Research-Based Practices for Teaching Reading in Elementary Classrooms: An Exploration of the Instructional Practices of Former Elementary Education Students
Keywords:
Literacy, Best Practices, Teacher PreparationAbstract
This study explored the instructional reading practices of four
elementary teachers, who obtained their Bachelor of Arts in elementary
education and have been employed in public elementary schools for
nearly three years. The individuals were the researcher‘s former
university students and had previously experienced classroom literacy
instruction in the use of research-based instructional practices within a
constructivist framework for teaching reading in a university methods
course and practicum.
Using a hermeneutic phenomenological approach, this study explored
how these teachers‘ knowledge about the use of research-based
instructional practices, or best practices, for teaching reading to children
influenced their classroom instruction, as well as what conditions
contributed to or inhibited their use. Through interviews and classroom
observations of the four teachers, data were analyzed to describe the
factors and dynamics that influenced these teachers‘ choices for reading
instruction. In particular, this study explored whether or not these
teachers were implementing the research-based practices for teaching
reading that were a large part of their university training in their teacher
preparation program, and what may have helped or hindered them
from doing so. The classroom teachers described their beliefs regarding
how reading should be taught, what influenced these beliefs, how they
taught reading, the support or lack of support from their administrators,
the pressure they felt from district- and state-mandated assessments of
their students, and their sense of self-confidence as teachers. Results of
this study indicated that when teachers have a firm understanding of
what constitutes research-based practices for teaching reading, and
when these beliefs are in-sync with their administrators‘ and school
districts‘ beliefs, they are given the support they need to teach according
to their beliefs and experience greater autonomy in their
implementation of reading instruction, and the use of best practices.
Additionally, it was found that teachers who experienced the autonomy
to teach according to their beliefs experienced a larger degree of self-confidence in their teaching abilities and found more joy in teaching
than those who did not. Lastly, it was found that if schools focuses
solely on the continual assessment of isolated reading skills, they create
teachers who are inhibited from using what they know about good
teaching practices and whose main focus becomes teaching for the sake
of their students‘ success in passing tests (Covault, 2011).
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