Teachers and Students Producing Together - Case Study Example

Community Visit Report Description of the agency The organization that is funded by US department of education, office of educational research and improvement is being considered for community visit report. It is CREDE that stands for Center for Research on Education, Diversity and Excellence. The center is focused on achieving academic excellence by identifying and developing effective educational practices for linguistic and cultural minority students who are classified as “at risk” category due to their race, poverty, cultural barriers and geographic location. The funding of 31 projects by CREDE all over the country in 1996-2001 can be termed as one of the reason for its consideration. These projects range from the Zuni speaking students in New Mexico to inner city schools in Florida. The California elementary schools that contain heavy strength of native Spanish speaking students are also have the projects funded by CREDE. The data was gathered and analyzed to identify the key issues affecting these students in pursuit of academic excellence. The synthesis teams formed in 2001-2003 extract the key findings and practices from the field research done previously. This is capable of producing the publications and tools that assist the teaching community to implement good practices in the classroom activities. These teams worked on seven topics in education to produce authoritative reports on the nation's state of knowledge about effective school reform for all students. They consisted of CREDE researchers, distinguished researchers from the education field, teachers, administrators, and policymakers. The seven topics of focus were: Language Learning and Academic Achievement, Professional Development for Diversity, Preservice Teacher Education for Diversity, Schools, Families and Community, Mathematics and Diversity, Science and Diversity, Teacher-School-Systemic Integration for Effective Reform. WHY CREDE? The benefits of outside support for students and schools are an already established fact by educationist in the past according to Epstein, 1995 and Ruterford and Billig, 1995. Kirst also opined that the schools and families couldn’t provide every student the support needed for academic without external assistance. For minority students specially, the language and culture differences act as main hindrances in understanding and assimilating the school environment and the schools themselves are incapable of addressing their academic needs appropriately. Thus schools take help of community based organizations to support such students. Thus these organizations act separately from the traditional methods to provide assistance to students in understanding their problems. (Davis, 1991; Dryfoos, 1998; Heath, 1993; Heath & McLaughlin, 1991; Jones, 1992). CREDE is one such institution which advises teachers and students alike by focusing on techniques which can foster better academic practices. They have come out with five “Standards," that is the ideals for best teaching practices, which express the principles of effective pedagogy for all students and especially for at-risk students. These are: Teachers and Students Producing Together, Developing Language and Literacy Across the Curriculum, Making Lessons Meaningful, Teaching Complex Thinking and Teaching through Conversation. Overview of the agency's work and goals As described earlier, the center is totally focused on popularizing its concept of five standards that should be utilized in teaching the minority students such that they do not suffer from any learning handicap due to their ethnic and diverse backgrounds and are able to effectively compete with the majority of the students. The center is run by a group of highly qualified researchers and educationists who believe in the learning capabilities of all children when provided with equal and stress free environment. They advocate the learning of English language as a desirable qualification, which is easily attainable, and their five standards show that individuals can be looked after in the group teachings and learning. The CREDE will provide the products involving the best teaching practices in CD ROMs, videos, online directories, print publications and in the form of a website for the teaching practitioners. These practitioners include teachers, researchers and parents. The five standards for effective pedagogy have been effective in educating all the students. This is considered as important as the students especially at risk have also learned after implementing these practices. Combined production of teacher and students: This combined production focuses on learning by joint production activities. These joint production activities involve both teachers and student in the implementation process. We all are aware that when experts and students work together for a common product or goal learning occurs most effectively and thus joint productive activity maximizes teaching and learning by encouraging meaningful conversations between teachers and students. This involves the learning in action. This is a characteristic value of the parents of young children, Pre School, graduate school, adult learning, school to work and service learning. This involves the on job training students also. Generally, such joint activities are not done in schools from which there can be a common understanding of issues between the two. The joint activity mentioned above is capable of creating a common context of experience. This is important in case of teachers and students of different backgrounds. Development of Language as a part of curriculum: The development of language as part of the curriculum will enhance the competence in the language instruction in all the schools. The school environment, the school culture and all the communications take place in the language commonly used, thus it is important to have the working knowledge of the medium of instruction. This gives the awareness that both social and academic language are critical for academic success. These skills can be developed through informal learning methods and by encouraging use of the language for both formal and informal communications such as in asking and answering questions. The building of learning contexts that can evoke and build upon children’s strengths will make a link to the culturally bases ways of talking. This enhances the language strength of the students. Connecting the school to the students lives can make a meaning: The connection of the school to the life will focus on connecting the teaching to the daily life activities. These activities may be at home or at the community. Generally, in schools, teachers focus on definitions, rules, verbal descriptions etc. but the students are unable to relate these concepts to their everyday life. Thus in order to facilitate better teaching or learning, teachers should try to explain examples from everyday life experiences so as to help at-risk students in understanding them and relating them to their personal, family, and community experiences. Teaching Complex Thinking: This standard advocates that by challenging students to analyze and think logically, complex learning can be enhanced rather than going for repetitive drilling methods. This is due to the consensus among the educational researchers about the risk of educational failure of the students in real life. This requires thinking and analysis. Teaching Through Conversation: This focuses on engaging students through dialogue, and meaningful Conversation. This method helps to encourage students to go beyond the educational material to think and express their ideas. The teachers should also allow students to freely question and express their thoughts and should try to interpret them through the students’ vision or intended meaning. They should be able to adjust their responses in a way that helps them to understand a concept rather than simply memorize it. This enables the teachers to know that the student has something to say beyond the known answers in the head of adults. This involves the listening of the adult by the student. They can even make guesses about the meaning conveyed by the student and the efforts of the students in the conversation. This type of conversations between students can reveal the knowledge, skills and values along with the culture. This enables the teacher to make a context in teaching that fits the learning experience. Review of the literature According to Tharp et al in 2000 there are five standards for effective pedagogy. These are included in methodology of CREDE. Achieving excellence, fairness, inclusion and harmony are transformed by using the five standards of pedagogy. They advocate the criticality of the five standards. These improve the outcomes for the students belonging to ethnic, cultural, linguistic and with different economic backgrounds. The researches by different researchers showed that the usage of the standards by the teachers resulted in using the variety of other effective teaching strategies. The studies by Saunders in 1999, Saunders and Golden berg in 1999a, 1999b, and 2001, Saunders, O’brien, Lennon and Mc lean in 1998 revealed that the conversational between and involving teachers and students are useful in enhancing the literary skills in the students. The examination by Doherty and Pinal in 2002 about the influence of the teachers use of joint productive activity revealed that JPA encouraged the self reported us of cognitive reading strategies in the students. The examination included the meta cognitive development of predominantly Latino students. Estrada’s set of studies showed a positive relation between implementation of the five standards and the student outcomes. This included the first to fourth grades and the parallel gain in teachers teaching capabilities. Another study by Padron and Waxman in 1999 revealed that the Latino students who used five standards of pedagogy spent more time on task. This made them to perceive as better readers and faced much less difficulty in their work. Evaluation of the agency and its effectiveness The formation of partnership and adoption of schools by CREDE resulted in applications of five standards of pedagogy and effective measurement of them. Although these are general principles and can be seen in application in different schools in varying degrees, CREDE has used some schools for demonstrating the effects of full implementation of these standards by providing all help to these adopted schools in form of material, methods and training. The straight elementary school in Watsonville, California and Waianne high school in Waiannae, Hawaii are some of them. By working closely with staff and administrators at the schools, CREDE provided comprehensive training in the Five Standards to the Teachers and then measured the student achievement after the implementation of the program to assess its effect. The assessment has been done with the help of classroom visits, videotaping, observation of teaching practices and consultation with the staff. These resulted in future refinements in the methodology. These refinements are regarding the implementation of five standards so as to design programs used by many in any classroom. The demographic diversity also is taken into consideration to help the students. This helped the students in achieving the full potential. The comprehensive studies by Hilberg, Tharp and Degeest in 2000 examined the efficiency of the five standards of pedagogy. This observation is regarding using these practices in the teaching of mathematics. This is done on a quasi experimental basis in American Indian middle school. The students taught using five standards of pedagogy outperformed the students who were taught using traditional methods. These traditional methods are based conceptual learning and exhibited better retention of unit content. Similar studies have proved the relationship between teachers’ use of the Five Standards and good student achievement especially with diverse students. Thus it has been seen that the center has done excellent work in coming up with these five standards of effective pedagogy and have followed up with assessments and help to schools adopting these measures. They have come out with exhaustive material on this methodology so as to be able to help those teachers trying to introduce such methods in their teaching. Discussion of how this project will affect your work as a teacher This project has given me an opportunity to learn the famous CREDE standards for effective pedagogy by experiencing and discussing them with the experts. I can get an in-depth understanding of coaching and collaborative literacy through this center. Since they also provide trainings and help, I will be able to benefit immensely by suing their techniques. I intend to learn skills to improve my instruction methods, so that I can have a better way of handling students from diverse backgrounds. Actually these concepts help to understand and encourage teachers to apply these methods to enhance learning experience of all students and especially those who are at risk of failure due to their ethnic and underprivileged backgrounds. This experience has made me more understanding of their problems and issues and now I can probably relate in a much better fashion to such students in my classroom. As Joan Wink says in her book – Critical Pedagogy: Noted from the Real World, “there is no one way of teaching which is correct. All kids are different and we should try to be innovative and experimental in our approach as teachers to help students in their pursuit of academic excellence. Moreover, the five standards as mentioned above have brought in the understanding and insight into the issues surrounding students having different and ethnic backgrounds and how that causes a hindrance to their normal learning behavior. References Davis, D. (1991). Adult literacy programs: Toward equality or maintaining the status quo? Journal of Reading, 35, 34-37. Doherty, R. W., Hilberg, R. S., Epaloose, G., & Tharp, R. G. (2002). Development and validation of the Standards Performance Continuum: A performance-based measure of the Standards for Effective Pedagogy. Journal of Educational Research. Doherty, R. W., & Pinal, A. (2002). Joint productive activity and the development of metacognitive thinking. Manuscript submitted for publication. Dryfoos, J. (1998). Safe passage: Making it through adolescence in a risky society. New York: Oxford. Epstein, J. (1995). School/family/community partnerships: Caring for the children we share. Phi Delta Kappan, 76, 701-712. Estrada, P., & Imhoff, B. D. (2001). Patterns of language arts instructional activity: Excellence, inclusion, fairness, and harmony in six first grade classrooms. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Education Research Association, Seattle, WA. Heath, S. (1993). Inner city life through drama: Imagining the language classroom. TESOL Quarterly, 27, 177-192. Heath, S., & McLaughlin, M. W. (1991). Community organizations as family. Phi Delta Kappan, 72, 623-627. Hilberg, R. S., Tharp, R. G., & DeGeest, L. (2000). The efficacy of CREDE’s standards-based instruction in American Indian mathematics classes. Equity and Excellence in Education, 33(2), 32-39. Jones, B. (1992). Collaboration: The case for indigenous community-based organization support of dropout prevention programming and implementation. Journal of Negro Education, 61, 496-508. Kirst, M. (1991). Improving children's services. Phi Delta Kappan, 72, 615-618. Saunders, W., O’Brien, G., Lennon, D., & McLean, J. (1998). Making the transition to English literacy successful: Effective strategies for studying literature with transition students. In R. Gersten & R. Jimenez (Eds.), Promoting learning for culturally and linguistically diverse students. Monterey, CA: Brooks Cole Publishers. Saunders, W., & Goldenberg, C. (2001). Opportunities through Language Arts: Overview video, video guide, and program manual. Tharp et al. (2003), Research Evidence :Five Standards for Effective Pedagogy and Student Outcomes, Technical Report No. G1 (rev., March, 2004) Tharp, R. G., Estrada, P., Dalton, S. S., & Yamauchi, L. (2000). Teaching transformed: Achieving excellence, fairness, inclusion, and harmony. Boulder: Westview Press.   Read More