Students Think-Aloud about their Teachers

1. Students Think-Aloud about their Teachers Elizabeth B. Kozleski Arizona State University

2. Overview • Study of a job embedded professional learning approach • Focus on how students in these classrooms • viewed their teacher’s skills • Thought about their own learning • Changed their own goals for learning and post-graduation transition • Outline the approach • Describe the students • Share the findings • Summarize the implications of this work

3. Learning Labs • Community of high school teachers (5 -20 members) • Across buildings and subjects • Focused on literacy development in the content areas • A group of teachers visits a classroom together • Pre-session • View a complete lesson • Debrief

4. Learning Lab Focus • Observed teacher names the focus of learning • Teachers debrief together • Mediation provided by a literacy coach • Focus on teacher inquiry

5. Impact • What happens to the students? • Does having the teachers present affect students’ relationships to each other, to the curriculum, and to their learning? • Is learning enhanced in these teaching labs?

6. Methodology • Identify successful learning lab teachers • Conduct focus groups with the students in those lab classrooms • Ask: • How do students describe the curriculum and instruction that occurs in their learning lab classroom and their associated literacy achievement? • (2) Do students perceive a difference in their behaviors or ability to learn when participating in a learning lab classroom session? and • (3) Do students perceive a difference in their teacher’s behaviors when teaching during the course of a learning lab classroom session?

7. Students • 29 students • 16 middle school students of Mr. Bonito (7 male, 9 female) • 11 students who were Latino • 2 students who were African American • 4 students who were European American • 6 students on IEPs • All students were reading at least 2 years behind their age group (8th grade) • 13 high school students of Ms. Covel (10 male, 3 female) • 8 students were Latino • 2 students were African American • 2 students were European American • 8 students on IEPs • All students were reading at least 3 years behind their age group (8th grade) and had failed freshman English.

8. Teachers • Mr. Bonito is a Latino in his mid-30’s who has been teaching six years. • undergraduate degree in English • masters degree in Secondary Literacy Curriculum and Instruction. • Hosting learning labs for three years. • Ms. Covel is European, early thirties with three years of teaching experience • Undergraduate degree psychology • Masters degree in Secondary Literacy. • Hosting learning labs for the past two. .

9. Learning Lab Valuable • I’ve learned just to use bigger, better vocabulary, higher level, um my readings improved, and my writing skills, just how I can write different things without having to really think hard on them, just know what words to use without having to use smaller words and then wait till later and then use a thesaurus to find a higher lever word for it, because I already know the higher level words and I can just put it in right away.

10. Literacy as an Agent for Life Success • Because if you can’t read or write you are not successful in any work environment because in every work in environment you have to read you have to write you have to do everything you have to read and write. In every job you’ll ever get you’ll need those abilities that’s why I think it is important.

11. Identity • It made me feel kind of good about myself because it made other teachers see that (the school) is not just another one of those ghetto schools with a whole bunch of bad kids…it makes it look like a better school for the good kids that come, the teachers and the parents can depend on each other and that makes it!

12. Community • The sense of humor that we have in that class, we take it on to our first hour and then our third hour. And, since most of us have the same classes together, we branch it out into those classes. And we mess around and everything but we still get our work done. Like in math me, Karen and a couple other people, we can be sitting there and we don’t understand the question, so we’ll be like “ok” so if it was one of those story questions. I put it in terms as if we were the people in the story and I like translate it.

13. Strategy Awareness • “We learn to predict, check for understanding, and summarize. Mr. B makes sure we know how to do it.” • “Maybe to watch Mr. B. and gets some ideas about how kids these days want to learn instead of sticking to the lesson plan you can do hands on, discussions, shared reading, independent reading and writing.”

14. Impacting Student and Teacher Learning • Of the 29 students we interviewed, all but 3 passed this class. • Students are conscious of how their teachers teach. • They know what approaches work for them. • They can inform teacher practice. • Being conscious and explicit about teaching practices makes them more aware of their own strategies for learning. • Being observed creates motivation for performance.

15. More information elizabeth.kozleski@asu.edu www.urbanschools.org www.nccrest.org