Supporting a Literacy INSET for Teachers in Challenging Contexts

Author(s):

Susanne Staf(presenting / submitting)Pernilla Andersson Varga(presenting)

Conference:

ECER 2015

Network:

01. Continuing Professional Development: Learning for Individuals, Leaders, and Organisations

Format:

Paper

Session Information

01 SES 11 C, Dialogue about practice in professional development

Paper Session

Time:

2015-09-10

17:15-18:45

Room:

428.Oktatóterem [C]

Chair:

Ruth Kershner

Contribution

Background, Objective, Research questions, Theoretical framework

Since the 90:ies Europe has seen increasing numbers of migrants.Sweden has received large numbers of people, a fact which challenges the educational system in the bigger cities, where most migrants end up. Gothenburg is the nations second largest city, a former industrial city characterized by segregation. Recent national school reforms, such as the voucher system has further increased the segregation between succesful and struggling schools, so that In some suburbs, less than 50 % of students leaving compulsory school qualify for upper secondary education. Most of them have an L2-background and attend schools characterized by a constant shift of students, teachers and school leaders.Common explanations for the poor performance are students´ insufficient knowledge of L1 and a lack of didactic strategies for teaching literacy across the curriculum.

To address this problem eleven middle and secondary schools decided to try and improve literacy levels by training teachers in the Reading to Learn (R2L) pedagogy (Rose & Martin, 2012). R2L is the third generation of genre pedagogy, developed through action research between Australian linguists and teachers. During the last ten years it has spread globally, and is used in for example South Africa (Rose, 2005) and a number of European countries, including Sweden (TEL4L). The pedagogy was originally developed for L2-learners and has an emancipatory idea. The overall aim is to close the gap between high- and low performing students, by providing teachers with strategies for scaffolding the reading and writing of age adequate texts.

The Gothenburg R2L-INSET started in 2013 and is organized by the local Centre for School development (CfS). Apart from two external R2L-instructors, who teach eight days of workshops per year, CfS reinforces the INSET with three local coaches who support participating schools between workshops. By analysing the strengths and weaknesses of how CfS has framed the INSET so far, more lessons can be drawn about how to support professional development in challenging contexts.

The main questions will be:

What conditions and practices seem to improve a literacy INSET with this particular design?

How have the teachers taken the R2L-pedagogy on board?

What impact has the INSET had on the teachers´professional identity?

Theoretical framework

The theoretical basis is found in Timperleys´ (2008) ten principles for research-based professional development, which serves as guidelines for planning and supporting the INSET at community level. Following the first two principles, professional development must meet with needs identified by participating schools, in this case improved literacy strategies for teaching L2 learners across the curriculum. Principle three (Timperley, 2008) emphasizes the importance of integrating new teaching practices with theories, rather than just imposing another method. R2L has a profound base in learning and linguistic theories and is hence well suited in this respect. Principle four states the importance of using classroom assessment to know what parts of the teaching that needs changing..During the INSET participants collect and assess texts, which are used to inform the next teaching move. Principles five to eight pinpoint the need for strengthening professional development by acknowledging efforts, challenging existing beliefs and providing opportunities for cooperative learning of new skills. Principle nine focus the part that school leaders play in creating a professional learning community where teachers develop and maintain their professional capital. The tenth and last principle underlines the importance of providing theories that enable teachers to monitor their impact on student learning.

Method

Material and method The material consists of various documents produced during the first two years of the R2L-INSET in Gothenburg. This includes planning notes from R2L-coaches, evaluations of workshops, teacher questionnaires, notes from local tutoring sessions as well as records from meetings with school leaders and administrators. The qualitative analysis will be made through a critical rereading of the material, which will be categorized and compared to Timperley’s (2008) ten principles for professional learning and school development. The focus will be on principles five to ten, which are most relevant for analysing the role of CfS in this inset. Principle five stresses the importance of facilitating professional learning by offering recurrent opportunities for discussing new insights in relation to existing teaching repertoires. According to Timperley (2008) this calls for insets of one to two years, during which the participants can be sure that their efforts will be supported and not looked down upon. As R2L challenges fundamental teaching practices such as the IRE/IRF- pattern of classroom interaction, the analysis will focus efforts, which seem to encourage the use of the new teaching strategies. Principle six is about the necessity of challenging existing knowledge and beliefs. As professional learning processes are cyclic rather than linear, the analysis will focus efforts to strengthen this process throughout the INSET. Principle seven stresses the importance of supporting teamwork that encourages teachers to practice their new skills in their classrooms. The analysis will focus on efforts made to support the participating school leaders in this respect. Principle eight is about the importance of teachers having access to external experts in their everyday context, in this case the local R2L-coaches, whose actions will be analysed. Principle nine underlines the necessity for school leaders to look for proof of good teaching and teacher progress, something which is especially important in this inset, as schools in challenging contexts are often overloaded with initiatives for improvement. The tenth principle is about keeping up the results at school level. The analysis will focus ways to support participating schools in using student data and existing evaluation systems as tools for assessing and improving their impact on student learning.

Expected Outcomes

Results so far The combination of workshops, tutoring and local support seems to have helped participating teachers in changing their classroom practice. The long-term perspective (Timperley, 2008) has proved especially important, since the teachers requested a second year of INSET. Some schools did not manage to persevere, mainly because they were snowed under by improvement initiatives. Finding ways of helping school leaders in underachieving schools to deal with this problem would strengthen this kind of INSET. While some schools leaders have organised regular opportunities for cooperative learning, others do not seem to notice the implications for their organisation. The shortage of school development culture in some of the participating schools (Skolinspektionen, 2012) needs to be addressed more systematically in order to close the gap between failing and successful schools. Overall, he R2L-INSET has been well received. More than 50% of the 90 teachers who took part in the first INSET 2013/2014 chose to continue the second year. Some schools also sent new groups for the next INSET, which started 2014/2015. All participants seem to practice the R2L strategies, although some more often than others. Almost all of them report an increasing student engagement. An analysis of students’ texts collected during the first year of the INSET shows that the gap between high and low achieving students has decreased. The participants claim having become more aware of the importance of working with texts in the classroom. Teachers also report that they and their students have developed a common linguistic meta language for talking about texts and genres across the curriculum. They also report that the pedagogy has strengthened their classroom management, and empowered them as teachers. Results from the first and second year of the ongoing INSET will be analysed and presented at the conference.

References

References Rose, D. (2005) Democratizing the classroom: a literacy pedagogy for the new generation Journal of Education, Vol. 3 , pp. 131-168 Rose, D. & Martin, J.R. (2012). Learning to write, reading to learn: genre, knowledge and pedagogy in the Sydney school. Sheffield: Equinox. Skolinspektionen (2012). Rektors ledarskap med ansvar för den pedagogiska verksamheten. Kvalitetsgranskning. Rapport 2012:1. http://www.skolinspektionen.se/Documents/publikationssok/granskningsrapporter/kvalitetsgranskningar/2012/rektor-2/slutrapport-rektors-ledarskap-2012.pdf TEL4L http://tel4ele.eu/index.php/component/docman/doc_view/360-final-report-public-part?Itemid=467 Timperley Helen (2008) Teacher professional learning and development. Educational Practices Series 18. International Academy of Education: Brussels http://www.ibe.unesco.org/fileadmin/user_upload/Publications/Educational_Practices/EdPractices_18.pdf

Author Information

Susanne Staf (presenting / submitting)

Gothenburg University/ City of Gothenburg , Sweden

IDPP ( The Institution for Didactis and Pedagogic Professions), Gothenburg University/ Centre for School Development

Partille

Pernilla Andersson Varga (presenting)

Centre for School Development, City of Gothenburg , Sweden,

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