, uncorrected journals can provide a non-threatening way for students to express themselves” (Spack and Sadow, 1983, p. 575). My intervention is designed to help personalize their educational experience in my class, with the ultimate aim of increasing their motivation, productivity and learning.
Charles Hannam's (1971) study agrees with the pedagogy of Spack and Sadow in that there has to be a different way to reach students who find school unrewarding and their teacher's efforts irrelevant. Hannam concluded that if teachers were to deal effectively with such children at all they must get to know them as part of their training in situations outside the normal school setting-- "where stereotypes on both sides operate so easily" (Hannam, 1971). The traditional forms of teaching practice may be inadequate for this purpose. As a written conversation, it is the hope that students will not only engage in "something different", but also gain insights and reflection when putting their thoughts to paper.
Cynthia Bowman (2000) points out in her article that reading and writing are reciprocal processes and “as students express their ideas, viewpoints, and questions about reading in reader response journals, they gradually possess ownership of their knowledge…Active reading and writing also allows students to construct meaning, to discover and understand the text, themselves, and others—a spiral development to personal, social, cultural, and political awareness” (p. 78). Student journals further enhance the construction of meaning by enabling students to become aware of their metacognitive processes through reflection. They begin to focus on their patterns of thought and become aware of how and ultimately why they process experiences in the manner that is their own. It is this metacognitive process that I hope students will take a more investigative look at how their time and effort is impacting their grade.
Katie Brooks, Susan Adams and Trish Morita-Mullaney (2010) argue that modeling and learning the primary language of ELL students can be helpful, however, it limits the focus only to language differences when there should be a broader focus, such as systemic challenges that impact the success of ELL students that will be addressed shortly. This is a very pressing and growing issue not just in border-states like California, but also in previously considered less diverse states in the Midwest region of the USA. According to a National Center for English Language Acquisitions (NCELA) study done in 2006, ELL student populations now account for 10.3% of enrollment in public schools, a 57% increase in the past ten years. In particular, Indiana’s ELL student population has grown 409%, from 9,114 ELL students in 1999 to 46,417 ELL students in 2009.
One of the aforementioned systematic changes that needs to be enacted is to increase communication between ELL students and their teacher and not think of that student as the responsibility of the ESL (English as second language) teacher. “In many schools in which we have worked, the ESL teacher becomes a social worker and de facto administrator in addition to being a language and cultural broker between students and adults. This expert—novice relationship can undermine school change initiatives that target integration and achievement of ELL students by releasing other teachers and administrators from building their own capacity to support and teach ELL students” (Brooks, Adams & Morita-Mullaney, 2010). Frankly put, by passing perceived responsibility of their roles to others, teachers are not giving themselves opportunities to learn and expand their teaching practice. When a teacher says, “That’s not my job” they are actually saying, “I don’t want to learn how to do my job better.”
What I hope to achieve is to increase the familiarity I have with my ELL students in the form of dialectical journals (discussions). “Without these regular discussions, content area teachers and administrators make decisions without a full understanding of how their decisions will impact ELL students. This results in further marginalization of both ELL students and the ESL teacher” (Brooks, Adams & Morita-Mullaney, 2010). What this means for content teachers such as myself is that widening the focus of the success of ELLs to social and cultural concerns rather than just English comprehension goals will make ELL students feel more a part of the class, therefore subject to the same expectations. As Bogum Yoon (2008) concludes, when these aspects are taken into consideration ELL students tend to meet those higher expectations.
On the same side of the argument as Brooks, Adams, & Morita Mullaney (2010), Bogum Yoon (2008) claims that research over the last decade suggests that ELL students have not been receiving adequate support in their regular classrooms because many teachers lack understanding of how their roles and teaching approaches can best support ELL needs. Yoon believes that teachers need not change, but expand their pedagogy to include more language learning strategies. There is an assumption that ELL students only need English language instruction. “This linguistic only focus is limiting since it may overlook that ELLs are ‘learners,’ as are all other students…Furthermore, it may prevent us from seeing the fuller, more complicated realities of these students’ lives” (Yoon, 2008).
The strategy of the dialectical journals I will be implementing is intended to gear teachers and students away from the perception of positioning theory Yoon (2008) believes is happening in schools. Yoon’s (2008) characterization of positioning theory is that perceptions of one’s duties or roles are made by the beliefs of what is expected of them. For example, single –subject teachers tend to believe that their role is to simply teach their respective subject to a general class population. For students, if they are placed in a lower track class, the expectations they have for themselves are also lowered. Results similar to what Yoon (2008) found in the following classroom is what I hope to achieve:
… [I]n the classroom of Mrs. Young, where ELLs were accepted as cultural social beings, the students' interaction and participation were promoted. But in Mr. Brown's and Mrs. Taylor's classrooms, where the ELLs were regarded as language learners who simply sat in the regular classroom with little encouragement for their participation, the students were disengaged and silent. These cultural and social aspects shed light on ELLs’ language teaching and learning. (p. 515-6)
One aspect of phase 1 of my implementation involves scaffolding interaction between my students and me. The term scaffolding refers to support given by a teacher to a student when performing a task that the student might otherwise not be able to accomplish. What I refer to in phase 1 as “guiding questions” or “prompts” are in reality scaffolds. I incorporate these scaffolds into my implementation because asking a child to start and continue a conversation with an adult can not only be difficult, but perhaps a bit intimidating. The added scaffolds are designed to lower the students’ stress level so that these dialectical conversations do not seem so daunting.
The changes made between phase 1 and phase 2 are what Jos Beishuizen, Janneke van de Pol & Monique Volman (2010) refer to as “fading” and “transfer of responsibility.” What I now realize is that in regards to my ELL students, I might have removed the scaffolds too soon. Or in technical terms, I accelerated the fading. Beishuizen, van de Pol & Volman (2010) explain that “…Via contingent fading, that is, responsibility for the performance of a task is gradually transferred to the learner” (p. 275).
When applying these principals to my own Action Research, evidence suggests that non-ELL students were able to internalize the scaffolds, which therefore rendered these students not as dependent on them. What this means is that non-ELL students were able to understand the purpose of the prompts given to them which was to open their minds to ideas to write about. When the “…learner internalizes the support structure associated with the scaffolding…in the end, teacher scaffolding is no longer needed as the learner can provide his or her own support (Beishuizen, van de Pol & Volman, 2010).
Charles Hannam's (1971) study agrees with the pedagogy of Spack and Sadow in that there has to be a different way to reach students who find school unrewarding and their teacher's efforts irrelevant. Hannam concluded that if teachers were to deal effectively with such children at all they must get to know them as part of their training in situations outside the normal school setting-- "where stereotypes on both sides operate so easily" (Hannam, 1971). The traditional forms of teaching practice may be inadequate for this purpose. As a written conversation, it is the hope that students will not only engage in "something different", but also gain insights and reflection when putting their thoughts to paper.
Cynthia Bowman (2000) points out in her article that reading and writing are reciprocal processes and “as students express their ideas, viewpoints, and questions about reading in reader response journals, they gradually possess ownership of their knowledge…Active reading and writing also allows students to construct meaning, to discover and understand the text, themselves, and others—a spiral development to personal, social, cultural, and political awareness” (p. 78). Student journals further enhance the construction of meaning by enabling students to become aware of their metacognitive processes through reflection. They begin to focus on their patterns of thought and become aware of how and ultimately why they process experiences in the manner that is their own. It is this metacognitive process that I hope students will take a more investigative look at how their time and effort is impacting their grade.
Katie Brooks, Susan Adams and Trish Morita-Mullaney (2010) argue that modeling and learning the primary language of ELL students can be helpful, however, it limits the focus only to language differences when there should be a broader focus, such as systemic challenges that impact the success of ELL students that will be addressed shortly. This is a very pressing and growing issue not just in border-states like California, but also in previously considered less diverse states in the Midwest region of the USA. According to a National Center for English Language Acquisitions (NCELA) study done in 2006, ELL student populations now account for 10.3% of enrollment in public schools, a 57% increase in the past ten years. In particular, Indiana’s ELL student population has grown 409%, from 9,114 ELL students in 1999 to 46,417 ELL students in 2009.
One of the aforementioned systematic changes that needs to be enacted is to increase communication between ELL students and their teacher and not think of that student as the responsibility of the ESL (English as second language) teacher. “In many schools in which we have worked, the ESL teacher becomes a social worker and de facto administrator in addition to being a language and cultural broker between students and adults. This expert—novice relationship can undermine school change initiatives that target integration and achievement of ELL students by releasing other teachers and administrators from building their own capacity to support and teach ELL students” (Brooks, Adams & Morita-Mullaney, 2010). Frankly put, by passing perceived responsibility of their roles to others, teachers are not giving themselves opportunities to learn and expand their teaching practice. When a teacher says, “That’s not my job” they are actually saying, “I don’t want to learn how to do my job better.”
What I hope to achieve is to increase the familiarity I have with my ELL students in the form of dialectical journals (discussions). “Without these regular discussions, content area teachers and administrators make decisions without a full understanding of how their decisions will impact ELL students. This results in further marginalization of both ELL students and the ESL teacher” (Brooks, Adams & Morita-Mullaney, 2010). What this means for content teachers such as myself is that widening the focus of the success of ELLs to social and cultural concerns rather than just English comprehension goals will make ELL students feel more a part of the class, therefore subject to the same expectations. As Bogum Yoon (2008) concludes, when these aspects are taken into consideration ELL students tend to meet those higher expectations.
On the same side of the argument as Brooks, Adams, & Morita Mullaney (2010), Bogum Yoon (2008) claims that research over the last decade suggests that ELL students have not been receiving adequate support in their regular classrooms because many teachers lack understanding of how their roles and teaching approaches can best support ELL needs. Yoon believes that teachers need not change, but expand their pedagogy to include more language learning strategies. There is an assumption that ELL students only need English language instruction. “This linguistic only focus is limiting since it may overlook that ELLs are ‘learners,’ as are all other students…Furthermore, it may prevent us from seeing the fuller, more complicated realities of these students’ lives” (Yoon, 2008).
The strategy of the dialectical journals I will be implementing is intended to gear teachers and students away from the perception of positioning theory Yoon (2008) believes is happening in schools. Yoon’s (2008) characterization of positioning theory is that perceptions of one’s duties or roles are made by the beliefs of what is expected of them. For example, single –subject teachers tend to believe that their role is to simply teach their respective subject to a general class population. For students, if they are placed in a lower track class, the expectations they have for themselves are also lowered. Results similar to what Yoon (2008) found in the following classroom is what I hope to achieve:
… [I]n the classroom of Mrs. Young, where ELLs were accepted as cultural social beings, the students' interaction and participation were promoted. But in Mr. Brown's and Mrs. Taylor's classrooms, where the ELLs were regarded as language learners who simply sat in the regular classroom with little encouragement for their participation, the students were disengaged and silent. These cultural and social aspects shed light on ELLs’ language teaching and learning. (p. 515-6)
One aspect of phase 1 of my implementation involves scaffolding interaction between my students and me. The term scaffolding refers to support given by a teacher to a student when performing a task that the student might otherwise not be able to accomplish. What I refer to in phase 1 as “guiding questions” or “prompts” are in reality scaffolds. I incorporate these scaffolds into my implementation because asking a child to start and continue a conversation with an adult can not only be difficult, but perhaps a bit intimidating. The added scaffolds are designed to lower the students’ stress level so that these dialectical conversations do not seem so daunting.
The changes made between phase 1 and phase 2 are what Jos Beishuizen, Janneke van de Pol & Monique Volman (2010) refer to as “fading” and “transfer of responsibility.” What I now realize is that in regards to my ELL students, I might have removed the scaffolds too soon. Or in technical terms, I accelerated the fading. Beishuizen, van de Pol & Volman (2010) explain that “…Via contingent fading, that is, responsibility for the performance of a task is gradually transferred to the learner” (p. 275).
When applying these principals to my own Action Research, evidence suggests that non-ELL students were able to internalize the scaffolds, which therefore rendered these students not as dependent on them. What this means is that non-ELL students were able to understand the purpose of the prompts given to them which was to open their minds to ideas to write about. When the “…learner internalizes the support structure associated with the scaffolding…in the end, teacher scaffolding is no longer needed as the learner can provide his or her own support (Beishuizen, van de Pol & Volman, 2010).
Beishuizen, J., van de Pol, J., & Volman, M. (2010). Scaffolding in teacher-student interaction: A decade of
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Bowman, C. A. (2000). Creating connections: Challenging the text and student writers. The English Journal,
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Cox, C. (1997). Literature-based teaching: A student response-centered classroom. In N. Karolides (Ed.),
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Kelly, L. (1981). Learner-teacher dialogues and writing that is learning. The English Journal, 70(5), 26-29.
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Spack, R., & Sadow, C. (1983). Student-teacher working journals in ESL freshman composition. TESOL
Quarterly, 17(4), 575-593
Yoon, B. (2008). Uninvited guests: The influence of teachers' roles and pedagogies on the positioning of English
language learners in the regular classroom. American Educational Research Journal, 45(2), 495-522.
Zancanella, D. (1991). Teachers reading/readers teaching: Five teachers' personal approaches to literature
and their teaching of literature. Research in the Teaching of English, 25(1), 5-32.