Action Research

Action Research >> Understanding the Importance of Academics By Daniel Moore, Yangon International School dmoore@yismyanmar.com

Introduction “What are you learning? Why are you learning this?” These are two key questions that can tell a lot about the engagement of students’ learning in a classroom. If a student can answer the question, “What are you learning?” correctly, it shows that they are engaged and understand the objective of the lesson. If they can answer the question, “Why are you learning this?” correctly it shows the student can go a step further and see the practical application of the lesson and how the knowledge acquired in the lesson can be useful to have in the real-world, which may also influence how much the student values the content they are learning. The goal of this action research was to see if students could be trained to make more real-world connections on their own through practice and how that could benefit them.

Method In order to conduct this research, students from three second grade classrooms were surveyed at three points during the school year. The survey was used to measure how well students value different mathematical skills, their ability to connect those skills to real-world applications, how well they were able to elaborate on their thoughts, if they could respond using an appropriate sentence stem, and what percentage of grammatical mistakes they made. Upon completion of the third round of surveys, all classes answers

In each classroom, teachers spent varying amounts of time discussing the importance and reasons for different mathematical skills learned. In Class A, the teacher spent about five minutes approximately every fourth lesson, especially when a new concept was introduced, discussing real-world applications. Sometimes students would brainstorm together to think of ideas for how the skill could be applied in the real-world but if they couldn’t, the teacher would share an example. In Class B, the teacher would share examples of real- world applications of the math skills when they were learning based on which ones were discussed. By having students practice

a new skill about a third of the time. In Class C, approximately five minutes was spent each lesson, where a new concept was introduced, discussing the importance of the lesson and how it could be applied to the real world. These students received practice on how to have one-on-one conversations with their peers about the lesson objective using sentence stems and relevant vocabulary to respond to one another. Students practiced this as a class for the first half of the school year, until the students took the second round of surveys. Changes in student answers were analyzed. When growth was observed in different areas, Class C stopped making real-world connections completely to see if any of their measured growth was retained by the third survey.

Results and Reflection After the second round of surveys the answers of students changed and were analyzed. Class C showed a more significant growth than

math concepts, writing with the use of a sentence stem, and elaborating on their thoughts. No class showed more growth than the others in regards to making less grammatical errors. Due to these results Class C stopped making real-world connections completely to see if any of their growth would be retained for the third round of surveys.

were analyzed to see how they changed. Class C retained the ability to make specific real-world connections to the appropriate math skills while their ability to elaborate and write using sentence stems decreased slightly, though they still scored higher than the other classes. How they valued the different math skills however, decreased to less than that of the other classes, especially in areas in which students had no practice with relating those skills to realworld applications.

Conclusion Connecting lessons taught in class to the real-world is a beneficial practice for students. If students can make connections to the realworld they will have a better understanding of the importance of what they are learning and can answer the question, “Why are you learning this?” on their own. Through guided discussion of the importance of different math skills with their peers, students can improve upon creating unique responses to the importance of math which can be applied to different subject areas, speaking and writing using sentence stems, and describing the importance of different skills with more elaborative conversation. However if the practice is not used consistently students may value some skills less than others the other classes in making real-world connections, valuing different

effective communication about real-world applications for lessons, teachers can observe students grow in several ways.

Action Research >> Defining the Role of English Support in International Schools

By Rob Stitt Lanna International School Thailand

The Changing Demographics of International Schools

The population of international school students has changed significantly over the past 25 years. Whereas the schools once primarily served expatriate students, they now cater to larger proportions of local students. The International School Consultancy Group estimated that in 2014 approximately 70% of international school students were local children and that in the future 80% of the demand for international school places would come from wealthy local parents who wanted to provide their children with a quality English-speaking education. Since most international schools are located in nonEnglish speaking countries, this implies that the number of English language learners (ELLs) has correspondingly increased considerably.

Thus the number of ELLs in many international schools may now constitute the majority of learners in school, rather than the minority, which had been the case in the past. This increase in the proportion of ELLs demands that schools critically examine the support they offer these students. Schools need to investigate whether minority language learner models of English support, such as intensive English programmes or pull-out ESL classes, are the most effective and efficient ways of ensuring that all students are able to not only gain language proficiency, but also access the curriculum and master content knowledge and skills simultaneously.

Action Research Plan

In 2016, our primary school changed from a separate pull-out English support provision to a collaborative inclusion model of English support. No longer were students segregated by language proficiency for language arts classes. English support teachers were pushedin to the mainstream classroom to provide support for any student who needed it.

This action research project sought to evaluate our new model of English support and make recommendations to improve its efficacy. Over the course of one and a half years our school examined the needs of ELLs by eliciting teachers’ thoughts and opinions about the collaborative inclusion model of English support. Data was collected using anonymous surveys from primary classroom teachers and English support teachers. The first survey was conducted in January 2017. From this data we were able to identify problem areas that were preventing effective implementation of collaborative inclusion English support in the mainstream classroom. An English support teacher job description and departmental vision and mission statement were then developed to try to address these issues. A followup survey was administered in February of 2018 to see what, if any, effect these changes had on the way ELLs were perceived to be supported in the primary school. From the results of this second survey, a number of further issues were identified to consider when implementing a collaborative inclusion English support model. Finally, recommendations were made that may well be applicable to other international schools, which transition from a separate pull-out English support provision to a collaborative immersion English support model.

It was also the intention of this project to propose a form of programme development, which takes into consideration the opinions, preferences, needs, and strengths of the very teachers who will be asked to implement such programmes. Ideally, this model of collaborative programme development will result in better teacher buy-in, thus resulting in better student achievement.

Findings

An analysis of the responses to the two teacher surveys revealed a number of impediments to implementing a collaborative inclusion model of English support. First of all, teachers’ comments provided evidence of diverse, and at times inconsistent and erroneous, views of English support both in terms of theory and practice. There was a lot of confusion about what exactly English support teachers were supposed to do both inside and outside the classroom to support ELLs and the classroom teachers with whom they worked. In addition, there also appeared to be a reluctance to embrace a collaborative teaching model of English support across the curriculum. English support teachers were almost exclusively used during language arts blocks, despite the fact that they are also needed in other content areas, such as science or social studies, which are linguistically demanding. There was also evidence that some teachers viewed ELLs through the lens of the deficit model. ELLs were seen to be deficient in language ability and needed to be ‘fixed’ by English support teachers. This is at odds with the more recent understanding

It also became apparent that English support teachers were being used in roles for which they weren’t necessarily qualified, trained, or experienced. For example, during the course of this research, English support teachers were used as substitute classroom teachers depriving some classes of needed English support. They also provided enrichment activities to students with higher levels of language proficiency, as well as teaching students who primarily had learning or behavioural support needs. In addition, there was a feeling among English support teachers that their role was diminished and that they felt more like native English speaking teaching assistants, rather than as experts in teaching ELLs which resulted in priority being given to assisting the classroom teacher, rather than supporting ELLs explicitly.

Finally, this research revealed a number of factors, which affected the efficacy of collaborative inclusion English support. The first issue was a lack of co-planning time. Often times, English support teachers felt that they were not given sufficient notice of classroom activities and lesson plans to effectively and deliberately support ELLs. This resulted in English support teachers being reactive. Rather than carefully and thoughtfully designing lesson plans and learning materials which take into account the needs and difficulties that ELLs may have and encounter in accessing the curriculum and mastering content learning objectives and skills, they dealt with ELL’s needs as singular events.

There was also a lack of English support consistency between and within year-levels. English support teachers were used very differently in various classes and year-levels. This led to inconsistent progress of ELLs depending on their classroom and English support teachers. Another factor affecting the quality of English support was personality conflicts between classroom and English support teachers. While this is inevitable when two people work in close proximity, it may perhaps have been exacerbated, or even caused, by a lack of understanding of the roles each teacher plays in collaborative co-teaching and a lack of awareness of best practices in supporting ELLs in the mainstream classroom. Finally, there was a lack of adequate support, guidance, professional development, and oversight of English support teachers which resulted in uneven progress of ELLs in different classes and year-levels.

Recommendations

The following recommendations are based on a survey of current literature on supporting ELLs, as well as the results and analysis of the research that was conducted. The recommendations have been grouped into 3 tiers. Short-term recommendations are those which can be more easily implemented without significant obstacles. Medium-term recommendations require more time and are more challenging to implement. These objectives need to be thoughtfully implemented since there may be obstacles and resistance. Finally, long-term recommendations are the most difficult to implement, and require the greatest amount of commitment in terms of time, resources, and expertise. These should be considered objectives to improve the support offered to all students and require more nuanced analysis and action planning to implement. Short-term goals for international schools should include establishing and effectively communicating an English support department vision and mission statement that embraces content and language integrated learning as the basis for English support. This vision and mission statement should clearly define the philosophy and pedagogy utilized in the support of ELLs. In addition, it is imperative that schools provide their English support teachers with pre-service training in teaching cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP). Very often, English support teachers have a background in ESL with CELTA or TEFL qualifications. While these teachers can be highly proficient, their training is in teaching and supporting basic interpersonal communication skills (BICS), which is very different from the role of an English support teacher at an international school. It is important that international schools recognize that the teaching of CALP and BICS are different, should not be conflated, and thus prepare their English support teachers accordingly. It is also essential that schools identify students in need of English support, as well a their relative strengths in speaking, listening, reading, and writing, in order to properly support them. Finally, there needs to be a precise job description for English support teachers, which identifies concrete duties and responsibilities for English support teachers within the context of content and language integrated learning, as well as establishing sanctioned co-teaching models for use by classroom and English support teachers.

Medium-term goals for schools should include establishing co-planning blocks into teachers’ timetables to provide time for classroom and English support teachers to sit down together and plan to support ELLs deliberately rather than reacting to their needs in the moment. This will require classroom teachers to share medium-term planning with English support teachers prior to teaching a unit, so that English support teachers can effectively plan language objectives, scaffolding, and differentiated activities and assessments for ELLs. English support also needs to be explicitly embedded within the school curriculum, so that all teachers recognize its importance. Finally, schools need to invest in teachers by providing both English support teachers and classroom teachers with professional development opportunities on scaffolding, differentiation, language acquisition, assessment, co-teaching, and content and language integrated learning.

In the long-term, schools need to investigate the possibility of establishing differentiated English language development instructional blocks into the timetable for all students based on their academic language proficiency. This would be a separate block of time from language arts classes in which students can improve their language development in smaller homogenous groups. Schools also should examine their provisions for learning support, behavioural support, and gifted and talented students, to ensure that English support teachers are being used efficiently and effectively to support the needs of ELLs, rather than supporting the needs of students outside their purview. Finally, schools need to ensure that there is adequate administrative oversight and guidance for English support teachers, with proper evaluation and continued professional development, in order to nurture the skill set of what has become a very important segment of the faculty of international schools.