Preservice teachers learn to do action research.

Abstract

This research addresses the challenge of preparing teachers for diverse classrooms and explores the use of action research as one strategy for preservice teacher preparation that can offer teacher candidates tools for working to meet student learning needs.

Introduction

This research focuses on the development of action research as a habit of mind that is responsive to issues of student diversity in the elementary classroom. While typically seen as a form of professional development commonly used with practicing teachers, pushing this work into the teacher preparation program supported teacher interns in developing teaching practices that were responsive to issues of classroom diversity. Our research explored our efforts to simultaneously help students in our internship year course on reflection and inquiry to develop the habit of mind to become teacher researchers as well as explore best practices to meet diverse student learning needs in the classroom. Teacher candidates are often focused on themselves as learners when they come to the classroom for early teaching experiences. Supporting and fostering inquiring practices was our tactic to help teacher candidates move beyond this and begin to focus on their efforts with individual students in the classroom.

Action Research in Teacher Education

New teachers and their students face many educational challenges in public school classrooms around the country. The diversity of students along multiple dimensions continue to grow, challenging teacher educators to address differences in perspective and experience. Thirty-nine percent of the public school student population was of minority status in the year 2000 (Hodgkinson, 2002). Students are different from their teachers along many social and cultural dimensions including race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, culture, and language because current and prospective teachers are predominantly white, middle-class, monolingual European-American women (Villegas & Lucas, 2002).

However, the diversity between students and teachers is commonly seen as a challenge rather than a strength or opportunity (Taylor & Sobel, 2001). Many teachers are choosing to return to the suburban schools of their childhoods rather than undertake teaching careers in the urban and diverse schools (Taylor & Sobel, 2001) and discovering that many suburban schools are also becoming increasingly diverse (Zehr, 2001). Therefore, it is inappropriate given the ongoing demographic changes to prepare teachers for a monolingual and monocultural society. Yet teacher educators may find it challenging to help teacher candidates learn to incorporate a diversity stance because of the strength of preservice teacher beliefs as they enter a program of teacher education. (Wideen, Mayer-Smith et al. 1998; Feiman-Nemser 2000). It is critical to help teacher candidates come to understand that diversity is a rich concept including variation in ethnicity, culture, language, socioeconomic status, race and ability.

One strategy to deal with these challenges is to give teacher candidates the tools to do something proactive about the challenges they face with classroom diversity. This issue is critical enough that beginning teachers can not afford to wait for professional development opportunities to learn how to address diverse student needs. Little research attention has focused on the beliefs and attitudes held, experiences had, and practices developed for working with diverse students in student teaching semesters or internships (Grant and Zozakiewicz, 1995; McIntyre, Byrd et al. 1996). Our work sought to find a way to help intern teachers develop the tools necessary to begin to address these challenges early in their professional careers. Action research is one such tool. Commonly used as a form of professional development for practicing teachers, action research has the potential to help students develop inquiry-based attitudes and practices that are responsive to student diversity.

Classroom teachers have engaged in classroom based inquiry as a form of professional development designed to create reflective and active practitioners over the past fifteen years (Goatley et al., 1994; Pardo, 1996; Wells & Chang-Wells, 1992; Wells, 1994). The action research teachers in these studies engaged in informed their practice and created thoughtful and reflective habits of mind. Classroom professionals who use action research in their own practice (Hubbard & Power, 2003) have written about implementing action research in classrooms by sharing successful stories of teachers practicing classroom based research. While some research exists that examines the notion of teacher research as a practice of teacher preparation (Auger & Wideman, 2000; Chant, Heafner & Bennett, 2004; Sparks & Butt, 2000), work that specifically addresses how beginning teachers engage in and learn from action research is scarce. Our current work focused on a cohort of preservice teacher candidates across an entire school year as they implemented action research projects within the context of a year-long internship.

Our Stance and Project Design

The research question for this study was: "By engaging in action research, to what extent and how do teacher candidates develop their understanding of teaching students with a diverse range of backgrounds and learning needs?" We strove to determine how to best support teacher candidates in utilizing their action research projects to meet student learning needs. As beginning teachers, we wanted our students to develop two kinds of understandings. First, learning about the action research process by engaging in an action research project would promote their own development of inquiry as a habit of mind. Second, this habit of mind is integral for becoming effective in responding to their students as learners.

During a year-long internship in the public schools, teacher candidates were enrolled in a series of graduate courses which provided opportunities for analysis of and reflection on their teaching practices. Teacher candidates learned about the process of action research during the fall semester as they read about, discussed and built conceptual understanding of action research. While observing and participating in their field classroom, teacher candidates maintained a 'teacher's notebook' that encouraged them to record observations about children and to reflect on the experiences of their classroom setting. As course instructors, we established and provided time for teacher candidates to meet in collaborative, school-based groups to provide support for the process. By structuring opportunities to learn about students through guided conversations with collaborating teachers and the instructors and colleagues of their graduate courses, teacher candidates were able to consider what they knew about children and what support they needed to provide for specific students to be successful in the classroom. Based on these observations and conversations, teacher candidates identified a topic of interest and explored professional resources on the topic to help them formulate a knowledge base and a question for their action research project.

During the spring semester, candidates developed and implemented an action research project to support their attempts to address student needs in that classroom while teaching full-time. They collected data on their question throughout the lead teaching period in February and March while maintaining their teacher's notebook as one source of data on their experiences with the project. We asked that they continue to meet with their collaborative school groups throughout the semester to ensure that they had collegial support for working through the challenges of action research. In class, we provided support in analyzing and understanding the data they had collected and interpreting the outcomes of the action research they implemented. Teacher candidates presented the results from their action research to their peers during presentations at the end of the year.

Throughout the experience, we asked that teacher candidates reflect on the process as well as the product of their project so that they were considering both the outcomes for the classroom and students as well as their own growth as a teacher in developing a habit of mind that promoted reflective action. We hoped to see that they would understand the value of action research as a tool for addressing challenges in the classroom as well as a tool for developing culturally responsive instruction.

Outcomes

While implementing this project, we collected data that documented teacher candidates' experiences with the process of action research. Data included student work artifacts (two papers, proposal, presentation), lesson plans from our planning of the course activities, class documents (syllabus, assignment sheets, handouts), field notes of our experiences in teaching the action research process, teacher candidate surveys administered at the end of the year, and informal communication (email correspondence, conversations with students before and after class and in the field).

Surveys of the teacher candidates indicated that they recognized the importance of action research for classroom teachers. Multiple teacher candidates indicated that it would help them "improve teaching practice," "learn how to gather data and understand data," "help me understand how to look at teaching differently," and "learn about my students." Nineteen of the 22 students understood the relevance of action research as a habit of mind for their growth as teachers and were able to demonstrate this through action research projects that demonstrated growth and reflection on the process and the product over time. For example, Michael realized, "I will look for researchable material that can be analyzed, summarized, and used to provide insight on my own teaching practices because I have seen the benefits of this procedure during the completion of this inquiry project."

Overwhelmingly, teacher candidates felt that the teacher's notebook we required of them supported them in the learning process of action research. Because teacher candidates made written observations of their students over time, they were able to look across a set of notes to find trends and questions. This helped them narrow their research questions as well as provide insights for collecting and interpreting data. Teacher candidates also felt that the collaborative groups that allowed them to play out their ideas and concerns with others were of value to them in learning how to implement action research.

Given the focus and purpose of action research, teacher candidates' work samples indicate the desired responsiveness to the unique situations in each classroom. Twelve of the projects students engaged in addressed classroom social issues such as management strategies or behavioral support for students who were struggling to get along with classmates. Six projects focused on the academic needs of an individual learner or a small group of learners (e.g. English Language Learners). Additionally, teacher candidates recognized their own areas of weakness and used this project as a place to enhance their knowledge about and application of a particular instructional approach. Three teacher candidates engaged in projects focused on Book Club (Pardo, 2002) to improve their own ability to engage students with exemplars of literacy instruction, while the remaining six students studied their implementation of other instructional models (e.g. writing workshop, poetry units).

Across the projects, students were aware of their particular students' emotional, social, academic and linguistic needs. For example, Jamie implemented a writing workshop in her second grade classroom in hopes of helping her students become more creative in the content of their writing and less focused on the mechanics of writing. In her final presentation to her peers, Jamie said:

   One of the pillars of Writing Workshop is the individual student
   conferences. To keep track of the students I had met with and what
   we talked about I used a conference sheet. Each student had one
   that listed the date, the piece of writing we looked at and what we
   had discussed.

Further, she showed the conferencing checklists that she developed and how she used them to track her students' academic progress and to determine her future instruction. However, Jamie also shared what she had learned about several students in terms of not only their academic achievements, but also those of improved or changed behaviors, and heightened self-confidence as some students began to feel like real writers.

Another student, Lisa Marie, studied an ESL student in her fifth grade classroom during a Book Club unit. She found that Book Club actually supported the student's academic growth in spoken and written English, although his reading was still problematic. However, Lisa Marie was so engaged with her project that she focused much of her in-class presentation to her peers on a literature review she had engaged in to learn more about second language learners. Among the findings she shared were:

* In addition to the challenge to be excellent, American schools are facing novel problems. They must cope with an influx of immigrant children, many of whom speak little or no English. They must respond to demands that the curriculum reflect the various cultures of all children.

* Acquiring a second language is a long and complex process that takes from 5 to 7 years for most children to accomplish. Without sustained and adequate support, English language learners can fall behind in subject matter learning.

* An ESL student learning to read and write needs to be introduced to literacy in a meaningful way, to make a successful connection between oral language and print.

By making her classmates aware of these findings, Lisa Marie was using action research to think about meeting the needs of the diverse students she might encounter in the future as well as reflecting on the challenges she faced in meeting the specific needs of the student she worked with in her project. This was, ultimately, one of our goals when we assigned the action research project.

One of our goals as the instructors of this course was to help students develop culturally responsive practices. Even though we represented diversity broadly to include cultural, linguistic, racial, gender, ability, learning styles, social and ethnic differences, students whose action research projects focused on the differences among their students focused primarily on academic ability, learning styles, and social differences.

Implications for Action Research in Teacher Education

From our experiences with this project and the teacher candidates' reflection on the process, we feel that learning to do action research as a beginning teacher can provide skills for further professional development and growth. As such, action research has a place in the university curriculum as candidates move from student to independent teacher roles as it further develops their understanding of the complexity of teaching while providing them with practical, tangible ways to go about addressing the issues of particular concern to them in their own classroom. However, the explicit connection was not made that action research can be a tool used by teachers to respond to student diversity and develop culturally responsive practices. Additional and explicit attention is needed to help teacher candidates recognize this. However, they did understand that action research provided them with a strategy to explore specific ways to support a student or students in the classroom at a more global level.

Above all else, this work allows teacher candidates to see themselves as powerful in the classroom, able to study and effect change on their own practices in order to support students' learning needs. Developing the habit of mind to analyze and address practice-based issues encourages teacher candidates to feel that students' diverse learning needs are regular aspects of classroom life to be addressed rather than deficits or drawbacks for classroom success. Further, this work has reinforced our efforts and intentions as teacher educators to ensure that students have the opportunity to realize their own power as teachers who are capable of making appropriate changes in their classrooms to improve student learning. This attitude will go a great distance towards supporting teacher candidates' sense of self as a reflective, inquisitive teacher during early career settings.

References

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Chant, R.H., Heafner, T.L., & Bennett, K.R. (2004). Connecting personal theorizing and action research in preservice teacher development. Teacher Education Quarterly, 31(3), 35-42.

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Zehr, M.A. (2001). ESL students pose a special challenge for rural schools. Education Week, 20(41), 6-8. Retrieved October 31,2004, from www.edweek.org.

Alisa J. Bates, University of Utah 

Laura S. Pardo, Hope College

Bates, Ph.D., is assistant professor of teacher education in the Department of Teaching and Learning. Pardo, Ph.D., is an associate professor of education in the Department of Education.