Abstract/Notes: The effectiveness and challenges of teacher collaboration as a tool to drive teaching outcomes has been observed in various educational settings. This research project was designed to answer the question, “Would collaboratively creating a Useful Words Handbook for teachers increase the number of language teaching opportunities that could occur during the day?” This action research project, conducted in a Montessori preschool setting, focused on two classroom teachers who educate children between the ages of two and three. Three intervals were identified for data collection. Four weeks of collaboration on the Useful Words Handbook began after two weeks of baseline data collection, during which the frequency of language teaching opportunities were recorded. A weekly topic was presented to the teachers, who provided feedback the following week, in addition to ideas for improving the topic for the handbook. Collaboration involved creating an introduction and four topics about teaching useful phrases to early language learners. The data showed a positive correlation between collaboration and an increase in the number of teaching language opportunities that occur during the day. The data also show that while it is possible to make short-term changes in the classroom through collaboration, changing teacher beliefs about teaching language and collaboration remain a challenge that is characteristic of the teacher collaboration process. Investigating strategies to increase awareness about teaching language should continue.

Language: English

Published: St. Paul, Minnesota, 2013

Abstract/Notes: summary of lectures by Jean Miller at 2006 Refresher Course

Language: English

Language: English

Abstract/Notes: More than ever before, schools and societies are looking to educate children in and for a global world. In the United States, these efforts have taken the form of increased interest in incorporating global or international perspectives into educational curricula, programs, and policy over the past decade (Hayden, 2011; Parker, 2011; U.S. Department of Education, 2012). Despite this interest in what I call global education, ambiguity remains regarding what it means to provide an education for a globalized world, both in terms of its underlying motivations and its ultimate execution in practice (Ortloff, Shah, Lou, & Hamilton, 2012).Two components often placed at the heart of these efforts in the United States—second/foreign language and digital technology—both reflect and contribute to understandings of global education. This study, rooted in an ecological theorization of discourse, asked how different school actors (teachers, administrators, parents, and students) position these two components in education today, how these positionings differ across groups, and what this means for understandings of global education. These questions were investigated through two complementary approaches: a survey distributed to a large cross-section of schools around the United States and an in-depth focal case study of one school. The survey was distributed to teachers, students, parents, and administrators at a broad range of U.S. secondary schools and assessed perceptions of second/foreign language and digital technology in education today. The focal case study focused on two secondary classrooms at a multilingual immersion K-8 school in the western US over a four-month period; data collection included field notes, analytic memos, and audio/video recordings from participant observations as well as multiple rounds of interviews with five students, four teachers, two administrators, and three parents. Data were analyzed using iterative rounds of inductive and deductive coding (Miles & Huberman, 1994; Saldaña, 2009) and critical discourse analysis (Blommaert, 2005; Fairclough, 2001).Findings suggest that second/foreign language and digital technology were positioned in a range of different ways that had concrete ramifications for schools and that built up divergent understandings of global education. The survey component of the study highlighted common discourses reproduced across groups, including: second/foreign language learning as a way to promote cultural understanding and awareness as well as economic opportunity; or digital technology as a threat to learning and as an omnipresent necessity. The focal school offered a more detailed look into these different discourses and their reproduction across groups. Analysis revealed trended similarities and differences across groups. For example, even though parents, teachers, and administrators often articulated a similar understanding of second/foreign language and digital technology, parental actions suggested more alignment with economic-based understandings of these two components. These differences in how second/foreign language and digital technology should be positioned within a global education created a “battle” between parents and the focal school as well as tension within the learning environment. The impact of these discourses and battles on students was unclear: while students at times voiced the discourses that their parents, teachers, and administrators reproduced, data also suggests that students were influenced by outside sources. These findings suggest that resulting understandings of global education were multiple and divergent across school groups. Data analysis also revealed the potential that anxiety, concern, or even fear of globalization and its effects could undergird adult understandings of second/foreign language and of digital technology: beneath economic as well as cultural motivations for second/foreign language and for digital technology learning resided trepidation about a changing world, changing identities, and the unknowns that lay ahead. This suggests that, underneath multiple and complex discourses, there can be a singular discourse that manifests in different ways, nuancing understandings of ecological approaches to discourse. It also suggests that different understandings of global education could stem from the same place: fear or anxiety in the face of a globalizing world. These findings highlight the need for a global education that equips students to navigate a changing world, its challenges, and any potential fears that may arise from these changes and challenges. The study concludes with a pedagogical framework built around discourse analysis that could offer students tools to understand their globalizing world.

Language: English

Published: Berkeley, California, 2017

Abstract/Notes: El presente proyecto de investigación se realizó con el objetivo de analizar la manera en que el Método Montessori contribuye al desarrollo de la expresión oral del Idioma Inglés en los niños de Educación Inicial del Centro Educativo Margarita Naseau en el periodo 2019-2020. El sustento teórico se orientó en la aplicación educativa, materiales didácticos, rol del docente y la enseñanza del idioma inglés. Por lo tanto, el proyecto tiene un enfoque cuali-cuantitativo, de carácter descriptivo y a su vez correlacional, bajo la modalidad socioeducativa que corresponde a una investigación aplicada porque se basa en datos reales. Las técnicas aplicadas en esta investigación fueron encuesta a los docentes y lista de cotejo a los estudiantes del Centro Educativo con el objetivo de determinar cómo el método Montessori contribuye al desarrollo de la expresión oral del idioma Inglés en los estudiantes. Una vez realizado el análisis e interpretación de resultados se concluyó que la aplicación del Método Montessori así como ayuda al niño a ser independiente también lo ayuda aprender diferentes idiomas y además se determinó la importancia que tiene para mejorar la expresión oral. La propuesta en base a los resultados es la elaboración de una guía de actividades lúdicas que incluye la aplicación del Método Montessori y los diferentes materiales a utilizarse.

Language: Spanish

Published: Quito, Ecuador, 2020

Abstract/Notes: High-stakes testing has become mandatory since the reauthorization of the Elementary Secondary Educational Act, 2001 with its No Child Left Behind (NCLB) provisions. Beginning with the 2005-06 school year, students in grades K-8 must be tested yearly in reading and math. Students in secondary schools must be tested once in reading and math. Student scores at all grade levels are then used as part of the formula for determining whether or not a school retains its accreditation or is placed on a "needs improvement" list. Being identified as "needs improvement" for three consecutive years carries an assortment of serious consequences for schools. As a result of these high-stakes tests, secondary language arts teachers are expected to prepare students for state reading assessments. Studies have investigated the effects high-stakes testing has on elementary and secondary curriculum and instruction but have not focused specifically on secondary language arts teachers. Therefore, this study focuses on the effects high-stakes testing is having on secondary language arts' curriculum and instruction. Six high school junior English teachers from a Midwestern state were surveyed and interviewed. Five of the teachers also participated in a focus group discussion. From this data several common themes emerged including a narrowing of their curricula and a loss of instructional time to test preparation and the actual administration of the tests. In addition, teachers expressed feelings of inadequacy about their knowledge of effective pedagogy for improving adolescent reading skills. From this study it becomes clear that secondary language arts teachers need more information on best practices for working with adolescents and improving adolescent reading skills while incorporating the state reading standards and maintaining a meaningful curriculum and engaging instructional strategies. Administrators and state departments of education need to consider ways to provide useful in-services on reading for secondary teachers. In addition, university teacher education programs need to prepare future teachers and offer teachers who are currently in the classroom assistance in developing effective strategies for teaching reading skills to adolescents which will keep the students engaged.

Language: English

Published: Lawrence, Kansas, 2005

Abstract/Notes: This thesis, underpinned by cross-cultural design ethnography (DE) and research through design (RtD), re-reads play-based learning constructs as design practice. In doing so, it charts the shifting relationship between design and theories of play-based learning. The work frames the design of play-based learning processes, from their emergence in historical learning environments such as the Montessori method to current pedagogies of STEAM learning. This evolutionary focus will be of interest to a wide range of stakeholders such as pedagogues, designers, and policy makers, each of whom contribute to where, what and how children are taught. This thesis presents the following arguments: Firstly, it frames and re-reads key historical play pedagogues as designers and design thinkers, whose work has shaped and influenced the evolution of play-based learning through the inception of play artefacts, spaces, and structures. This thesis further elucidates that design-thinking has been at the heart of play-based learning, demonstrated through the design of modular and standardised pedagogic objects and spaces of historic learning environments. The design evolution within this framework helps to enlighten the development of tinkering and iterative prototyping as twenty-first century affordances of learning through play. Secondly, this thesis uses observation-based design ethnography of the Montessori method, to argue that Montessori’s restrictive pedagogy can be counterproductive to learning through intuitive processes of exploration and iteration. Thirdly, by adapting the practice-based research method of research through design (RtD), the thesis demonstrates and proposes that twenty-first century design affordances of tinkering and iteration can be suitably integrated to enrich historic play-based learning environments such as the Montessori method. In each of these arguments, the ways in which pedagogic theories of play are interwoven with the language of design thinking are revealed. By bringing into focus the triad of play, pedagogy, and design, an additional educational landscape of twenty-first century cultural learning environments is explored. Cultural learning environments (CLEs) such as museums and public galleries extend the scope of play-based learning beyond formalised spaces of schools and bring into relief, the predominance of design while incepting platforms, ateliers, and activities to initiate learning through play.

Language: English

Published: Edinburgh, Scotland, 2021

Abstract/Notes: Maria Montessori's work is intimately grounded in her detailed teaching practices and the logic of their sequence, along with their underlying ideas and values, particularly in the area of language arts. There are no studies, however, which comprehensively analyze her language arts curriculum for children from three to seven as it was applied by the practitioners who fostered, interpreted, and promoted her work in America in periods of its popularity: 1909-1921 and 1953-1963. This lack of comprehensive analysis blurs the fundamental identity and contextual coherence of Montessori's work and obscures the significant and ongoing contribution made to American education through her language arts curriculum. An analysis of Montessori's published work and those written about her was made in order to achieve a description of her language arts curriculum for the purpose of comparing her work to that of her American sponsors. To determine how Montessori's curriculum was interpreted and applied, the literature on the history of the Montessori movement was reviewed and five leaders were identified: Ann George, Alexander Graham Bell, Clara Craig, Helen Parkhurst, and Nancy McCormick Rambusch. Their writings and other primary sources were analyzed with reference to Montessori's curriculum. In some cases interviews were conducted and Montessori classrooms were observed over an extended period of time. The analysis of the activity of the leaders, within their contemporary social and educational settings revealed how Montessori's curriculum became detached from her original experimental context and was reshaped because of lack of understanding or of agreement with the systematic purpose of her educational material in the development of language arts skills, and because of varying intentions and views on how and what children should learn. The findings of the study also contribute to existing studies on the reasons for the decline of Montessori's practices by the end of the first period, and for success in the revival of her work in the second period. In addition, conclusions contribute to the unified body of knowledge needed to thoroughly identify the Montessori educational model practiced and researched by educators.

Language: English

Published: Durham, North Carolina, 1984

Abstract/Notes: With the passing of NCLB in 2001, pedagogy in the kindergarten classroom has changed exponentially. The requirement for a rigorous academic curriculum has replaced the play-based learning that used to be synonymous with the kindergarten classroom. Since the beginning of kindergarten, researchers have worked to prove the importance of play in the classroom and the role of the educator in these play-based learning scenarios. Many studies have found a correlation between play and child development, but this has not been enough to change the minds of educators and school districts across the United States. This qualitative case study explored teachers’ perceptions and classroom interactions during play through a triangulation of data including video recordings, interviews, and observations to explore the effect play might have on the social, emotional, and oral language development of kindergarten students in a district that is already implementing free play centers in the classroom. Varying beliefs among the educators and multiple scenarios of social, emotional, and oral language development skills being used by students during these free play sessions were explored. Key themes that emerged from the data included a range of understanding amongst the teachers, the need for regular professional development on how to implement play in the classroom, and the importance dramatic play has on social, emotional, and oral language development for kindergarten students.

Language: English

Published: Springfield, Missouri, 2022

Abstract/Notes: In recent years there has been greater emphasis placed on second language acquisition in schools. To be prepared for life in the 21st century, to function within an increasingly interdependent world society, to be free from the petty biases that hinder understanding and from the larger hatreds that lead to confrontation, children will need to acquire the basic tools of communication--including a working knowledge of other people's languages. Although early learning of another language is often viewed as exceptional and sometimes as undesirable, studies conducted around age-related issues find that children before the age of 7 tend to acquire second languages with great ease and fluency. Their older brothers and sisters, in traditional high school or college foreign language courses, seldom reach such communicative competence--even after 4 or 5 years of instruction. Research data, personal observation, and anecdotal information about children suggest encouragement of early second language introduction. This article discusses the benefits of introducing second language programs to young children.

Language: English

ISSN: 1054-0040