Christine A. Draper Michelle Reidel Georgia Southern University

1. Promoting Reading Engagement Through Collaboration in Pre-Service Teacher Education Methods Courses Christine A. Draper Michelle Reidel Georgia Southern University

2. Abstract • The purpose of this project was to explore the investigators’ efforts to utilize and implement common literacy strategies across the content-areas, and how these efforts were experienced and interpreted by pre-service middle grades teachers enrolled in their first methods block experience.

3. Guiding Questions • How do preservice teachers initially view literacy and response? • How do preservice teachers view implementation of response strategies or implement these strategies into their teaching practice?

4. Aims • Since teachers play a significant role in motivating children to read and to write, it is important to challenge teachers to promote engaged and motivating literacy experiences for their students (Ruddell, 1995). • To work toward this goal, teacher education programs should strive to prepare teachers who can support the growth and development of critical literacy in their classrooms and with their students.

5. Aims • Common literacy response strategies in both the context of the Language Arts and Social Studies Methods curriculums. • Pre-service teachers were then required to incorporate at least one of the literacy response strategies discussed and utilized in the block into a unit of instruction they teach at their practicum placement. In addition they incorporate a reading lesson into Language Arts or Social Studies.

6. Aims • With the realities of standards-based accountability, it is imperative to model and demonstrate for students how subject areas and teaching methods transcend across traditional boundaries. • By exposing pre-service teachers to methods and strategies that encouraged discussion and further understanding of reading and response across all curriculum areas, we encourage our future teachers to implement these types of learning strategies within their future classrooms.

7. Common Literacy Response Strategies

8. Methodology • Qualitative Case Study (Stake, 1995) • Topical Interviews • Course Artifacts • Student and Instructor Perspective • Ethnography (Atkinson, 1990) • Data Sources • Investigators’ personal hand-written reflective journal • Participants’ journals and observations (Spradley, 1980) • Course assignments • Interviews (pre/post) with study participants • Each week during the data collection period the researchers also wrote an analytical reflective journal entry.

9. Methodology • Grounded Theory • Individually coded by both researchers to allow for inter-rater reliability. • Initial broad concepts were generated and biographical sketches were completed for each of the eight participants. • Micro-analysis and generative or open coding (Strauss and Corbin, 1998). • Content-based patterns and references about prior experiences and reading perceptions and often wrote research and theoretical memos in the margins such as “ways to get books” or “schooling influences.” • Organized repeated phrases into initial broad concepts.

10. Methodology • Coding and categorizing went through various stages as the initial broad concepts were refined and challenged through further comparative analysis (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). • Generative or open coding, as the term is used in grounded theory methodology, is the process of developing categories of concepts and themes constructed from data (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). • Since we had both taught these courses before, we wanted to ensure that we did not bring in our own pre-conceived concepts or categories. • Therefore, it was through microanalysis and continuous reading and re-reading of the data sources that initial broad concepts and categories that recurring concepts and topics were refined (Strauss & Corbin, 1998).

11. How do Pre-service Teachers Initially View Literacy and Response? • Basic understanding that literacy involved reading and writing • All participants were stuck on the notion that literacy ensured comprehension • Reluctant readers • Disliked reading and felt that their students would feel the same • Rarely questioned or challenged what was read • Most read to repeat rather than engage with the text • Assignments mirrored their perceptions • Approached reading from an efferent stance

12. How do pre-service teachers view implementation of literacy response strategies or actually implement these strategies in their placements? • Motivated Students • “some students that have the reputation of doing the minimum and not trying in class had some of the best work”. • Involved Students • “allowed my students to take what they learned and apply this in a fun and creative way that they were excited about and enjoyed; something a worksheet cannot do”. • Encouraged Thinking • “really made learning memorable to the students and encouraged them to think about how the curriculum related to their understanding of the topic”. • Teacher as Facilitator

13. Results • Findings suggest that the instructional strategies utilized in coursework programs have the potential to influence the eventual teaching practices of pre-service teachers. • By exposing pre-service teachers to methods and strategies that encourage discussion and further understanding of reading and response across all curriculum areas, we encourage our future teachers to implement these types of learning strategies within their future classrooms. • Yet findings also reveal an overall lack of engagement and even disdain for reading among the preservice teachers in this study.

14. Questions remaining • If pre-service teachers, as the findings above suggest, do not ‘enjoy’ reading; if they conceptualizing reading as the practice of repeating rather than engaging with a text; what are the long-term implications for their practice as literacy educators? • While the pre-service teachers in this study were willing to incorporate diverse literacy response strategies into their instruction and seemed excited about the results of these practices, can this shift be sustained if they do not also shift their own personal reading practices?

15. Why do I have to take these courses? I teach math!” or “This block seems like a total waste of my time since I do not teachreading or social studies”. • While proclamations like these are difficult to hear, what frightens us most is that the students in this block typically complete these courses during the fall or spring of their junior year. They are very close to student teaching, graduation and moving into their own classrooms; yet they continue to view curriculum integration - and more specifically -literacy- as far removed from certain subject areas.