The Adventures of Weather Girl and Cloud Man: What Pre-service Teachers Taught Us about TeachingErin E MargarellaMatthew Ulyesses BlankenshipJenifer J Schneider

Overview

Original Study Context

Theoretical Stance

Data Source

Methods

Results Weather Girl Cloud Man

Conclusion

Original Study Context

Research Assistants for a Study involving writing instruction through iPad infusion.

Tasked with observing pre-service teacher and student interactions for two small groups at a medium sized catholic school.

Met once weekly for four hours and then the research team met to discuss observations.

Theoretical Stance

Social Constructive Lens – the idea of how meaning is created through interactions (Rosenblatt, 1994; Bandura, 1977)

There must be social interaction between two or more people to create meaning.

In this case, it was the group of students, preservice teachers, professor and each other.

Data Sources

Field notes from original study

Reflective notes from original study

Researcher reflective journal

Notes from our discussions

Researcher memory (confirmed by other sources)

Output from Original Study

Methods

Reviewing, interacting and discussing data

Read and reread notes looking for themes

Composed individual narratives and then compared

Weather Girl

Previous Thought- Teacher led instruction Teacher modeling

Shift in perception Intellectual freedom for

students Fewer academic limitations Focused attention on student

interest High interest increased

achievement

Cloud Man

Previous Thought – Social Construction

Environmental Shift: Rows to Groups

Student Generated vs. Teacher Generated

Nice Looking vs. Nice Learning

Enduring Observation

Conclusion

Extended observation has transformative power for novice to experienced teachers.

Perceived social construction to true socially constructed experiences in the classroom.

Increased academic freedom for students leads to an increase in student achievement

References

Bandura, A. (1977) Social learning theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Clay, M. (1975). What did I write?  Portsmouth, NH:  Heinemann.

Coker, D. (2007). Writing instruction for young children. In S. Graham, C.A. MacArthur,

& J. Fitzgerald (Eds.), Best Practices in Writing Instruction (pp. 101-118). New York, NY: Guilford.

Dewey, J. (2005). Art as Experience. New York: Perigee Trade.

Fitzgerald, J. (2005). Multilingual writing in preschool through twelfth grade: The last 15

References

Fitzgerald, J. (2005). Multilingual writing in preschool through twelfth grade: The last 15 years. In C.A. MacArthur, S. Graham, & J. Fitzgerald (Eds.), Handbook of writing research (pp. 337-354). New York, NY: Guilford Press

Hayes, J. (1996). A new framework for understanding cognition and affect in writing. In

C.M. Levy & S. Ransdell (Eds.), The science of writing: Theories, methods, individual differences, and applications (pp. 1-27). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Merriam, S.B. (2009). Qualitative research: a guide to design and implementation. San Fransisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

References

Mertns, D. M. (2003). Mixed methods and the politics of human research. The transformative-emancipatory perspective. In A. Tashakkori & C. Teddlie (Eds.), Handbook of mixed methods in social and behavioral research (pp. 135-164). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Moje, E. (2002). Re-framing adolescent literacy research for new times: Studying youth as a resource. Reading Research and Instruction, 41, 211-228.

Pressley, M., Mohan, L., Fingeret, L., Reffitt, K., Raphael-Bogaert, R. (2007). Writing instruction in engaging and effective elementary settings. In S. Graham, C.A. MacArthur, & J. Fitzgerald (Eds.), Best Practices in Writing Instruction (pp. 13-27). New York, NY: Guilford.

References

Rosenblatt, L.M. (1994). The transactional theory of reading and writing. In Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading (pp. 1363-1398). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Schlagal, B. (2002). Classroom spelling instruction: History, research, and practice. Reading Research and Instruction 42, 44-57.

Vygotsky, L. (1986). Thought and Language. Boston: MIT Press.

The Adventures of Weather Girl and Cloud Man: What

Pre-service Teachers Taught Us about

TeachingErin E Margarella - Erin Margarella

erinmargarel@usf.eduMatthew Ulyesses Blankenship – mublanke@usf.edu

Jenifer J Schneider

Questions?