scholarly journals More Than Content: The Persistent Cross-Subject Effects of English Language Arts Teachers’ Instruction

2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 429-447 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Master ◽  
Susanna Loeb ◽  
James Wyckoff
Keyword(s):  
Language Arts ◽  
Student Learning ◽  
English Language Arts ◽  
English Language ◽  
Value Added ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Language Arts Teachers ◽  
Important Variation ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Wide Range

Evidence that teachers’ short-term instructional effects persist over time and predict substantial long-run impacts on students’ lives provides much of the impetus for a wide range of educational reforms focused on identifying and responding to differences in teachers’ value-added to student learning. However, relatively little research has examined how the particular types of knowledge or skills that teachers impart to students contribute to their longer-term success. In this article, we investigate the persistence of teachers’ value-added effects on student learning over multiple school years and across subject areas. We find that, in comparison with math teachers, English language arts (ELA) teachers’ impacts on same-subject standardized achievement scores are smaller in the year of instruction, but that teacher-induced gains to ELA achievement appear to reflect more broadly applicable skills that persist in supporting student learning in the long run across disciplines. Our results highlight important variation in the quality of teacher-induced learning for long-run success, distinct from the variation across teachers in more typically measured short-term learning effects.

scholarly journals State educational agencies in an uncertain environment: Understanding state provided networks of English Language Arts curricular resources

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 125
Author(s):  
Serena J. Salloum ◽  
Emily M. Hodge ◽  
Susanna L. Benko
Keyword(s):  
Language Arts ◽  
English Language Arts ◽  
English Language ◽  
Quadratic Assignment ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Secondary English ◽  
Language Arts Teachers ◽  
Arts Teachers ◽  
Organizational Ties ◽  
State Educational

Rapid adoption of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), the Race to the Top (RTTT) competition, and backlash around these policies created widespread uncertainty among state educational agencies (SEAs). SEAs may have not had a clear direction about how to support standards implementation in a new context, and therefore, may have looked to their professional networks, their geographic neighbors or other highly regarded SEAs, or other sources for information and resources to guide their decisions about where to send teachers for information about standards. Drawing on institutional theory (Meyer Rowan, 1977) and isomorphism specifically (DiMaggio Powell, 1983), we posit that coercive forces (primarily due to RTTT application and CCSS status) as compared to mimetic and normative forces influenced the organizations to which SEAs turn for curriculum materials. Using Multiple Regression Quadratic Assignment Procedure and a data set of over 2,000 state-provided resources for secondary English Language Arts teachers from all 50 states and Washington, D.C., we indeed found that coercive forces had a relationship with shared organizational ties, demonstrating that RTTT application and CCSS adoption influenced resource provision.

scholarly journals Perceiving the Materiality of Language in Teaching English Language Arts

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. p61
Author(s):  
E.A. Gamini Fonseka, PhD
Keyword(s):  
Language Arts ◽  
English Language Arts ◽  
English Language ◽  
Holistic Approach ◽  
Teaching English ◽  
Life World ◽  
Language Arts Teachers ◽  
Verbal Language ◽  
Arts Teachers ◽  
Materiality Of Language

As language is the medium of an art or a configuration of arts focused on communication, it is indispensable to realize the materiality of language with its potential to interpret the numerous phenomena in the environment. Our individual microcosms filled with messages on various complex situations received through our sensory channels exist in terms of strings of verbal language that help to re-create them for communication in whatever fashion we want. We experience language in meaningful utterances that function in singles or clusters to represent the life world in numerous registers. Our expressions inspired by our experiences of the life world are communicated through words orchestrated in grammatically patterned sentences. Like in other forms of art, in English language arts, teachers and learners can behave with confidence, when they realize the substance they deal with as oral sounds that gradually evolve into syllables, morphemes, signs, symbols, metaphors, and images, which creatively represent the life world. Against this background, I intend to demonstrate here the relevance of perceiving the materiality of language under the framework of a multifaceted unity of several disciplines, namely, phonology, morphology, semiotics, rhetoric, and stylistics that altogether contribute to a holistic approach to language. A concrete perception of language achieved in this manner helps to recover the learning process not only from inhibition and anxiety but also from fossilization and ephemerality.

The Promise of Anonymity: An Investigation of the Practices of ELA Teachers Facilitating Discourse about LGBTq Topics

2016 ◽  
Vol 118 (12) ◽  
pp. 1-36
Author(s):  
Sarah Schneider Kavanagh
Keyword(s):  
Language Arts ◽  
English Language Arts ◽  
English Language ◽  
Instructional Practice ◽  
Comparative Case Study ◽  
Secondary English ◽  
Language Arts Teachers ◽  
Secondary English Language Arts ◽  
Arts Teachers ◽  
Lgbtq Students

Background/Context As states and districts have begun adopting texts inclusive of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people, debates about how LGBTQ issues should be represented in the curricular canon have emerged. While existing research investigates curricular questions that are arising as a result of LGBTQ curricular inclusion, scholarship has been slow to address the instructional questions presented by the introduction of inclusive curricula. Purpose This study explored how seven secondary English Language Arts teachers facilitated student engagement with LGBTQ-related topics. Analysis of data on teachers’ instructional practice and related decision-making sought to (a) determine what instructional dilemmas arose for teachers as they taught LGBTQ-inclusive content and (b) analyze the instructional decisions that teachers made to address these dilemmas. Participants Participants in this study were seven secondary English Language Arts teachers who (a) held strong reputations in their professional communities for supporting LGBTQ students and (b) had strong intentions to support LGBTQ students through LGBTQ curricular inclusion, reducing student prejudice, and advocating for and with LGBTQ students. Research Design This comparative case study was embedded in a larger qualitative study that investigated the instructional practice of LGBTQ-supportive teachers. This article reports on findings from an analysis of all data from this project that pertained to how teachers engaged students when teaching LGBTQ content. Data was collected over a six-month period and includes 22 teacher interviews, 28 observations of classroom instruction, 70 teacher log entries, and 25 teacher questionnaires. Findings/Results Analysis showed that participants felt a tension between a desire to make LGBTQ identity visible and a desire to offer LGBTQ students privacy. Participants employed two different approaches to navigating the visibility–privacy tension. Some created parallel engagement strategies for students, some public and some private, while others simultaneously allowed for privacy and visibility through the use of anonymity. Conclusions/Recommendations As conceptions of diversity expand to include sexual diversity, this study has implications for teacher preparation and professional development aimed at supporting teachers to attend to the unique needs of LGBTQ students within instructional practice.

Preparing Pre-Service Secondary English Language Arts Teachers to Support Literacy Learning with Interactive Online Technologies

2013 ◽  
pp. 318-334
Author(s):  
Luke Rodesiler ◽  
Barbara G. Pace
Keyword(s):  
Language Arts ◽  
English Language Arts ◽  
English Language ◽  
Literacy Learning ◽  
Secondary English ◽  
Language Arts Teachers ◽  
Literacy Events ◽  
Online Technologies ◽  
Secondary English Language Arts ◽  
Arts Teachers

In this chapter, the authors present the framework and methods they employ to integrate online learning opportunities into an English teacher education program at a large, public university in the southeastern United States. The authors focus on their efforts to extend pre-service secondary English language arts teachers’ understandings of what constitutes literacy and what counts as text in the secondary English language arts classroom in a blended technology- and media literacy-focused methods course, a required component of a three-semester English Education Master’s degree program. Specifically, the authors document the ways they nudge pre-service teachers to consider the kinds of literacy events they might design and the types of literacy practices they might promote to support literacy learning with interactive online technologies and popular media in English language arts classrooms.

Differences in Intellectual Challenge of Writing Tasks among Higher and Lower Value-Added English Language Arts Teachers

2015 ◽  
Vol 117 (5) ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Chandra L. Alston ◽  
Michelle T. Brown
Keyword(s):  
Student Achievement ◽  
Language Arts ◽  
English Language ◽  
Value Added ◽  
Student Work ◽  
Language Arts Teachers ◽  
Intellectual Quality ◽  
Arts Teachers ◽  
Intellectual Challenge

Background Writing is an essential literacy skill; however, public school students often receive inadequate writing instruction, particularly as they move into middle and high school. However, research has shown that the nature of writing tasks assigned can impact writing development and student achievement measured by standardized assessments. With the need to assess teacher efficacy, districts are increasingly using some form of value-added modeling, although researchers warn of relying solely on value-added scores to distinguish between more and less effective teachers. Purpose This study investigated the intellectual challenge of typical writing tasks and the intellectual quality of student work in classrooms of higher and lower value-added middle school English language arts teachers to understand what value-added modeling might capture in terms of writing instruction. In particular, this article investigates how higher and lower value-added teachers differ in terms of (1) the intellectual challenge of typical tasks assigned, (2) the quality of supports surrounding the tasks, and (3) the quality of student work produced. Research Design Data for this study were collected as part of a larger study that identified pairs of middle school ELA teachers within the same school who were in their third through fifth years of teaching. Within each school, we identified at least one teacher in the fourth (top) quartile and one in the second (lower) quartile based on their measures of value-added to student achievement. We analyzed the typical and challenging writing tasks and corresponding student work for the intellectual quality, looking within and across the two groups of teachers to document patterns of instructional practices. Conclusions We found differences in the consistency of challenge and scaffolds between the two groups, with higher value-added teachers more consistently providing challenging and supportive tasks. Teachers whose typical writing tasks maintain a high degree of challenge are associated with higher student performance, as defined by a measure of teacher value-added. This implies the importance of educating teachers regarding the importance and nature of challenging assignments.

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