Teachers and Researchers Building Subject Knowledge for Teaching English Language Learners: Exploration of Communal Constructivism in an Online Learning Space

Author(s):

Naomi Flynn(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2016

Network:

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

Format:

Paper

Session Information

01 SES 02 A, Approaches to Literacy

Paper Session

Time:

2016-08-23

15:15-16:45

Room:

OB-Theatre F

Chair:

Naomi Flynn

Contribution

This paper presents findings from a research project in which researchers and school-based practitioners co-constructed an online research-informed practical guide for the teaching of children with English as an additional language (EAL). It builds on existing work relating to the theory of communal constructivism in order to shed light on the processes that might foster professional development for a growing area of need. Around twenty percent of pupils in English primary schools now have a home language other than English and this, in common with other European countries responding to both intra-EU migration and migration of families from outside Europe, has necessitated that teachers acquire new pedagogical skills for supporting pupils’ development of a new language.

Alongside this change to the pupil demographic in schools there is an aspiration, from policy makers, academics and teacher professional groups in England, that the teaching profession should be more research-engaged in order to foster effective classroom practice that both draws on and engages with research activity (BERA/RSA 2014). Additionally there is a view that online professional development materials might best provide teachers with access to research and thus present a platform for knowledge mobilisation between researchers and professionals (Dede et al 2008; Pietikainen et al 2014). Furthermore there is a sense that academics have a moral imperative to make their research accessible - to ‘mobilise knowledge’ - for practitioners if it is to influence practice and operate outside the paywalls that can restrict both its availability and its potential impact (Ellwood et al 2013). However, there is little research that looks at how these apparently separate agenda might come together to transform research knowledge into practice.

The intention of this research was to create an online guide for practitioners that would develop both their subject knowledge and their engagement with the empirical basis supporting effective pedagogy for EAL learners. Research aims were: firstly to develop, trial and publish online research-informed materials through a process of co-construction; and secondly to explore the extent to which online materials might impact on the practice and research-literacy of teachers of EAL learners. The practical activity creating the guide involved collaboration between an academic researcher, specialist teachers of EAL and classroom practitioners working with EAL learners. The iterative approach to development of the materials through a community of individuals with a shared aim afforded the researcher a pathway to exploring the potential of communal constructivism as a vehicle for underpinning aspirations to develop research-informed teachers.

The theory and pedagogy of communal constructivism was first developed as a way of framing the co-construction of new knowledge when working with new technology (Mehan et al 2001; Leaske and Younie 2001). It shares some commonality with the work on knowledge building communities outlined by Scardamalia and Bereiter (2010) in that it is applied to research that is across learning communities and which seeks to innovate pedagogically. Knowledge construction through this medium is framed as a communal, collaborative journey through which understanding is enriched by the process of joint exploration and discovery; and through which knowledge is more likely to survive and act as a fund for the building of deep understanding across learning communities.

Despite desires to mobilise knowledge in order to develop research-informed practitioners, studies exploring how such an aspiration might be realised in practice are few. In particular there is limited research in to how the theory of communal constructivism might frame activity in knowledge building communities of researchers and practitioners. Discussion will examine how application of this theory as a pedagogy to support cross-community research in education can foster knowledge mobilisation and professional development.

Method

The guide’s co-authors were a university researcher and two specialist advisory teachers with expertise in the teaching of EAL learners. From the outset the research team’s aim was to work collaboratively with teachers in schools in a region of the south of England in order to co-create guidance that would straddle the theoretical and the practical and which would of itself support research activity among the teachers who had EAL learners in their classes. The guide was published under the auspices of MESHGuides.org (http://www.meshguides.org/) which are guides written with shared aims related to building a self-improving profession that is research-informed and a core understanding that this forms part of the knowledge-mobilisation agenda. Thus the publishing platform was itself part of the process in that its aims related to the core aims of the project. Practitioner participants were a group of seven teachers and two learning support assistants with an EAL focus in their work recruited from five schools; pupils taught ranged in age from 5 to 15 years old. Research aim 1 was approached through co-authoring a synthesis of existing research and practical guidance relating to EAL teaching and learning with design and content style informed by interviews with the practitioner participants before, during and after the writing of the guide. Research aim 2 was explored through action research projects developed by the practitioners which attended to the needs of individuals in their classes and which drew on the MESHGuide as the supporting mechanism to shape classroom interventions for EAL learners, and through data from the interviews used to support the first aim. The action research projects were devised by the teachers in partnership with the university-based researcher. Interviews from the beginning, mid-point and end of project were coded using NVivo. A grounded theory approach to analysis generated insights in to the complexities inherent in the communal construction of knowledge.

Expected Outcomes

The aim to transform practice with research engagement through an online learning space proved to be a complex task which necessarily involved explicit acknowledgement of the very different starting points held by researchers, specialist teachers and general practitioners (Moss, 2013). It became apparent through the process of writing the guide, and in the exploration of teachers’ practice through their classroom research, that learning new knowledge for teaching EAL took place both on and offline, but that each learning space had value in supporting our knowledge building community. The final, published guide needed to reflect the wishes of the practitioners who were its users and these were not always as one with the wishes of the co-authors. However, the process of compromise was necessarily part of the process of co-construction and of defining a path to making research accessible and useable by professionals. Navigating professional – researcher differences is essential if academics are to avoid being stymied in their attempts to make available to practitioners the research that can inform practice. Despite challenges, users’ responses to the online guide’s potential as a tool for both research engagement and for continuing professional development relating to the teaching of EAL learners were positive. Given the international potential inherent in web-based learning tools this suggests that an online learning space can support teachers across Europe facing the need to develop new pedagogies for their non-native speakers. Findings relating to the nature of teachers’ research engagement and how this is different from an academic perspective on research engagement advocate that more studies of how differences might be ameliorated are needed. Analysis proposes that the pedagogical theory of communal constructivism has a place to play in brokering fruitful research relationships between academics and practitioners.

References

BERA/RSA. (2014). Research And The Teaching Profession: Building The Capacity For A Self-Improving Education System, Final Report Of The BERA-RSA Inquiry Into The Role Of Research In Teacher Education. London: BERA Dede, C., Ketelhut, D. J., Whitehouse, P., Breit, L., & McCloskey, E. (2008). A Research Agenda for Online Teacher Professional Development. Journal of Teacher Education, 60(1), 8 – 19 Leask, M., & Younie, S. (2001). Communal constructivist theory: Information and communications technology pedagogy and internationalisation of the curriculum. Journal of Information Technology for Teacher Education, 10(1-2), 117-134. Mehan, S., Holmes, B., & Tangney, B. (2001). Who wants to be a teacher? An exploration of the theory of communal constructivism at the chalk face. Teacher Development, 5(2), 177-190. Moss, G. (2013). Research, policy and knowledge flows in education: What counts in knowledge mobilisation? Contemporary Social Science Journal, 8(3), 237-248. Pietikainen, S., Compton, S., & Dlaske, K. (2014). Putting resources into practice: a nexus of knowledge mobilisation activities in language research and multilingual communities. Current Issues in Language Planning, 187-200. doi:10.1080/14664208.2015.972533 Scardamalia, M., & Bereiter, C. (2010). A Brief History of Knowledge Building. Canadian Journal of Learning & Technology, 36(1), 1-16.

Author Information

Naomi Flynn (presenting / submitting)

University of Reading

Institute of Education

Reading

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