Developing a Professional Learning Community: University/School Collaboration to Support the Teaching and Learning of Literacy in Elementary School project

Principal Investigator
Joanne Larson
Chair and Associate Professor, Teaching and Curriculum

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School 28, West Ridge Elementary receive DDE mini-grants made possible by the Warner School

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Teachers learn together; improve instructional practices

Description
The project is an ethnographic study of language and interaction in elementary schools – currently in both urban and suburban districts. The project combines several teaching communities into one professional learning community of language arts educators to support the teaching and learning of literacy, particularly in urban elementary schools whose students represent a high-need population of poor urban minority children.
The fusion of teachers from different schools creates an environment conducive to preparing and supporting teachers as they work to better understand their practice and to help all their students learn literacy in a meaningful context. The collaboration catalyzes school-wide and institutional changes and learning reform by guiding participant teachers as they reflect on and transform their practice in a supportive environment. Project activities include annual summer institutes, monthly meetings, and an end-of-year open house. Participating teachers may also apply for mini-grants funded through the project that can be used to purchase literacy-related supplies, books and technology, attend literacy conferences, or construct meaningful literacy-learning contexts for their students.

In addition to directly supporting literacy education reform, the collaboration is also the basis of research into understanding how collaborative relationships between schools and universities are constructed and sustained. The research component includes gathering and analyzing data from audiotape and videotape transcripts of meetings; observing and videotaping the practice of master teacher participants; formal and informal interviews; surveys, field notes and artifacts (like the journals produced by participants inside and outside of meetings); and aggregate student performance data. Research findings are shared with the participants in the collaborative as well as with the broader professional development community through conferences and publications.

Supported by
The New York State Deptartment of Education.

Timeframe
9/99 – 8/03