learning

JOURNAL OF TEACHING AND

LEARNING

December 2018 Volume 12, Issue 2

Challenges and Possibilities

of Scaffolding Critical

Reflection and Cultural

Responsiveness for Pre-

Service Special Educators Bindiya Hassaram, Phyllis M.

Robertson, & Shernaz B. García

“It Would Be Better If You

Can Hang Out With Different

People”: An Examination of

Cross-National Interaction in

Postsecondary Classrooms Christopher J. Johnstone, Diana

Yefanova, Gayle Woodruff, Mary Lynn

Montgomery, & Barbara J. Kappler

Emergent Professional

Learning Communities in

Higher Education Julie A. Mooney

The Effects of Holistic

Diagnostic Feedback

Intervention on Improving

Struggling Readers’ Reading

Skills Edith van der Boom & Eunice Eunhee

Jang

Book Reviews:

Transforming Conversations:

Feminism and Education in

Canada since 1970

Jillian Authier

Making Men, Making Masculinities:

Canadian Masculities across Time

and Place

Alethea Cassano

The cover for this issue of the Journal of

Teaching and Learning is a sound cover by

Sefton, Terry & Ricketts, Kathryn. (2017).

Postcard 3. From Stories of Windsor: Sites

of fascination and performances of place.

https://cdigs.uwindsor.ca/ojs/Sefton-Ricketts-2017-Postcard-JTL-12-2.mp3

https://cdigs.uwindsor.ca/ojs/Sefton-Ricketts-2017-Postcard-JTL-12-2.mp3

ISSN: 1911-8279 (online)

The Journal of Teaching and Learning (JTL) acknowledges the land we operate on as part of the traditional territories of the Three Fires Confederacy of First Nations, comprised of the Ojibwe, the Odawa, and the Potawatomi. There are few places on earth where others have not walked before us or called it home. The JTL is an international, peer-reviewed journal. The journal seeks manuscripts that provide a critical examination of historical and contemporary educational contexts. The journal publishes original research that contributes to theoretical and applied questions in teaching and learning. These may include: issues related to indigenous education, gender, class, race, ethnicity and diversity, educational policy, teacher education, educational leadership, and theories of teaching and learning. The journal also welcomes critical and exploratory essays that focus on current educational issues. The JTL is published twice a year. Submissions to the JTL are anonymously peer-reviewed.

About the cover:

Sefton, Terry & Ricketts, Kathryn. (2017). Postcard 3. From Stories of Windsor: Sites of

fascination and performances of place.

Terry Sefton, cellist, and Kathryn Ricketts, dancer, created a body of improvised

performances that re imagine, or trans-mediate stories from text to sound and movement.

For Stories of Windsor, we included an “unknown” collaborator – stories from the public,

which they submitted as “postcards.” Each story was a vignette, located in a particular

place in Windsor – a process we entitled ‘carto-elicitation.’ The audio we have included

for this inaugural audio cover of the Journal of Teaching and Learning is “Postcard #3.”

You will hear the cello improvising a variant of a Bach Prelude, and you will hear the

heavy footfall of the dancer, as she runs through an imagined landscape, and the swish-

swish of her soft shoe exit. The entire artwork was performed and exhibited at the Art

Gallery of Windsor, for the 2017 Triennial of Contemporary Art.

i

December 2018 Volume 12, Issue 2

ARTICLES

Challenges and Possibilities of Scaffolding Critical Reflection and Cultural * * * * * * * * * 1

Responsiveness for Pre-Service Special Educators

Bindiya Hassaram, Phyllis M. Robertson, & Shernaz B. García

“It Would Be Better If You Can Hang Out With Different People”: * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 23

An Examination of Cross-National Interaction in Postsecondary Classrooms

Christopher J. Johnstone, Diana Yefanova, Gayle Woodruff,

Mary Lynn Montgomery, & Barbara J. Kappler

Emergent Professional Learning Communities in Higher Education * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 38

Julie A. Mooney

The Effects of Holistic Diagnostic Feedback Intervention on Improving * * * * * * * * * * * * 54

Struggling Readers’ Reading Skills

Edith van der Boom & Eunice Eunhee Jang

BOOK REVIEWS

Transforming Conversations: Feminism and Education in Canada Since 1970 * * * * * * * 70

by Dawn Wallin and Janice Wallace (Eds.)

Jillian Authier

Making Men, Making Masculinities: Canadian Masculinities Across Time and Place * * * 73

by Peter Gossage and Robert Rutherdale (Eds.)

Alethea Cassano

ii

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The Journal of Teaching and Learning

Vol. 12, No. 2 (December 2018), pp. 1–22.

http://dx.doi.org/10.22329/jtl.v12i2.5767

1

Challenges and Possibilities of Scaffolding Critical

Reflection and Cultural Responsiveness for Pre-Service

Special Educators

Bindiya Hassaram

Learning Differently

Phyllis M. Robertson

Texas A&M University – Corpus Christi

Shernaz B. García

University of Texas at Austin

Abstract

Given the nature of their responsibilities in field-based settings, university

supervisors play an important role in preparing pre-service teachers to become

culturally responsive and critically reflective special educators. However,

supervisors themselves may not have the experience and training necessary to

do so, and limited guidance is available regarding effective mentorship practices

to foster implementation of culturally and linguistically responsive pedagogy

(CLRP) and critical reflection. This exploratory qualitative study examined how

three supervisors engaged in post-observation conferences with their student

teachers to promote critical reflection about CLRP using content and discourses

analyses. Findings indicated that, although student teachers engaged in

discussions about CLRP and were able to critically self-reflect, supervisors were

unable to facilitate critical reflection vis-à-vis institutional practices and

systemic bias. Theoretical and practical implications for supervision of

practicum experiences in pre-service teacher education programs are offered.

Although essential in the education of pre-service teachers (PSTs), the role of the university

supervisor has been largely unexamined in recent research. Typically, supervisors observe and

then reflect with PSTs, guiding their thinking about instruction and its impact. Such supervisory

conversations provide opportunities to discover how PSTs think (Holland, 1989; Zeichner &

Liston, 1985) and how supervisors actively cultivate the level and types of thinking in which they

engage.


Cultural Responsiveness for Pre-Service Special Educators Journal of Teaching and Learning 12(2)

2

Although supervisors contribute to the formal evaluation of PSTs to ensure compliance

with preparation program requirements, their primary purpose is to provide a platform for PSTs to

talk about pedagogical practices, reflect on beliefs, knowledge, and past actions, and engage in

problem-solving through an iterative process of observation and feedback (Chamberlin, 2000;

Zeichner & Liston, 1987). Reflective practice (Schön, 1987) is the act of thinking back on an

experience, evaluating it, generating possible solutions, and testing the solutions in practice. In

education, it involves a teacher creating an active dialogue between theory and practice (Weshah,

2007) by studying his or her own teaching methods, curricula, students, and classroom

environment, to determine what works best for students.

Cultivating reflective practice requires PSTs and supervisors to build an interpersonal

relationship based on trust, support, effective communication, and shared goals (Goldhammer,

1969; Richardson-Koehler, 1988). PSTs co-construct knowledge actively and collaboratively with

their supervisors, whose objective is to create the optimal conditions for reflection. Fostering this

relationship and achieving desired outcomes requires considerable knowledge and skill on the part

of supervisors. However, there is limited research available on best practices for supervisor

preparation and practice and often, supervisors have limited preparation for the critical role they

play (Bates, Ramires, & Drits, 2009; Cuenca, 2010; Zeichner, 2005).

Critical Reflection

Critical reflection has been posited as a measure of PST’s thinking about the practice of teaching

beyond the classroom walls and to its wider sociopolitical impact (Hatton & Smith, 1995). In order

to effectively and equitably teach in today’s increasingly diverse schools and society, critical

reflection of curricula, teaching, and students is essential (Jacobs, 2006). Teacher education

programs should support PSTs in developing an inquiry- and data-based approach to critical

reflection, problem solving, and decision-making. In the field, supervisors can provide the

scaffolds needed for PSTs to become critically self-reflective and transformative practitioners by

providing opportunities for reflective practice, building trusting relationships, modeling critical

reflection, and engaging PSTs using think-alouds and discourse to identify and reframe problems

of practice (Achinstein & Barrett, 2004; Bates et al., 2009; Bean & Stevens, 2002). Such

experiences provide a forum in which PSTs can learn how to “apply, reflect on, and refine their

practice within a supportive environment of continuous, focused, professional dialogue” (Little &

Robinson, 1997, p. 434).

Extant literature indicates that PSTs should engage in critical self-reflection first, through

examining their own teaching and classroom, before moving to critical reflection of school and

society (Jacobs, 2006). While research on critical reflection in teaching is extensive, little is known

about how to cultivate this broader level of critical reflection in beginning teachers (Bates et al.,

2009). In order to consider the moral and ethical aspects of social justice in addition to the technical

aspects of teaching, PSTs and their supervisors must first have the knowledge, skills, and

understanding to practice culturally and linguistically responsive pedagogy (CLRP).

Journal of Teaching and Learning 12(2) B. Hassaram, P. M. Robertson, & S. B. García

3

Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Pedagogy (CLRP)

For supervisors and PSTs, lack of exposure, familiarity, and opportunity to interact with people

from diverse groups (Cochran-Smith, Davis, & Fries, 2004; Seidl, 2007) can result in cultural

conflict (Marxen & Rudney, 1999), as predominantly white educators bring their unexamined

assumptions to teacher preparation programs (Sleeter, 2008) and classrooms. Differences in

attitudes, values, beliefs, and traditions can also contribute to low expectations and deficit thinking

(Valencia, 2010). Deconstructing these influences requires that supervisors themselves be

knowledgeable regarding CLRP and critical reflection, so that they can model CLRP for their

PSTs.

CLRP is “based on the assumption that when academic knowledge and skills are situated

within the lived experiences and frame of reference of students, they are more personally

meaningful, have a higher interest appeal, and are learned more easily and thoroughly” (Gay, 2000,

p. 106). Responsive teachers understand that culture and language shape the thinking processes of

groups and individuals, with both culture and language strongly influencing the attitudes, values,

and behaviors that students and teachers bring to the instructional process (Gay, 2002). CLRP

involves building on students’ cultural and linguistic capital by using student-centered

instructional methods, building connections between students’ homes and school, and using

intercultural communication and multicultural resources in instruction (Gay, 2002; Villegas &

Lucas, 2002).

CLRP in Special Education

Special education has long been recognized as part of the outcome of the larger

systematic failure of schools to recognize the ways in which cultural diversity, such as

ethnic, linguistic, and socioeconomic class-based diversity, influence different ways of

being and knowing in children. (Seidl & Pugach, 2009, p. 58)

To avoid such consequences, special educators must understand the intersectional nature of

culture, language, and disability (García & Ortiz, 2013) to implement CLRP and meet the needs

of students with disabilities from culturally and linguistically diverse communities (Orosco &

O’Connor, 2014).

Teacher education programs must therefore provide opportunities for PSTs to build cultural

self-awareness (Abt-Perkins, Hauschildt & Dale, 2000), as well as to practice the principles of

CLRP in special education. This includes (a) considering principles of language development in

assessment, instruction, referrals and IEP development (García & Ortiz, 2008; Harry & Klingner,

2014; Linan-Thompson & Ortiz, 2009; Orosco & O’Connor, 2014); (b) using research-based

linguistically responsive strategies such as peer collaboration, using language for communicative

and authentic purposes, teaching literacy in students’ dominant languages, and teaching

vocabulary in explicit ways (Hoover, Klinger, Baca & Patton, 2008; Orosco & O’Connor, 2014);

(c) providing instruction that maximizes students’ funds of knowledge, using culturally diverse


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materials, and finding a balance between holistic and explicit instruction that helps students access

prior knowledge, make connections, and build new knowledge (Amanti, 2005; Cloud, 2002;

Hoover et al., 2008); and (d) seeking an understanding of families’ belief systems around disability

in order to involve parents in decision-making about the education of their children (Kalyanpur &

Harry, 2012; Kozleski & Waitoller, 2010). Many teacher education programs purport to follow the

guidelines provided by the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC; 2009) related to knowledge

and skills standards for multicultural competence in special education in an effort to ensure their

candidates are adequately prepared to provide equitable services.

Supervision for Equity

The study of supervision to foster CLRP and equity is minimal in both special education and

general education. In a unique review of literature on culturally responsive supervision, Jacobs

(2006) found only nine articles published between 1982 and 2003 that related supervision to issues

of equitable teaching. Her review revealed that while critical reflection is an essential component

of equitable teaching, PSTs may not have the experience to engage in critical reflection unless

supervised by someone who can model this way of thinking. Jacobs (2006) concluded by stating

that more empirical studies are needed to investigate the outcomes of this type of supervision on

views and actions of PSTs as well as on their students’ learning.

Researchers have advocated that universities should provide supervisors with professional

development in order to increase their cultural responsiveness (Jacobs, 2006; Zozakiewicz, 2010).

Abt-Perkins et al. (2000) suggest that supervisors should be prepared to guide PSTs to “shape their

own problems in their own classroom contexts along ‘cultural dimensions’” (p. 45); that is, to

question their practices from the perspective of race, ethnicity, gender, beliefs and assumptions

about teaching and learning. Although there have been some efforts to infuse cultural

responsiveness in special education preparation programs (e.g. Robertson, García, McFarland &

Rieth, 2012; Robertson, García & Rodriguez, 2016; Sobel, Gutierrez, Zion, & Blanchett, 2011)

and provide professional development for special education faculty (e.g. Prater & Deveraux,

2009), these efforts have not addressed the critical role of university supervisors in bridging

university classroom theory to actual classroom practice.

A closer look at supervision conferences. Supervision conferences, typically conducted

immediately after observation of a lesson delivered by the PST, provide a source of data from

which the nature of supervisory conversations can be gleaned. Discourse analytic methods have

been recommended as a tool with which to examine these interactions (Holland, 1989; Zeichner

& Liston, 1987). Very few studies have been conducted to examine PST’s thinking about

pedagogy during the process, and much of the existing research was conducted in the 1980s and

1990s. Zeichner and Liston’s (1985) analysis of 26 supervision conferences revealed that most

PST reflection discourse occurred at the factual level–where PSTs provided facts about their

lessons; less than one percent of teachers’ thinking revealed in supervision conferences was at the

critical level. Zeichner and Liston (1985) hypothesized that PSTs may have a stronger influence

on the level of conversation than the university supervisor with supervisors being unable to


5

promote more complex modes of reasoning. In a follow-up study, Zeichner, Liston, Mahlios and

Gomez (1988) compared the discourse of PSTs enrolled in preparation programs with two very

different philosophies; one emphasized the technical aspects of teaching, while the other utilized

an inquiry-oriented approach. In the latter, “student teachers [were] encouraged to reflect and

examine the most effective and efficient means, to question the underlying assumptions embedded

in educational practices, and to deliberate over the ethical aspects of teaching and educational

institutions” (Zeichner et al., 1988, p. 351). Despite program differences, course requirements and

program structure were the same. Discourse analysis revealed no significant differences in the type

of thinking student teachers engaged in vis-à-vis program type. While the inquiry-oriented

program actively engaged PSTs in reflective thinking, such thinking was not frequently reflected

in post-observation conversations. The researchers posited that neither the inquiry-oriented

program philosophy nor the professional development provided to supervisors about reflective

supervision was successful in yielding evidence of critical thinking from PSTs.

Hatton and Smith (1995) derived five levels of reflection from their analysis of student

teacher written reflections:

Level 1—Technical: Reporting events and focusing on the immediate, with no attempt to

provide reason/justification;

Level 2—Descriptive: Providing reasons for actions and looking for ‘best practices’ based

on personal judgment, based on analyzing areas for growth and development.

Understanding that alternative reasons/perspective exist (e.g., I chose…because).

Level 3—Dialogic: Deliberate cognitive discourse within one’s self that includes weighing

different viewpoints and exploring alternatives. Stepping back and reflecting on

possible alternatives (e.g., there may be several reasons the student did not respond

to this…)

Level 4—Critical: Thinking about the effects of one’s actions on others, taking the broader

historical, social, and/or political context into account, and making practice

problematic (e.g., the student management in this classroom is reflective of the

power relationships between students and teachers in wider society).

Level 5—Contextual, Reflection in Action: Involves being able to apply Levels 1-4 as new

situations arise.

Following a review of 16 studies about student teacher reflection, Hatton and Smith (1995)

found “little evidence of critical reflection on the part of students, most of whom demonstrate the

technical and practical types” (p. 38). While student teachers engaged in constructive criticism of

themselves, with a view to improve and transform of their own practice (Bates et al., 2009;

Cochran-Smith et al., 2004; Larrivee, 2000), they did not critically reflect on schooling in a broader

sociocultural context.

Although many programs purport to emphasize the cultivation of reflective teaching

practice, little is known about how this is successfully achieved. Common strategies include: (a)


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action research projects; (b) case studies, ethnographic studies, and examination of multiple

perspectives; (c) microteaching, supervised practicum experiences, and critical dialogue; and (d)

structured curriculum tasks, such as reading fiction and non-fiction, conducting oral interviews,

writing journals, narratives, biographies, or reflective essays (Hatton & Smith, 1995; Sparks-

Langer & Colton, 1991; Weshah, 2007), but there is little evidence of their effectiveness. In the

rationale for a research study, Bates et al. (2009) report that in the past and currently, there is

unwavering agreement on the “need of systematic and regular reflective practices” (p. 91). They

conclude from their study that “supervisors who not only model critical [self-] reflection but also

specifically, outwardly articulate the process are able to fully demystify critical reflection for their

students” (Bates et al., 2009, p. 108).

Rationale and Purpose

In summary, although supervision has been recommended as a tool for fostering critical

reflection (Hatton & Smith, 1995; Sparks-Langer & Colton, 1991; Weshah, 2007), few studies

have explored how supervisors cultivate critical reflection, investigated what form reflection can

and should take, or how reflection affects teachers’ beliefs and practices (Bates et al., 2009; Bean

& Stevens, 2002). Additionally, although there is a body of knowledge about the principles of

university supervision, predominantly in general education, there is limited knowledge about

supervision to foster CLRP and critical reflection in either general or special education.

The purpose of this study was to examine the dialogue exchanged during supervision

conferences to reveal special education PSTs thinking about CLRP in their student teaching

classrooms. The question guiding this research was: how do supervisory conversations promote

student teacher critical reflection about CLRP? The findings are part of a broader study

(Hassaram, 2013) which also explored contextual factors that appear to influence the nature and

quality of discussions about CLRP in supervisory conversations.

Method

This exploratory qualitative study was conducted at a Southwestern American university, in an

undergraduate special education program committed to teaching the theory and practice of CLRP.

An interpretivist framework was used to capture the richness and complexity of phenomena as

they occur in their naturalistic setting (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005).

Context

Supported by funding from the Office of Special Education Programs, program faculty

were working to develop, evaluate and institutionalize a restructured and improved undergraduate

program to prepare special educators for CLRP (for a comprehensive overview see Robertson et

al., 2012). To better understand the realignment efforts, the first author, a doctoral student in

multicultural special education at the time, began to attend project meetings. She soon realized that


7

the research on supervision practices to scaffold CLRP for PSTs was scant, and decided to pursue

this in her research.

Participating undergraduates engaged in a five-semester program of study. During the first

semester, they enrolled in four foundations courses including a field experience course in which

they completed extensive observations in six special education settings. Extensive field

experiences in a variety of special education settings continued to be an emphasis for the remainder

of their program. They were supervised by university supervisors and received formative and

summative evaluations every semester. During their final semester, student teachers (STs) spent

40 hours per week in a special education setting while simultaneously enrolled in a course on

Intercultural Communication and Collaboration with the emphasized expectation of

implementing CLRP in their classrooms.

Participants

Three university supervisors (two female, one male) of STs served as primary participants.

Michelle (all names are pseudonyms) who identified as female, white, and Czech/English/Scottish,

was pursuing a Ph.D. in special education administration, while seeking principalship certification.

She expected to see improvement, learning, and growth in her STs and she expected open

communication. Missy identified as female, white, and Portuguese, and was pursuing a doctorate

in learning disabilities/behaviour disorders. She expected STs to be almost-beginning teachers,

able to handle all aspects of the classroom, and deliver fluid lessons. She also valued open

communication. Finally, Edwin identified as male, white, Irish American and Roman Catholic.

Edwin was a doctoral student studying multicultural special education and expected his STs to be

professional and independently execute all parts of their lessons.

Five STs (all female) served as secondary participants. Stephanie, who identified as Euro-

American, grew up in a suburban neighborhood that was mostly middle-income Euro-American.

She identified her college friends as a mixture of Hispanic, Middle Eastern and Euro-American

peoples. Anna self-identified as a bilingual, Hispanic/Latina female who grew up in an urban

neighborhood with a mostly lower-income, Hispanic population. Anna reported that she had no

exposure to Asian, Native American, or Euro-American communities until she attended college.

Clara also self-identified as a bilingual, Hispanic female, and reported growing up in a middle-

and lower-income rural neighborhood with a predominantly Hispanic population. Although she

attended college with ethnically diverse students, her circle of friends remained Hispanic. Lisa

identified as a Caucasian female, who grew up and continued to live in suburban communities of

mostly middle-income Euro-Americans. She also grew up, and continued to socialize, with

predominantly Euro-American friends while in college. Gabrielle identified as a Caucasian female,

who grew up in a suburban, mostly middle-income, Euro-American neighborhood. During high

school and college, she had a mixture of Asian American, African American, Hispanic, American

Indian and Euro-American friends.


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Professional Development for Supervisors

Because CLRP and critical reflection were new components added to the supervision

process, two professional development sessions were held for participating supervisors to provide

the foundation for adoption of a culturally/linguistically responsive framework into the practice of

supervision. During the first orientation at the beginning of the semester, supervisors participated

in a half-day workshop, the purpose of which was threefold: (a) to review changes in supervisory

duties for the semester, (b) to provide a new framework for CLRP supervision, and (c) to introduce

a new observation guide. Training focused on the principles of CLRP and the CEC’s (2009)

knowledge and skill standards for multicultural competence in special education. The new

observation guide developed for this study provided a framework to focus observations on the

delivery of CLRP, an expectation of the Intercultural Communication and Collaboration course.

It contained statements of criteria that should be observed at each stage of a lesson (e.g., students’

current level of knowledge about topic is ascertained), as well as prompts that could be used during

the follow-up conference (e.g., is instruction linked to students’ background knowledge?). Prompts

included general questions for each lesson stage as well as questions to scaffold a sociocultural

perspective during debriefings.

During the mid-semester supervisor training, case studies of classroom teacher

observations were presented and supervisors were asked to actively apply the supervisory

observation guide to the cases. Following this session, the guide was reviewed and revised;

specifically, questions addressing deeper layers of culture were added (e.g., are materials reflective

of cultures/ethnicities/gender/religion/lived experiences of students in the classroom?). The

revised guide was used for the observations conducted during the Total Teach period when STs

assumed complete responsibility for their assigned classroom.

Data Sources

Audiotapes of the three final conferences between each supervisory-student teacher pair

constituted the primary data source for the findings reported in this article. In total, 14

conversations ranging between 4 and 15 minutes were recorded and uploaded to a secure server

during the Total Teach period. Lesson data files were created for each observation, consisting of

the ST’s lesson plan, the supervisor’s observation form, as well as the transcripts of the audio

recording. These files served to contextualize the supervision conference. For example, a section

of the required lesson plan entitled “Cultural and Linguistic Diversity Considerations” prompted

the students to actively consider how they would ensure CLRP in their instructional delivery and

provided insight into their intentions. Towards the end of the data collection phase, one semi-

structured interview was conducted with each supervisor to ask questions about their philosophy

about supervision, their expectations of student teachers, to obtain clarification of the transcripts,

and to elicit supervisors’ perceptions of the supervisory conference guide. All data were gathered

by the first author.


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Data Analysis

Three types of analysis were used in the broader study (content analysis, and discourse

analysis [interactional sociolinguistics and pragmatics]). Due to space limitations, we focus here

on the content analysis of conversations about CLRP topics and the analysis of levels of reflection

(interactional sociolinguistics).

Analysis of content of post-observation conversations. Two rounds of content analysis

were conducted for each transcript: The first round of coding captured any topic that was initiated

by both primary and secondary participants (e.g. assessment). In the second round, a system of

external and internal coding (Graue & Walsh, 1988) was used. External codes from culturally

responsive education/special education frameworks in the literature were used to code CLRP

strategies and other topics under the CLRP construct. Internal codes were created to capture topics

not addressed by the external codes. For example, “repeated exposure to vocabulary terms” was

assigned the code ‘Linguistically Responsive Strategy (LRS) - pre-teaching vocabulary’ (when

vocabulary instruction occurred at the beginning of the lesson).

Analysis of the nature of the discourse. Discourse analysis was used to determine levels

of reflection engaged in by STs (Hatton & Smith, 1995). The analysis of speech acts (Austin, 1962)

uncovered which participants engaged in reflection (Hatton & Smith, 1995), how these topics

emerged in conversations, and the effect of supervisor and ST statements on each other.

Trustworthiness and Credibility

Four methods were used to ensure trustworthiness and credibility—triangulation, member

checking, declaring positionality, and audit trail. Multiple sources of data and multiple methods

were used to confirm emerging findings (Merriam, 2009); specifically, content and discourse

analysis were used to examine transcripts of supervisory conversations. Data from STs’ lesson

plans provided contextual information for topics that emerged in the supervisory conversations as

did details from the content analysis of supervisors’ semi-structured interviews. Triangulation of

transcripts, lesson plans, observation notes, and semi-structured interviews helped ensure the

validity of emergent themes. Member checking was used: (a) to provide clarity or more extensive

information about the content (e.g., during the semi-structured interviews, segments of post-

observation conference transcripts were presented to the participant supervisors); (b) to ensure

accuracy of details (supervisor profiles were created and reviewed by the supervisors); and (c) to

ascertain if the working hypotheses resonated with supervisors (feedback was elicited from them).

Although the first author was also employed as a supervisor during this process, she did not

supervise any STs. She maintained a professional relationship with all participants throughout the

research process. A reflexive journal was also used throughout the data analysis process in order

to limit any bias in the analysis and to provide an audit trail.


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Findings

The content and discourse analysis of supervisor/ST pairs revealed that CLRP topics were

discussed, but the extent to which these conversations developed varied considerably. Speech acts

(Austin, 1962) that emerged from the analysis included generating ideas, asking questions (STs),

praising, informing, and evaluating (supervisors). Detailed descriptions of these conversations are

followed by the emerging themes they revealed. Due to space limitations, repetitions, affirmative

interjections by both STs and supervisors (e.g., that’s right, uh huh) have been eliminated from the

transcripts cited below.

Quality of Student Teacher Reflection

Discourse analysis using Hatton and Smith’s (1995) framework revealed three levels of

reflection (i.e., technical, descriptive and dialogic) in supervisor/ST conversations.

Descriptive reflection. When responding to Michelle’s open-ended questions or prompts,

Stephanie not only provided factual information (technical reflection) but also consistently

evaluated the impact of her instruction or behavior management strategy on students (descriptive

reflection). In the excerpt below, she describes her students making a cow puppet:

Stephanie: It was just a lot of…identifying the cow parts, and then gluing them on…I

had my model paper bag cow open, so they could see how it would work as a

puppet…That got them really excited, ‘cause they…saw me moving it, and they

were like “Oh cool!”

Michelle: (giggle). Yeah, that was one thing I really noticed, that you did a really nice

job on, was having that model there with the students.

Stephanie engaged in descriptive reflection when concluding that her model of the puppet served

to attract the students’ attention and interest. She seemed to know that having a model ready would

be effective, and through her reflection, concluded that it had the intended impact.

Near the end of her student teaching, Edwin asked Gabrielle to explain the beginning of

class. She described her annoyance with two students who were particularly “non-compliant.”

Gabrielle: His energy level was a little off the charts and he would be able to get down

from the trampoline and get that out and I’d be fine, but…he wasn’t even giving

me a chance to give him that opportunity, I mean, I was asking…him to stop moving

his body…just to be quiet for a minute, and that couldn’t happen so, at that point, I

gave him a strike, and I said three strikes you’re out and that was the end of

break…but we started out with our social rule and the social rule was based

upon…one of the student’s behavior this morning, about drawing things when

he…wasn’t supposed to be drawing like he’s supposed to draw a simple horse, but

he’s got this obsession with Neanderthals and so he drew a Neanderthal horse and

this…battle scene…and this has happened a lot, like this is not the first occasion.

And so I figured that would be a good social rule…because it was about following


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directions when a teacher talks to us, why that’s important and so that’s what was

going on (giggle), with the high energy level.

Gabrielle explained why she decided to give a student a strike for his misbehavior, and then

evaluated the impact of how her decision to teach a social rule based on a behavior displayed by a

student that morning tied in to her lesson about following teachers’ directions. Throughout this

exchange, she justified her actions and decisions, also demonstrating descriptive reflection.

Dialogic reflection. Dialogic reflection was demonstrated when Missy noticed that Clara

did not provide students with opportunities to answer questions, as they had run out of time:

Missy: Why do you think that was, that you didn’t have a whole lot of time?

Clara: We were trying to…fit in that extra read aloud…and we wanted to get to do some

table work so…that’s why I kind of felt like let me get extra done and then go into

table work…and fit it all within the next…20 minutes…I probably should have

just…asked for the questions, and then just…drop the whole table…at the end…and

just let them have time for the questions, since we had said that we were going to

do that earlier.

As she reflected, Clara arrived at the realization that there had not been enough time for both

activities and concluded with a judgment about her own lesson (evaluating impact – negative).

In addition to reflecting on alternatives (dialogic reflection) when they realized that a

strategy they used did not have the intended outcome, STs also reflected on alternatives on

occasions when supervisors asked them what they might do differently. Lisa provided several

reasons for choosing to sit next to the student instead of across from him.

Edwin: Earlier I saw examples of power-distance kind of play out in your lessons even

just with it being one student…and, if you could walk me through what you thought

about that, what that looked like to you.

Lisa: When it’s just me and one student, I, I just find that I feel uncomfortable sitting

across the table, and I know that that it’s very much me versus you, it’s kind of a

face-off…That’s what it feels like so, I decided I wanted to sit next to him, plus we

were kind of sharing materials, it was a little less formal.

Edwin: Let’s use…a [Intercultural Communication and Collaboration] term, and

let’s…think about power distance…Do you remember what conceptually

that…talks about?

Lisa: Yeah!…The authority…a larger power distance would be…me sitting across the

table, being very…much the teacher and he’s very much the student. We have…our

roles…and be very formal, but…especially with this one student, like, I…don’t find

that I need to…do as much behavior…because his attention is pretty much on me,

‘cause I’m right there with him I feel like he’s more comfortable with me sitting

next to him.


12

When asked about power distance, Lisa initially described her personal preference of

sitting next to the student. Although she is aware that an alternative exists (descriptive reflection),

she preferred to create an informal atmosphere. Later, though the topic of conversation had shifted

briefly, Edwin chose to return to power distance, asking Lisa to think about power distance

conceptually, and apply it to her lesson. First, Lisa stated her knowledge of the concept. She

thought aloud through the alternative option of sitting across from the student, creating a formal

teacher-student dynamic. She then stated reasons why she thought her choice was better. By

focusing the conversation on the concept of power distance, Edwin prompted Lisa to engage in

dialogic reflection by applying relevant theory to her analysis of her practice. Dialogic reflection

also seemed to come into play when STs reflected on themselves critically.

Critical reflection of self. Jacobs (2006) identified critical reflection as an essential

component of teaching for equity, and concluded that PSTs are typically able to reflect critically

about their own disposition and practices before they are able to reflect critically on the injustices

of school practices in relation to broader society. Each of these STs was able to be critical of their

instruction, and to identify alternative methodologies. Critical self-reflection seems to be a subset

of dialogic thinking; once aware of a negative impact of their instruction, STs explore alternative

ways to improve their teaching. In response to a prompt from Missy:

Clara: I feel bad, but I should have publicly put more [emphasis] on the positive

[behaviors] but I felt like there was a lot more, it was a lot of negative, but I probably

should have addressed those positive [behaviors] like I did with that one student.

Critical self-reflection is clearly evident in this reflection, with Clara recognizing that she

could improve her instruction by changing the nature of her reinforcement.

At their last conference, Michelle asked Anna what she would work on in the

future:

Anna: Well, I guess…just I can always get better at incorporating, and making

connections and using things that are valid for them…things that interest them. And

I think, being able to incorporate things that would be important for them…

In another lesson, Edwin noted that he had seen Lisa teach the suffix -s, but

wondered if she had taught the student the function of the suffix as a plural.

Lisa: I remember I did use the word plural because it was it was in the text, but I wasn’t

sure if he knew what I meant, so I kind of just said plural, and I was like…more

than one (giggle), kind of being like I’m not sure if you know that word, so I’m just

going to…give it to you. I should have probably asked him if he knew what it meant,

but…

In this example, Lisa recognized that her instruction might have been more effective if she had

clarified the student’s understanding of the concept of plural.


13

Emerging Themes

Further analysis of dialogues revealed two emerging themes: (a) Failed Attempts, and (b)

Missed Opportunities. Failed Attempts are described as (seemingly) deliberate supervisor

attempts to adopt a CLRP framework, only to have the direction of the conversation thwarted by

the STs. Sometimes, supervisors initiated a conversation using a cultural lens or by addressing a

topic related to CLRP; however, STs did not continue the conversation in this trajectory. Missed

opportunities, on the other hand, are described as openings in conversations, where a supervisor

could have used a comment made by a ST to generate CLRP related topics, but failed to do so.

Failed Attempts. Two conversations are illustrative of failed attempts. In an attempt to

encourage Lisa to explore the topic from a cultural standpoint, Edwin brought up the term

machismo in reference to a Hispanic male student who refused assistance. In a later interview,

Edwin defined machismo as “culturally-informed pride in that which is masculine, and taking

pride in that which is masculine.” It was unclear whether Lisa understood this definition in the

context of their conversation and rather than continuing the discussion, Lisa changed topics.

In her conference with Clara, Missy re-introduced a topic previously discussed about a

young student who frequently took off her shoes at school. In that conversation, Clara had

explained that the expectation at home was to take shoes off at the front door.

Missy: When we had a little discussion about cultural awareness…you had mentioned a

particular student…taking off her shoes a lot. I’m wondering how that’s going?

Clara: She’s gotten a lot better. She actually did it earlier but it’s because she had

something in her shoe…she actually keeps them on and understands now that this

is school and you need to keep them on and stuff so that’s gotten a lot better.

Missy: Sure, and how did she come to that understanding? Was it conversation that

someone had with her?

Clara: I know I haven’t, and I don’t know if my CT. I don’t think we’ve had. I think she

just kind of started to see maybe, just being in the classroom. And we always

redirect her too: “you need to leave your shoes on when you’re in school;” like I’ll

redirect her in that way, but not a set conversation, but just that redirection

of…“leave your shoes on here in school” ‘cause every time she’d take it off, they

would make fun of [her].

Missy: Did you did you explain to her why? Or did anyone tell her why it’s important to

have her shoes on? The safety thing.

Clara: Now we’re relating that to staying safe. Why you need to stay safe. This is why

it’s important and stuff like that…

Missy began the discussion with a direct reference to cultural awareness. However, Clara

continued to raise the issue of behavior and the focus on CLRP was subverted. Eventually, Missy’s

focus also shifted to behavior, rather than maintaining the cultural lens she had been attempting to

utilize. It appears that both of them needed more scaffolding for them to engage in this

conversation from a sociocultural perspective. A culturally responsive teacher might explain to the

student that there are sometimes differences between home norms and school norms, in this case,


14

shoes are taken off at the door at home, but worn in school. This would have validated the practices

of the home, yet provided the student with one of the repertoires of school practice (Seidl &

Pugach, 2009). Although Missy discovered that no one had addressed these issues with the student,

she did not suggest or recommend that Clara should initiate this conversation.

Missed Opportunities. Missed opportunities occurred when supervisors had an opening

to engage in a reflective conversation around culture, but did not. Michelle and Edwin each missed

opportunities with two STs that could have been conversations about CLRP. In all cases, STs

talked about a teaching strategy they claimed was culturally responsive and the supervisor accepted

this at face value, rather than exploring how these strategies were responsive to culture.

In the prior example of a failed attempt, Lisa mentioned a student who isolated himself

from a group of girls during math remediation by choosing to remain in the general education

classroom. Although Edwin brought up the concept of machismo, the conversation followed a

different track, and the student was not discussed further. However, it seemed that this student was

not receiving the special education services to which he was entitled. Edwin missed this

opportunity to engage Lisa in a conversation about the student’s rights to services.

In attempting to facilitate Gabrielle’s thinking about a topic external to the lesson he had

observed, Edwin began by commenting on a note she had written in her lesson self-evaluation for

the Intercultural Communication and Collaboration class. He noticed that she had expressed

concern about a student whose family are members of the Jehovah’s Witness denomination of

Christianity. Gabrielle wrote that the student’s family did not want him to establish friendships

with students who were not Jehovah’s Witnesses. When asked how she planned to address this,

Gabrielle responded that she had already taught a social skills lesson focused on the idea that

everyone can be friends, even if they have different opinions or beliefs.

Gabrielle: With him, if you directly talk about it…he is…die-hard Jehovah’s

Witness…he just talks about it you know, he wants to preach to his friends so that

his friends can be Jehovah’s Witnesses and they can be his real friend. So I’m

just…trying to…keep it open that we can have true friends with different

beliefs…without targeting…

Edwin: If I was in this situation, I was thinking maybe…even the difference between

like a friend, and being friendly…Or like a friend, an acquaintance…Or a friend

and a classmate…‘cause the thing about it is that kind of gray area that maybe not

be clear to a student with autism…also, looking at the message from home…a friend

is just a member of this community, and you’re not to have friends in the classroom

or something like that or some way to kinda challenge that a little bit, with a way

that also saves face, protects the integrity of the beliefs that they are getting from

home too.

Gabrielle: And it’s still reinforcing it. No…that would be a good talk, ‘cause next year

he’s going to middle school. Not next year, it’s like three months…and…just to

build up like people who are your friends, and they can be there for you, and then

people who are friendly to you, and acquaintances. I think that would be a good talk

to have, ‘cause I’m trying to think of everything I can to prepare him for this.


15

Edwin clearly makes an effort to engage Gabrielle in a conversation about her concern. He

provides a solution she can use at school and also brings up the cultural concept of “saving face,

protecting the integrity of the beliefs they are getting from home.” However, he misses an

opportunity to converse with Gabrielle about ways to engage in cultural reciprocity (Kalyanpur &

Harry, 2012) with the parents of this student as well as the cooperating teacher. In schools, a typical

goal for students with autism would be to teach strategies that increase socialization with peers.

However, this would be difficult if the student’s belief system is a mediating factor that affects

with whom he can socialize. If the family and professionals were to discuss each other’s goals in

a safe and respectful way, there is a likelihood that common goals could be agreed upon.

Intersectionality of dialogic reflection with CLRP. Despite the failed attempts and

missed opportunities, there were two dialogues in which STs engaged in dialogic reflection while

simultaneously focusing on culturally and linguistically responsive practice.

For example, Gabrielle was explaining to Edwin the resources that students have at school

to calm themselves down when they are agitated. The professor of the Intercultural

Communication and Collaboration class had suggested that she help students identify resources at

home that they could use to achieve the same effect, so that the learning at school could be

generalized to their home settings. Edwin scaffolded Gabrielle’s learning by talking about this

topic using an equitable teaching lens. He explained that some students could probably afford to

buy a tool they were using at school for their homes, but that might not be possible for others.

Edwin: But then the students that aren’t able to afford that…what are they going to do

when they get home? How can we make that more in parallel, so it doesn’t put them

at an unfair, you know, situation?

Gabrielle: So a good thing to do probably for that would be, just to really identify what

that tool…how that tool, what that tool does, so if it’s the tension, if it’s the hugging

of it all, you know, wrap up in a blanket, we can suggest things. They can still have

those tools…if it’s the fidgets…even with, one of our students it’s the paper clips,

you know….and that’s his fidget toy, and he pretends that it’s (inaudible) and that

gets him through the day and he’ll pull it out during class and…you know, that’s

something that’s going to internalize though…’cause it used to be a big fidget toy

that he had with him . . .

Edwin: Is that right?

Gabrielle: And now it’s gone down to a small paper clip, so…we can think of other

ways to get the same effect but just with different tools which they can find around

their homes…Now I’m even thinking about tools they have at home, but…that they

can make themselves…to give that same effect…And with these tools, we’re really

teaching them self-advocacy too because they’re not going to work unless they’re

able to ask for ‘em. That’s a big thing with our students, like if we need a break, ask

for it. Stand up for yourself, say, “this is what I need to be successful.”

Gabrielle recognized that adapting instruction could go beyond school walls. Responding

to Edwin’s scaffolding about inequity, she generated an idea about students creating their own


16

fidget tools so they could have parallel access to resources outside of school. She took up the

conversation through this lens, and thought about ways to minimize the inequity, by exploring an

alternative solution.

Discussion and Implications

The purpose of this study was to explore how supervisory conversations promoted ST critical

reflection about CLRP. The findings revealed that (a) student teachers were successful in engaging

in descriptive and dialogic reflection, and in critical self-reflection; (b) student teachers did not

engage in critical reflection about institutional practices and systemic bias in special education;

and (c) supervisors needed more experience and knowledge to engage STs in dialogue focused on

culturally and linguistically responsive special education.

Levels of Reflection Evident in Conversations

Prompted by supervisor inquiry, STs were able to identify best practices in culturally and

linguistically responsive pedagogy and generate ideas for incorporating CLRP to meet the needs

of their diverse learners. STs were also able to critically reflect on themselves as practitioners; this

aligns with a definition of critical reflection related to constructive self-criticism of one’s actions

with a view to improvement and transformation of one’s own practice (Bates et al., 2009; Cochran-

Smith et al., 2004; Larrivee, 2000).

The work in which students and supervisors are expected to engage should be a reflection

of the philosophy of the teacher education program in which they are involved. The special

education undergraduate program in which PSTs were enrolled shares characteristics that are

similar to those of an inquiry-oriented program described by Zeichner and Liston (1985), which

places “an explicit emphasis on encouraging students to reflect about the purpose and

consequences of their classroom practice and about the classroom, school and community contexts

in which they work” (p. 157). An emphasis on self-reflection and CLRP was infused throughout

the program, including a focus on case studies of two children from different sociocultural and

linguistic communities, during student teaching. Thus, by the time they are in their student teaching

semester, STs have been provided with many opportunities for reflection over a period of two

years, and at times with a particular focus on learners from CLD communities. However, the

emphasis is on self-reflection and the impact of their teaching practices rather than critical

reflection of pedagogy as a whole. The STs in this study applied self-reflection throughout their

student teaching practice, suggesting that they had successfully acquired this skill.

Failure to Engage in Critical Reflection About Institutional Practices

No ST demonstrated critical reflection about institutional practices and their implications

for society. This is consistent with the findings of other researchers who have studied PSTs and

teacher education programs (Hatton & Smith, 1995; Zeichner & Liston, 1985). In her review of

literature about supervision for equity, Jacobs (2006) concluded that PSTs would perhaps be able

to develop critical reflection of themselves first, before reflecting broadly about practices at


17

schools and their implications on society. In order to cultivate this type of critical reflection,

however, PSTs need to demonstrate cultural self-awareness as related to teaching diverse others

(Abt-Perkins et al., 2000). Howard (2003) contends that PSTs may find it difficult to examine their

own biases, and thus guidance is needed from more experienced others. Although discussions and

simulations were presented in coursework to facilitate PSTs in acknowledging their biases, these

discussions were also conducted early in their teaching career, and perhaps need to be revisited or

addressed more frequently through classes and coursework.

Hatton and Smith (1995) recommended that students should also be exposed to the

literature of critical reflection to understand its nature. Hence, the absence of critical reflection in

this data set may indicate a curricular gap rather than students’ limited ability to reflect at this

level. Despite the focus on CLRP, the focus on critical reflection may not have been explicit

enough. Thus, it is suggested that pre-service teacher education programs should focus not only

on self-reflection as a view to improving practices, but on reflection of the special education system

as a whole, with a view to improving institutional and systemic bias.

The philosophy of a teacher education program is closely linked to the “beliefs and

assumptions about the nature and purposes of schooling, teaching, teachers, and their education

gives shape or form to specific forms of practice in teacher education” (Zeichner, 1983, p. 3).

Zeichner noted that, in the social reconstructionist tradition of teacher education, the objective of

teachers is to “work at changing their own practices because schools continue to reproduce a

society based on unjust class, race and gender relationships” (as cited in Hatton & Smith, 1995, p.

37). Perhaps a teacher education program that articulated the tenets of a social reconstructionist

tradition through its curriculum, field placements, and supervision would be more successful at

fostering a critical orientation in STs.

Supervisors’ Limited Experience and Knowledge About CLRP

These findings showed that supervisors were not adequately prepared to engage their STs

in dialogue in exploring the cultural dimensions of teaching and learning in depth and failed to

model critical reflection themselves focused on CLRP (Abt-Perkins et al., 2000). The results of

this study suggest however, that in some cases, STs may have had more knowledge about CLRP

than their supervisors. For example, Anna’s comments about centering curriculum on students’

interests are concepts (i.e., personalization, self-determination) she would been exposed to in her

curriculum. It is possible that her supervisor did not have exposure to these concepts, thus resulting

in the missed opportunity to further develop this discussion.

Supervisors began the semester in which this study took place with variable levels of

knowledge, skills, and experience with regard to supervision in general and to supervision for

CLRP. The supervisor who was himself enrolled in a PhD program focusing on multiculturalism

was the only supervisor who had dialogue that was sustained along a cultural trajectory. His

knowledge of concepts such as power distance and equitable resources seemed to allow him to

enter and refocus conversations along cultural lines. It is possible that in conversations

characterized by missed opportunities and failed attempts, a supervisor more knowledgeable about

cultural concepts might have been able to refocus or reframe the conversations with their STs. It


18

is also interesting to note, however, that even someone with the level of knowledge that Edwin

had from his post-graduate coursework also missed some opportunities that presented themselves

during supervisory conferences. This suggests that knowledge about cultural and linguistic

responsiveness may not be sufficient and that skills in supervisory techniques are also necessary

for effective supervision.

All the supervisors in this study had some prior experience with supervising PSTs.

However, the training received for supervision was limited. Supervisors were selected based on

availability, interest and prior teaching experience. Prior to undertaking supervisory duties,

supervisors needed to complete a three-hour online training module provided by the university,

related to basic coaching techniques. As Zahorik (1988) noted, observation instruments do little to

reduce supervisor variability. Practically, each supervisor underwent the same training on how to

use the researcher-developed observation tool at the beginning and middle of the semester.

However, supervision of the supervisors was not provided. Perhaps ongoing professional

development of the supervisors vis-à-vis supervision skills, fostering critical reflection as well as

individualized coaching with using the observation tool and would be necessary to develop

supervisor capacity and efficacy aligned with the goals of the teacher education program.

Limitations

This study was exploratory and thus reflects the boundaries of such research. It is reflective

of a single preparation program supported by external funding and transferability is limited by the

duration, context, and number of participants. However, efforts have been made to provide rich

descriptive detail so that readers can evaluate the transferability to their own contexts.

While beyond the scope of this study, it would be helpful to thoroughly analyze the

undergraduate curriculum to determine the extent of the emphasis on the development of critical

reflection in the pre-service program. Further, supervisors were not provided ongoing professional

development in supervision techniques, which likely resulted in varied supervision skills among

the supervisors. Lastly, although efforts were undertaken to maintain a professional relationship

between the primary researcher and the participants, a previous social and professional relationship

did exist. This could have influenced participants to be either more or less forthcoming in their

responses or hesitant to be critical of the research.

Implications for Research and Practice

Future research is needed to confirm or broaden the current findings. The study could be

replicated with additional supervisor and ST participants over a longer period of time and could

be conducted in universities with various models of pre-service teacher preparation to investigate

the transferability of the results to different contexts. Research could also be carried out on the

scope and sequence of pre-service teacher education programs to investigate the extent to which

critical issues related to CLRP in special education are covered, and the extent to which the skills

required for critical reflection are developed in the curricula.

It would be useful to investigate the effects of more intensive supervisor training and its

impact on the conduct of supervision conferences. Such research could investigate the effects of


19

regular supervisor debriefing seminars in building supervisor capacity. Supervisors could be better

prepared to evaluate the CLRP responsiveness of PSTs lesson plans. Research could also be

conducted with the observation tool to determine ways to enhance its effectiveness and prompts

could be added to focus on critical reflection (e.g., including key words such as access, equity,

power and privilege.)

Another area worthy of study is to explore key components of professional development

that are typically accorded to university supervisors in special education programs. Perhaps the

use of established coaching techniques such as cognitive coaching (Costa & Garmston, 2002) or

educative mentoring (Feinman-Nemser, 2001) could be studied to investigate their effectiveness

on supervision for culturally responsive instruction and critical reflection.

The findings of this study also offer programmatic and practical implications. First, they

suggest that, programmatically, students may need more guidance in order to effectively apply

literature on critical issues such as equity and access for CLD populations in special education in

their field-based practice. In addition, they also need to be exposed to the literature on critical

reflection in its broader sense and more scaffolding to engage in critical reflection of schools and

society. In relation to this, students also need to be given more guidance and opportunities to

practice critical reflection in addition to critical self-reflection. The study suggests that supervisors

also need to have exposure to this literature.

The findings also suggested that supervisors should be knowledgeable about culturally

and linguistically responsive practices so that they can guide their mentees’ knowledge and

application in practice. Similarly, supervisors should be able to model critical reflection to the

STs, and scaffold the STs’ use of it. Clearly, supervisors needed additional training with the

observation tool in order to use it more effectively. Additionally, supervisors could be informed

about different levels of reflection and well as question types that may invite deeper thinking and

reflexivity. Along with the above, it would seem to be beneficial if supervisors were also

supervised, perhaps by university professors who are responsible for teaching these curricula to

the pre-service teachers.

In conclusion, consistent with other literature, supervisors failed to support their STs to

engage in critical reflection. However, the supervision process as designed for this study seemed

to hold promise, suggesting that both supervisors and STs may need more time and support to

develop the requisite skills.

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23

“It Would Be Better If You Can Hang Out With Different

People”: An Examination of Cross-National Interaction in

Postsecondary Classrooms

Christopher J. Johnstone

University of Minnesota

Diana Yefanova


Gayle Woodruff


Mary Lynn Montgomery


Barbara J. Kappler


Abstract

This study examines the motivations and experiences of international and

domestic students on three U.S. campuses related to cross-national interactions

within classroom settings. The study also examines the role of instructors in

facilitating such interactions through individual and group interviews. Findings

indicate that domestic students appreciate the global perspectives of

international students related to course content. International students, in turn,

appreciate the “real world” perspectives that domestic students provide about

the US (but do not necessarily find value in their content-related comments).

The implications of this study are that cross-national interactions have different

meanings for different stakeholders (i.e., some perceive to benefit academically

while others perceive to benefit culturally). The implications of this study relate

to how instructors structure student interactions and what might be reasonable

outcomes for students in international groups in postsecondary classrooms.


Cross-National Interaction in Postsecondary Classrooms Journal of Teaching and Learning 12(2)

24

Introduction

Internationalization of higher education has become a nearly ubiquitous term in postsecondary

institutions. Knight (2015) has set out guideposts for the process by periodically updating her

definition of the process. Most recently, in 2015, Knight noted that “internationalization, at the

national, sector, and institutional levels is defined as the process of integrating an international,

intercultural, or global dimension into the purpose, functions, or delivery of postsecondary

education” (p. 2). Knight’s (2015) umbrella definition allows for systems and institutions to design

their own pathway in the internationalization process. As noted by Childress (2009), this pathway

is often in response to the impacts of globalization, which institutions cannot control. Jones,

Coelen, Beelen, and de Wit (2016), however, also note that internationalization approaches and

strategies are strongly rooted in local political agendas and resource availability.

In general, internationalization of higher education is a broad and encompassing concept

that, at the local level, has many strategies aimed at the enterprises of administration, partnerships,

research, and students. In this study we chose to focus on a subset of the internationalization

strategy present in many universities—enrolment of international students. Such enrolment is part

of a broader student mobility agenda, operationalized as the outward international flow of domestic

students in study abroad and the inward flow of international students to study at U.S. campuses

(American Council on Education, 2016). In this study we focus specifically on the classroom

environment and interactions of international and domestic students in the postsecondary

classroom.

Study Context and Rationale

Although this qualitative study did not posit specific hypotheses, our theoretical perspective draws

upon decades of work related to strategies of facilitating positive outcomes of intercultural contacts

in the learning environments. The study focus leads to the brief review of the concept of

internationalization at home (IaH) that highlights spreading the benefits of higher education

internationalization to a much wider segment of students than those who study abroad, especially

domestic students with limited opportunities to travel abroad (Crowther et al., 2000). The initial

emphasis in the IaH model was divided among three principal components: (a) diversity as a

resource; (b) an internationalized curriculum; and (c) a culturally sensitive pedagogy. For the

purpose of this study we focus on the first and the third components of this conceptual model.

Within the U.S. context, where our study was conducted, international students are

identified as an important contributor to diversity on campuses (Zhao, Kuh, & Carini, 2005).

College classrooms may be the best place on campus to leverage the diversity of views and

experiences that international students may bring (Shapiro, Farrelly, & Tomaš, 2014) and where

positive benefits of engaging with international diversity in the classroom may be realized for all

students.

Journal of Teaching and Learning 12(2) Johnstone, Yefanova, Woodruff, Montgomery, & Kappler

25

Outcomes of Cross-National Interactions

Over the past several decades, scholars have identified cross-cultural learning

environments as spaces of opportunity for cognitive development (Bruning, Schraw, & Ronning,

1999), moral reasoning (Grayson, 2008), intercultural competence (Arkoudis, Baik, Marginson, &

Cassidy, 2012), and international attitudes (Parsons, 2010). Our study focuses directly on intra-

classroom cross-national interactions (CNI) that occur as part of the everyday curricular offerings

and serve as formal learning environments where students can interact in diverse educational

contexts.

Interactions with diverse perspectives and identities in college classrooms have been shown

to be significant factors correlated with student learning and outcomes, intercultural competence

development (Bowman, 2010; Deardorff, 2006; Denson & Chang, 2009; Hurtado, 2001; Lee,

Poch, Shaw, & Williams 2012), and academic engagement (Zhao & Douglass, 2012). A study in

US and Australian universities (Parsons, 2010) indicated that social contact with international

students (as one of the components of an internationalized curriculum) significantly predicted

higher scores on most scales associated with desired outcomes of curriculum internationalization

(i.e., international attitudes and perceptions; cross-cultural skills, and international behaviours). It

is not always clear, however, what opportunities for student interaction were offered in the

classroom, and what the role of faculty and instructors was in leveraging international diversity.

The Role of Academic Staff in Facilitating CNI

Facilitating interactions among students from different national backgrounds can be a

challenging process for instructors (see Matsuda, Saenkhum, & Accardi, 2013), as it relates to

pedagogic practices. One common concern is that, if such interactions are not facilitated by

instructors in the classroom, domestic students may fail to benefit from contact with other cultures

and thus fail to benefit from campus diversity, as the mere presence of international students, even

in large numbers, is insufficient in itself to promote intercultural interactions with cultural "others"

(Andrade & Evans, 2009; Leask, 2009) and to result in mutually beneficial cross-cultural

understanding.

Internationalization scholars have identified a gap in literature that relates directly to

classroom interactions of international and host country national students. Leask and Carroll

(2011) noted that institutional agents often assumed there would be automatic cultural benefits as

a result of increased international student enrolment, but noted that there was rarely an institutional

process for facilitating outcomes. Instead, research has tended to focus on concerns by instructors

about how to respond to culturally and linguistically diverse students (Matsuda et al., 2013), often

viewing students’ needs from the deficit perspective. Such research has not addressed how the

facilitation of cross-national interaction in classrooms may accomplish institutional or

instructional goals (Green, 2012; Jones & Killick, 2013; Leki, 2006; Zamel & Spack, 2004), nor

the conditions under which such outcomes may be attainable.

The need to facilitate intercultural interactions to achieve expected outcomes international

diversity can bring to the classroom was predicted by Allport (1954), whose contact hypothesis

suggests that the individuals need to have common purpose or shared work, and equal status for


26

meaningful infraction to occur across cultural lines. Such interactions require deeper engagement

with the cultural “other” and his/her perspectives (Cruickshank, Chen, & Warren, 2012) as well as

how alternative perspectives and peers’ cultural backgrounds relate to concrete tasks and goals in

shared work (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006). As applied to the learning environment in college

classrooms, there has also been increasing focus in the literature on understanding how faculty

members and instructors may engage international diversity in the classroom to enhance cultural

learning for all students in the classroom (Leask, 2009; Zhao & Douglass, 2012). Several authors

also note the need for instructor facilitation to ensure and support in-class cross-cultural

interactions because undergraduate students tend to work with other students from a similar culture

and linguistic background, experience anxiety during such interactions (Dunne, 2009), and rarely

seek out diverse interactions without being prompted by the instructor (Arkoudis et al., 2010).

Rationale for Study

The rationale for our study is twofold. First, as internationalization and, specifically, the

components of IaH, continue to be a common practice in U.S. higher education institutions, data

points at various levels of institutional activity (e.g., administration, teaching and learning, student

life) will help to inform the broader agenda of IaH. In this study, we focus our efforts specifically

on international student interactions within postsecondary classrooms. Additionally, our study

seeks to better understand the outcomes of cross-national interactions in postsecondary classrooms

as experienced by students from the United States, international students within U.S.

postsecondary classrooms and the academic staff who are simultaneously responsible for

facilitating classroom activities (Tange & Jensen, 2012).

Our questions are framed in the broad conceptual framework of internationalization of

higher education and the role that international students play (or do not play) in this process.

Understanding this process further will depend on answering our two research questions:

1. What are the perceived outcomes experienced by domestic and international students

who participate in cross-national interactions in postsecondary classrooms?

2. What do students and faculty perceive to be the most effective ways that instructors

facilitate cross-national interactions?

Methods

Participants

Data reported in this study draws upon a larger dataset based on the multi-year study on

contributions of international students to campus internationalization that was conducted on three

campuses of a public university system in the Midwest region of the United States. Our sample

featured self-selected students and invited instructors from an urban research-intensive campus, a

rural liberal arts-focused campus, and a rural comprehensive undergraduate campus within this

university system. Our aim was to better understand a wide variety of classroom settings, so we

also selected both students from multiple academic fields.


27

In total, we engaged 121 students, both international (IS) and domestic (DS). For the

purposes of our research, we defined international students as those who are holding a student visa.

Although we continue to be very interested in outcomes and experiences of students who are

immigrants to the U.S., our focus on this study was on international students who have finite

student visas because they are frequently a formal component of campus internationalization plans.

Table 1 provides an overview of the interview sample. Our sample reflects an effort to over-sample

international students: this population comprises approximately 10% of the total institutional

population, but approximately 30% of the students interviewed were international students. Our

over-sampling was aimed at understanding a wide variety of international student perspectives.

The students were self-selected as we invited volunteers to participate in the study.

In addition to students, we sought to better understand teaching-learning dimensions from

those who were leading the process. We solicited volunteers from a purposive sample of instructors

based on their interest in and support of campus internationalization initiatives and/or existing

contacts within the departments. In total, we included 47 teaching faculty on three campuses. On

the flagship campus of the university we interviewed 26 faculty members from three disciplines,

while interviewing six faculty members from the university’s liberal arts undergraduate campus,

and a third from the comprehensive undergraduate-focused institution in the university system.

Table 1

Study Participants

Undergraduate Students Graduate Students Faculty

International (visa) 30 20

Domestic (citizen or resident) 50 21

Faculty 47

Total 80 41 47

Procedures

In order to engage as many students as possible, and to examine common themes among

students, we interviewed students in focus groups to gain in-depth insights on concepts we were

examining and allow participants to build upon or refute each other’s response in small groups

(Krueger & Casey, 2000). To this end, we grouped our participants into focus groups in the

following four categories: (a) international undergraduate students; (b) domestic undergraduate

students; (c) international graduate students; and (d) domestic graduate students. Each focus group

interview size ranged from two to eight participants; interviews lasted between 60-90 minutes and

were audio recorded. Interview questions centered on student and experiences with CNI. The

research team had no direct contact with participating students in classroom context.

Our faculty interviews were of mixed format (i.e., face-to-face and via teleconference and

telephone) and largely depended on the availability of faculty. Wherever possible, we conducted


28

focus groups using the same procedures as utilized in student interviews. In total we conducted

nine focus groups (31 participants) and 16 individual interviews.

Analysis

Overall, data analysis was divided into three stages. First, we individually read through

participant responses relevant to our research questions. In phase two, we analyzed student and

faculty responses by independently coding transcripts using NVivo and writing memos on what

types of CNI opportunities students described and what were the perceived outcomes of these

interactions. During the third stage, data analysts discussed codes, checking for inter-coder

agreement (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). Finally, the analysis team compiled the initial and the

emergent codes to reach the consensus on each one, then assigned them to particular sentences or

paragraphs that corresponded with codes (Miles & Huberman, 1994).

Findings

Two main findings emerged from this study. Our first main finding was one that was unexpected,

does not yet seem to have a strong foundation in literature, and was somewhat contradictory within

the study itself. Domestic students self-reported that their learning about academic content

improved as a result of interactions with international students. Although CNI is often framed as

an opportunity for students to improve their intercultural skill as a result of course-based dialogue

(Bowman 2010; Denson & Chang, 2009; Soria & Troisi, 2013), a theme emerged among domestic

students in the study regarding content learning. Both undergraduate and graduate domestic

student participants reported having developed multiple perspectives on course content and

indicated that international student presence enriched in-class learning and academic engagement

when opportunities to share knowledge and perspectives across cultures were provided. One

student noted:

In my group project we had German and South Korean students in the group, and hearing

and understanding from their perspective how the same kind of psych topics were discussed

in their countries and how research over there is handled... that I wouldn’t have otherwise

learned from the class…So learning more about that is, I think a great opportunity.

(Domestic Undergraduate Student A)

At the graduate level, where our sample consisted of students in professional schools,

student responses also indicated that they considered CNI an important tool in preparing for future

careers by virtue of learning more about different national contexts.

Just getting an insider perspective on everything that's happening in China [is important].

Because, obviously, I can read about it in The Economist or whatever, but it's not like

actually hearing from a real-life anecdote of how you actually get business done and make

transactions happen. (Domestic Graduate Student A)


29

We have students from Korea, from China, Taiwan, Japan, and Austria, Spain, Europe, so

it’s quite diverse and in the past…I was able to closely collaborate with them in projects,

either in class or outside of class as research assistants...we ask questions about their

different cultural experiences and perspectives. Like, we exchange [perspectives].

(International Graduate Student D)

Domestic students arguably had an internationalized experience as a result of small group

work with international students. This theme, however, was not present in international student

perspectives. It is unknown why international students did not feel they received an academic

bump from domestic students, but there are likely three explanations. First, learning perspectives

from U.S. students may not be novel or surprising to international students. Rather, these students

are immersed in U.S. academic culture and may have grown accustomed to U.S. students sharing

perspectives. It is also possible that international students do not value CNI as a learning strategy

as much as domestic students. Although not all students in this study were educated in Confucian

traditions and learning styles, demographics within the university campuses where the research

took place indicate that the vast majority of students on U.S. campuses are either from China or

South Korea. The Confucian effect is unknown. Some students expressed trepidation with working

in groups and spoke of insecurity in their own language, which may have influenced perspectives

on CNI.

For international and domestic students alike, cultural understanding was also a perceived

benefit of CNI. How the students understood and perceived the cultural outcomes of CNI,

however, differed between domestic and international students. Domestic students’ responses

aligned with the theoretical propositions of cultural intelligence theory as those US students who

reported benefits from CNI appeared to be developing the drive for cultural intelligence outlined

by Ang, Van Dyne, and Koh (2006). For U.S. students, positive perceptions of CNI occurred when

the domestic students initiated the desire to learn more. Students perceived benefits when they

were willing to move into more in-depth conversations about each their group mates’ culture. For

example, some students noted the benefits of addressing the underlying process of reflecting on

their own culture and examining their own preconceived cultural notions and stereotypes of

cultural difference.

One main thing that I learned is that a lot of people think that if someone doesn't have that

great of English, they're not intelligent, which is not the case at all. And I think that's a lot

of times why people get pushed to the side, because they struggle with English. But really,

it's probably their second language, or third, or fourth ... Just because they struggle with

English doesn't mean their insight isn't valuable. (Domestic Undergraduate Student B)

Certainly, you find a lot of similarities between each other, but you also find that the

differences that we share are useful, especially to work together and use those differences,

different skills, different abilities, different mindsets. And that helps a collaborative effort

work. (Domestic Undergraduate Student C)


30

The drive to engage interculturally, however, manifested itself differently in international

students. In this case, international students spoke of opportunity to gain emic perspectives about

life in the U.S. For one student, this provided an opportunity to challenge her existing beliefs and

value systems about Americans’ cultures, opinions, approaches to academic work and what is

“really going on in America” (International Undergraduate Student). In this example, students

were seeking out conversations as a way of understanding the culture beyond what was represented

to them in media, classroom content, and university messaging. During this process, international

students appeared to be enlisting U.S. students as cultural interpreters (Katan, 2014), as one student

shared:

There are some cultural issues behind [grammar]—like it’s grammatically correct, but

when Americans hear it, it’s just not… appropriate. Or they will take it in a different way

than what you intended to. So there’s some cultural ways of thinking, or you need

knowledge behind it, too. And I have American peers who sometimes help me confirm

[ideas], or double check, you know, sometimes I let them go through it, if it’s important

for me or they have time and they are willing to help me with that. (International Graduate

Student D)

What is likely the most relevant, and likely the most intuitive finding in this section, is that

students experience group work benefits differently. For U.S. students, who may have less

experience in the countries of origin of their international classmates, these classmates represent

an opportunity to view content within new contexts. Domestic students also expressed a sense of

discovery and new culture learning that occurred in these groups. International students on the

other hand, are already immersed in the U.S. environment. They are surrounded by academic

content, teaching styles, and peers from the U.S. who are more often than not the majority in

classes. For international students, culture learning manifested itself in more strategic thinking.

U.S. students were seen as a resource to help understand the intricacies of U.S. culture. The

implications of these findings are expanded upon in the Discussion section below.

Discussion

Our study aimed to better understand the inner workings of cross-national interaction (CNI) in

postsecondary education classrooms in the U.S. We located this study in the broader

internationalization of higher education literature. In this literature, there appears to be both great

hope in the role that international students can play in supporting diversity and internationalization

on campus (Zhao et al., 2005) and recognition that faculty often feel unprepared to manage such

diversity in their classroom (Matsuda et al., 2013). Our study set out to identify the potential

contributions of international students on US campuses by investigating a micro-level space of

engagement – classroom group work.

Our pursuit was somewhat open-ended. Our literature review indicated that we might

encounter reports of intercultural competence development (Arkoudis et al., 2012) or students


31

reporting more internationalized attitudes as a result of cross-national contact (Parsons, 2010).

What we found was that results of CNI were nuanced, differed by student population group, and

were highly dependent on faculty facilitation. We also learned that not all students enjoy CNI (a

topic for further exploration in another study).

Course Content Learning, Resource-Seeking and CNI

Although themes were at times inconsistent, our first major finding was that domestic

students (those who were studying in their own country, in their first language, and in many cases

their home community) viewed international students as global content guides. In this case,

domestic students were appreciative of the perspectives of international students about the content

at hand. Through conversations in groups, domestic students felt they benefited from the unique

and new perspectives that international students could share about the course content. We should

note that domestic student comments about issues like friendship, global understanding, enhanced

worldviews, etc. were rare. Rather, domestic students saw international students as a resource from

which to gain new knowledge.

Similarly, international students saw domestic students as resources. International students

were studying in an environment that was far from home, potentially in unfamiliar pedagogical

environments, and were managing day to day life in a system that was potentially new to them.

Further, international students were largely outnumbered by domestic students in discussion

groups. Despite all the navigational capital that international students had gained through their

time on campus, they claimed they were missing the true story of the United States. This true story

was likely a story not presented in official university documents, media, and other outlets. Within

groups, international students saw domestic students as cultural interpreters who could provide

them with the everyday experience perspective of the United States. Figure 1 (below) is a graphic

representation of our findings.

Figure 1. Outcomes of CNI.

Domestic students act as cultural interpreters for international students.

International students act as global content advisors for domestic students.

Instructors facilitate process through strategic grouping, communications coaching, and structured activities.


32

The Role of Academic Staff in Promoting CNI

As noted above, both international and domestic students in the study reported some benefit

from CNI (although students valued different aspects and arguably received differential benefits).

Because of this, we sought to understand what the role of instructors was in supporting CNI that

was valuable to students. Students at both the undergraduate and graduate levels noted that external

structure on group activities is important for supporting CNI. For domestic students, there was a

desire to have equal voice in conversations, but a recognition that some students were more verbal

than others.

One thing is that in group work…is that…[international student] just sort of feel

overwhelmed by the native English speakers who are just… bombarding the group with

their verbiage. So that's certainly one challenge, how to make sure that people…are getting

their opinions heard, their insights acknowledged. (Domestic Graduate Student B)

[We need to] increase social interaction…because I can’t tell you how many times, like, I

just feel like we kind of shut each other out, and it’s not … on purpose… I think we do

have a lot in common socially, but for whatever reason, we don’t give ourselves the

opportunity to interact enough, and I think that’s where things fall apart when we’re in the

classroom. (Domestic Undergraduate Student D)

International students echoed the challenges that existed in groups, noting that domestic

students minimize the efforts and contributions of international students. One student commented

on assumptions about language and the stigmatization that sometimes occurs for students who

speak English as a second language.

When you're an international student they just assume that you don't know the language,

so there's a patronizing thing that is there that is like, "Oh, it's not your first language, it's

not your language." And they don't see the work that has been done because some of them

may not be fluent in speaking it, but they would be very good at writing it ... I think it

mainly makes you not that happy to be in the class and it's kind of a stressful thing if it's an

ongoing thing. (International Graduate Student C)

The assumption or the stereotype that the international students may not be writing as well

as their counter American fellows… the first ever project that we had to do together and

write a 25 page long single- spaced paper, we were eight people in the group, only two

international students… We ended up writing the paper, two of us. So, I guess the

stereotype that they thought, “Oh, you know, we’re gonna do group work, and meet with

them, and you know, it’s probably going to be, they can do the research but we should do

the writing,” It happened the other way around. (International Graduate Student B)

The challenges experienced by both domestic and international students in group settings

appeared to be minimized when faculty provided structure or support to group work. Students


33

recognized that it was sometimes difficult for them to work through the challenges of group

assignments, and that a scaffolded or supported group structure eased challenges in the group.

[Professors] are really aware of the fact that like international students and the language

barrier, and they notice that sometimes we usually sit in a bunch of group [sic] with, like,

Chinese students together in class with 200 people...they’ll sometimes bring that up too

and they’ll be like, “You know what, it would be better if you can hang out with different

people.” (International Undergraduate Student E)

Faculty triangulated student findings regarding structuring group activities for maximal

interaction, and were able to provide more insights into their instructional intentions than were

immediately visible to students. Faculty reported that a first an easy strategy often used was

grouping to ensure cross-national communication. Instructors who perceived CNI to be effective

in their classrooms drew upon linguistic and cultural diversity in the classroom to enhance

cognitive engagement through peer feedback and assessment (Arkoudis et al, 2010). This finding

seemed to be especially relevant for graduate students.

I put students in groups quite often … When I have just a few international students in

there, I never make them be the only international student in a group. I always make sure

there’s at least two. I actually had a speech class once where I only had five Americans and

ten international [students], and I made the Americans split up, and they were nervous. And

I thought it was good for them to experience that. (Lecturer, Humanities)

In addition to purposeful assignment of students into cross-national teams, those who were

most supportive of CNI viewed international students as resources to help all students engage with

content knowledge and facilitate deeper learning. Some of their approaches were: utilizing

multiple cultural perspectives on content as a teaching and learning resource; shaping projects

around countries international students in their classroom came from; and emphasizing the

importance of drawing on international student cultural experiences without tokenizing

international students.

I’ve seen students have their assumptions questioned from all different sides. Sort of the

assumption that, I don’t know, marriage should be based on love. And then you have

someone saying, ‘Well, not in my country.’ And then everyone says, ‘Whoa! Different!’

And you can see the sort of light bulbs going off, and this is really helpful for [the subject

matter learning]. And I think for our field, this is critical. (Faculty Member, Humanities)

Faculty who perceived group work to be an effective element in their classes next modeled

behaviors for students after the grouping process. These instructors described setting a

communicative tone and purpose for CNI in order to support engagement between students.


34

But I do also try to model skills for them to work through group challenges…for instance

if there’s a group member who’s not pulling their weight, or if there’s a group member

whose communication skills seem to be posing a problem for the others…well, what could

you do about that? What kinds of steps could you take either to make it easier for her to

communicate with you or vice-versa? And so, really building this sort of group problem

solving skill set. (Faculty Member, Technical Communication)

The findings illustrate the importance of an intentionally structured classroom environment with

opportunities for interaction, reflection, and instructor support, given that not all student

respondents viewed the classroom as a comfortable or appropriate space to engage in purposeful

cross-national interactions beyond required group work (some preferred co-curricular

environments such as student organizations and clubs). In fact, without structured support and

reflection in the classroom, exposure to diversity can lead to reinforcement of negative stereotypes

on cultural others (Pettigrew, 2008). However, instructors may wish to leverage the findings of

this study to create opportunities for students to discuss specific class content by placing it into

international contexts or may specifically ask for reflections on content based on students’

everyday experiences.

Conclusion: Making Sense of CNI

This study provided data that suggests that when domestic and international students enter into

group work environments, there is a degree of reciprocal exchange that exists. The reciprocity,

however, is not a direct exchange, as domestic and international students both give and receive

differently. The finding in and of itself provides nuance and perhaps a new analytic frame for

internationalization research. Our literature review discussed outcomes of the presence of

international students on US campuses from both institutional and individual frames. Our data

suggest, however, that a third unit of analysis may be needed for studies such as ours. We suggest

that further research may be conducted at the level of the interaction itself.

The themes that emerged from our study indicate that student engagement in groups creates

a degree of exchange between participants. These exchanges can either empowering or thorny.

Zhang and Epley (2009) note that within every reciprocal exchange, there is a process of give and

take. The authors suggest that challenges emerge when individuals calculate their giving to be

more than their receiving and note that this may be inevitable because humans exist in an egotistic

frame. Intercultural communication theories (Leask & Carroll, 2011) and cultural intelligence

theories (Earley & Ang, 2003) suggest that egocentric ethnocentrism can be reduced through the

development of cultural skill and competence, which may explain why the students who felt they

benefited had appreciation of cultural dimensions (internationalized content and cultural

informants). These findings indicate that international students can indeed contribute to campus

internationalization and can be assets in group learning environments, but perhaps in ways not yet

identified in the literature. Our findings also challenge deficit-oriented perspectives sometimes

found in the literature, suggesting that international students are seen as a learning resource by


35

their domestic classmates. Likewise, domestic students were seen as a resource by international

students.

Finally, our findings also indicated that instructors play a central role in facilitating CNI

and helping students overcome associated challenges (e.g., via providing structure or support to

group work). However, we are going “beyond the present condition of ‘good’ lecturers and

‘deviant’ learners” (Tange & Jensen, 2012, p. 191), as those instructors supportive of CNI viewed

international and domestic students as resources to help each other engage with content knowledge

and facilitate deeper learning.

This micro-study of CNI across three campuses provided qualitative evidence of how

learning takes place in groups and what instructors might do to support the process. The interaction

of the three key actors in CNI (i.e., domestic students, international students, and instructors)

indicates that if any one of the parties was missing, the specific outcomes described in this article

may disappear. To this end, further investigation of CNI as a strategy for classroom and campus-

based internationalization is warranted. At the same time, the findings that emerged from this study

indicate that there are limitations to CNI and, like any pedagogical approach, there are benefits

and drawbacks to its use. Thoughtful structuring of CNI opportunities, however, may contribute

to campus internationalization strategy by providing students with broad perspectives nested in

finite, short-lived classroom-based discussion.

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38

Emergent Professional Learning Communities in Higher Education:

Integrating Faculty Development, Educational Innovation, and

Organizational Change at a Canadian College

Julie A. Mooney

University of Saskatchewan

Abstract

Centres for teaching and learning at postsecondary educational institutions in

Canada seek to serve the professional development needs of faculty members

throughout the college or university. Recognizing the limits of conventional

frameworks for faculty development, such as one-time workshops, pedagogical

conferences, and lunchtime discussion sessions, this interpretive inquiry

explores learning communities as an additional framework for serving faculty

development and cross-institutional professional development needs. The study

asks: what does it mean for faculty, educational developers, support staff, and

administrators to participate in a learning community at a college in Canada?

Data collected through individual inquiry conversations (semi-structured

interviews) and research memos were used to develop narrative descriptions

representing the participants’ respective experiences of a learning community in

a large, urban college context in Canada. These narrative descriptions offer

portraits of the meaning that learning community members made of their own

experience, revealing that the learning communities served not only as sites for

professional development, but also formed microcultures within the institution,

which, over time, influenced educational (academic) and organizational

(administrative) change, both in policy and in practice.

Introduction

This article presents and discusses the results of an interpretive inquiry into emergent professional

learning communities (PLCs) at a large, urban, Canadian college, and the influences they had at

that institution on faculty development, educational innovation, and organizational change. For the

purpose of this study, the term learning community refers to a group of people, affiliated with a

postsecondary educational institution, as employees or students, who share a common interest and

undertake to inquire about it together (Cox, 2004; Goodsell Love, 2012; Macpherson, 2007; Senge,


Journal of Teaching and Learning 12(2) J. A. Mooney

39

2006; Wenger, 1998;). The use of learning communities in education is not new, but it is not widely

applied to faculty development programming, which tends towards brief, one-time sessions that

aim to intervene on a particular teaching or curricular skill or strategy (Beach, Sorcinelli, Austin,

& Rivard, 2016).

Significance of the Study

Faculty development units, like most academic services within higher education, are increasingly

under pressure from senior leadership to show evidence of the effectiveness and impact of their

programming (Beach, Sorcinelli, Austin, & Rivard, 2016; Condon, Iverson, Manduca, Rutz, &

Willett, 2016; Schroeder, 2011). The effectiveness and impact of faculty development services are

often measured in quantitative terms. In the Canadian higher education sector, faculty learning

communities (FLCs), which meet regularly for a full academic year, ranked low on a scale of

signature approaches to faculty development (Beach et al., 2016). Only 17% of Canadian

respondents ranked FLCs in their top three approaches, while less time-consuming approaches,

such as hands-on workshops and individual consultations rated high (Beach et al., 2016). The

current study sought to better understand the quality of professional learning afforded by learning

communities, and to gain greater insight into this form of faculty development. This interpretive

inquiry revealed understandings of faculty development from wider, institutional, and integrative

perspectives.

Problem Statement and Research Question

Centres for teaching and learning in postsecondary educational institutions in Canada seek to serve

the professional development needs of faculty members throughout the college or university.

Recognizing the limitations of conventional frameworks for faculty development, such as one-

time workshops, pedagogical conferences, and lunchtime discussion sessions, this interpretive

inquiry explored learning communities (LCs), as an additional and integrative framework for

serving faculty development and cross-institutional professional development needs. The study

asked: What does it mean for faculty, educational developers, support staff, and administrators to

participate in a learning community at a college in Canada?

Inspiration for the Study

In 2009, while working as an educational developer in a centre for teaching and learning,

colleagues and I had the opportunity to hear George Kuh speak about high impact educational

practices (Kuh, 2009). Shortly thereafter, we started thinking about and discussing how learning

communities – one of Kuh’s (2009) high impact practices for students – could apply to faculty

professional learning. A disciplinary background in Peace Studies had provided me with

theoretical and practical understandings about community-building. As I designed and developed

various faculty development programs and sessions, I made efforts to cultivate community as a

Emergent Professional Learning Communities Journal of Teaching and Learning 12(2)

40

core component of these programs (Mooney, 2014). Simultaneously, faculty members at the same

institution were engaged in similar community-building efforts. Over the course of a few years,

several such communities formed at the college, both through formal faculty development

programming and as emergent learning communities.

Initially, I thought about these emergent communities as faculty learning communities,

because they had been initiated by faculty members. However, as I pursued the research discussed

in this article, these communities revealed themselves to me as inclusive of colleagues from

various professional roles, and in some cases, inclusive of students as well. As my study progressed

through semi-structured interviews with participants from these communities, my thinking about

these groupings of colleagues changed. They were not simply sites of faculty development in the

conventional professional development programming sense of the phrase; they were emergent

professional learning communities (PLCs) that had been built from the ground up by individuals

who sought out colleagues with whom to learn collaboratively about their shared curiosity or

conundrum.

Conceptual Framework

While the concept of learning as a community first appeared in colleges and universities in the

1920s, learning communities started to prove effective and to take root in higher education in the

1990s (Brownell & Swaner, 2009; Meiklejohn, 1932). Much of the literature on learning

communities in higher education contexts has focused on student or student-faculty learning

communities (Kuh, 2009; Brownell & Swaner, 2009; Price, 2005; Garrison & Anderson, 2003;

Lenning & Ebbers, 1999; Gabelnick et al., 1990). This study took a broader look at the whole

institution, through the lens of Senge’s (2006) learning organization concept. While not entirely

excluding student participation, this study focused primarily on the participation of faculty,

educational developers, staff, and administrators in learning communities. Lenning and Ebbers

(1999) highlight that applications of the learning community model have grown beyond the

classroom context:

Learning communities can be philosophically related to Deweyan principles – that

education is most successful as a social process and is deeply rooted in our understanding

of community and democracy. As we understand learning communities today, they evolved

out of cooperative and collaborative learning movements that emphasized social

interaction and active learning. Learning communities were almost always discussed in

relation to the classroom. But what was once a pedagogical tool is now being used to

transform all sorts of campus features, including classrooms, retention programs, distance

learning, residential environments, and many other structures. (p. 11)

Professors at postsecondary institutions in Canada are selected to teach based on their

subject matter expertise; seldom are they required to have prior credentials in the scholarship of

teaching and learning (Heinrich, 2014; Mooney, 2015). Their professional development as

educators is therefore of instrumental importance to the quality of learning opportunities they offer


41

students (Mooney, 2015). In Canada, postsecondary centres for teaching and learning have been

established by senior administrations with the explicit mandate to serve faculty development needs

(Mooney, 2015). Teaching and learning service units often experience low participation rates in

their faculty development programming (Heinrich, 2014; Mooney, 2015), which typically include

such offerings as new faculty orientation, course design and assessment workshops, pedagogical

discussion series, and one-one-one consultations. Despite the quality, variety, and number of

services offered by educational developers, for some centres for teaching and learning, outreach

to faculty to support their development as teachers remains challenging (Mooney, 2015).

Faculty development programs that are designed as one-time sessions do not necessarily

create conditions for deep professional learning. As an educational developer who has grappled

with these challenges, I ask myself: (a) what could teaching and learning services in postsecondary

education do to create conditions for sustained learning over time that is rooted in professional

practice? and (b) are the teachers who do not participate in teaching and learning development

opportunities finding other outlets for ongoing professional development as educators? These

questions are central to my conceptual framework, a tentative theory for the phenomenon under

investigation (Maxwell, 2005).

According to a pilot study conducted in Canada in 2014-2015, some faculty members

appear to be going elsewhere to find and create their own opportunities for ongoing professional

learning, independent of opportunities offered by centres for teaching and learning (Mooney,

2015). Some are connecting with colleagues from across or beyond their institution in what appear

to be learning communities focused on a common need, a special project, or a shared area of

interest (Mooney, 2015). These groups of collaborative, self-directed, self-starters are the types of

learning communities at the centre of the study discussed in this article.

In this inquiry, I investigated the phenomena of five learning communities within a

Canadian college that, at the time of data collection, were generally viewed, by administrators,

faculty, educational developers, and support staff at the college, as successful initiatives because

of either their longevity, their number of active or affiliated members, the impact they were having

on student learning, and/or their influence on the learning culture of the institution. Of course, they

did not start out that way. In their respective emergences, they formed organically and tentatively,

forging their paths and collective identities over time. Select members of these learning

communities were invited to share their respective experiences of a learning community (LC), how

they had made meaning of their experiences in it, and how their participation in the LC had

informed their professional practice.

Methodology

This study used an interpretive inquiry methodology. “In some scholarly communities, interpretive

approaches have become explicitly associated with a postmodernist perspective” (Thorne, 2016,

p. 223). This study asserted the subjectivity of the participants’ accounts and of the researcher’s

interpretations. As a methodology, interpretive inquiry emphasizes the situated individual, uses

relatively small sample sizes, and requires that the particular meanings reported by participants be


42

set within their contexts (Cohen, Manion, & Morrison, 2011). Findings are not meant to be

generalized but may offer insights that are relevant in other contexts (Butler-Kisber, 2010). These

methodological qualities were upheld in this study.

Research Ethics

This study was reviewed and approved by the research ethics boards at my parent institution and

at the college that served as the site for this study. Consent forms were administered and signed

by informed and voluntary participants prior to data collection. Subsequently, a transparent,

communicative practice (in conversation and in writing) for ensuring ongoing consent was used

throughout this study. With each step in the process, participants were informed of their rights to

withdraw and of the process for withdrawal of participation. This study received no funding.

Methods of Inquiry

This study was conducted at a large, urban, publicly-funded college in Canada. A purposive sample

of colleagues who had recently participated in an LC was selected. Ten research participants

represented five learning communities and four employment classifications: faculty members,

support staff, educational developers, and administrators. In order to protect individual and

institutional identity in this study, the learning communities were given pseudonyms, namely: (a)

Sciences, Arts, & Culture Collaborating (SACC); (b), Faculty Writing Community (FWC); (c)

Indigenizing Education Community (IEC); (d) Integrating Pedagogy and Classroom Design

(IPaCD); and (e) Universal Design for Learning Community (UDLC). Similarly, each participant

was assigned a code (e.g., A1 represented Administrator 1).

As seen in Figure 1, in this interpretive inquiry process, data was collected through

individual inquiry conversations (semi-structured interviews) and research memos in order to

develop narrative vignettes representing the participants’ respective experiences of an LC. A set

of guiding questions was developed for the inquiry conversations, which were audio-recorded and

transcribed. Transcripts were stripped of the researcher’s voice, sub-headings were added, and

acronyms were expanded. These revised transcripts were sent to their respective research

participant for member checking (Carlson, 2010).

The participant-approved texts were reviewed, annotated, and coded for units of meaning,

identified as themes. A total of 27 themes were grouped into five categories: (a) the nature of an

LC; (b) LC motivations and goals; (c) participant motivations for joining an LC; (d) unintended

outcomes; and (e) constraints and opportunities. The themes were repeated across many

transcripts, demonstrating saturation in the data (Beitin, 2012). Using the language of the research

participants, and referring to the research memos, the author crafted narrative vignettes for each

theme. The narrative vignettes were then distilled into statements of phenomena, which became

the thematic findings of the study.


43

Figure 1: The interpretive inquiry process of data collection, processing, and analysis

methods used in the study.

Thematic Findings

In this section, a selection of the thematic findings is presented, with some accompanying narrative

vignettes, in order to draw a portrait of the LCs in this study. This portrait will be distilled further

in subsequent sections in which the major findings, the author’s interpretations, and the policy and

practice implications arising from these findings are discussed.

The thematic findings, written in the author’s own words and based on the narrative

vignettes, address succinctly the overarching research question posed in this study: What does it

mean for faculty, educational developers, support staff, and administrators to participate in a

learning community at a college in Canada? Concurrently, the narrative vignettes respond to the

research question in more detail and in the words of the research participants. The thematic

findings are organized using the 27 themes that emerged from the data, grouped into five categories

(for a comprehensive list of these five categories and 27 themes, see Appendix A.) The selection

of thematic findings statements and narrative vignettes that follows relate specifically to the

context of the Canadian college at the centre of this inquiry. Although the thematic findings

statements are written in terms of learning communities, they must not be read as generalizations

about all learning communities.

Category 1: The Nature of a Learning Community

Collaboration and co-design. Learning community members work together, and in so

doing create new knowledge that could not have been created by any one individual member on

their own.


44

Degrees of participation. Varying degrees of participation are critical to sustaining a

learning community, as participants in the core, periphery, and penumbra help the learning

community to achieve its many goals (see Figure 2).

Peer mentoring. Learning community members learn from each other and support one

another in mutual, give-and-take relationships.

Interdisciplinarity. The interdisciplinarity of learning communities responds to the

complexities of contemporary societal challenges. Effective interdisciplinary learning

communities need one or more translators to draw connections between disciplines, as well as the

willingness of all participants to learn to think extra-disciplinarily¬—outside the norms and

paradigms of their own fields of expertise.

Figure 2. Degrees of participation in an LC with a large, diverse membership.

Productive and goal-oriented. In their early stages of development, learning communities

are product- and goal-oriented because members are looking for practical results and may feel they

need to prove themselves worthy recipients of support and funding. More established learning

communities that have made significant contributions and earned a level of legitimacy or

recognition tend to shift to a more process-oriented approach. These phenomena are not seen in

opposition, but some learning communities tend more towards productivity and others tend

towards a process-orientation.

Shared values. Learning communities allow shared values to emerge among their

participants. Once normative, shared values are identifying features of a learning community.

Without being directive or prescriptive, the shared values signal to new members what the learning


45

community cares about and how it functions. The finest of their collective work comes from a

learning community that shares foundational values.

Research or evidence-based. Learning communities are sites of inquiry where researchers

and practitioners learn from one another to improve practice and to ground research in a particular

context.

Organic emergent process. The establishment of learning communities is hard to engineer

or direct. Successful learning communities recognize a gap and respond to it at a time when the

broader community is ready for that kind of change. Learning communities bring together a core

group of people who create a safe space for exploration and peer-to-peer learning. They use non-

linear, organic processes to emerge as a cohesive community.

Narrative Vignette 1

We know that successful learning communities have something to do with recognizing gaps

and harnessing needed expertise to respond to the gaps. It’s also about finding the right

time when the broader community is ready or open to potential change. It involves a core

group of people, who believe in the goals and intentions of the emergent learning

community. And there needs to be a safe space, that is not overly structured, to allow for

creative ideas to surface, for people to follow a tangent and see where it leads, and for

people to be influenced by each other. The emergent nature of successful learning

communities means their members have to be able to live with ambiguity and uncertainty,

at least some of the time. (Educational Developer and Faculty Member)

Sub-culture or microculture. Learning communities are a point of connection for

colleagues within a large institution. Connections formed in learning communities foster a greater

sense of connection to and pride in the institution. Over time, learning communities within a large

institution become microcultures (Mårtensson, Roxå, and Stensaker, 2014; Roxå and Mårtensson,

2015). Several learning communities within a large institution become a network of microcultures

that influences the operational culture and the culture of innovation within the institution (Roxå

and Mårtensson, 2009) and forges a path for new learning communities and microcultures to

develop.


We always need to consider the system that is creating the right conditions – multiple

parallel factors, such as the philosophical and financial support of the senior leadership,

and simultaneously the interest and willingness of colleagues to inquire together, – for the

success of our learning communities. Without any of these right elements within the system,

we may not get the same kind of result. If our system was void of other learning

communities that had their own nexuses, we probably wouldn’t have the kind of impact

that each community has on its own, or now can have. Our communities are drawing on

microcultures of people who are willing to engage in something that is bigger than

themselves. If there were just one learning community in the institution, it would not

constitute a phenomenon, and it would likely have little impact compared to the impact all


46

these learning communities are now having on the way we operate and innovate at the

college. (Faculty Member)

Category 2: Learning Community Motivation/Goal

Improving practices. Learning communities attract people who are interested in and

committed to improving teaching practices, in order to improve student learning.


We see that a small, well-developed, engaged community within the college can enrich the

college, and create safer, more inclusive, more engaging, effective, or exciting learning

experiences for students, which then starts to influence our organizational culture. […]

Small groups of colleagues have found each other around a shared interest, frustration,

conundrum, or vision and they’ve gone about pursuing it together. Along the way, they’ve

needed to do some learning, in order to achieve their goals. (Administrator)

Category 3: Participant Motivations for Joining Learning Community

Belonging, trusted colleagues, group identity. Learning communities create mutually

supportive environments in which members share professional highs and lows. Strong collegial

connections between learning community members lead to more effective professional learning

and development. Learning communities develop a cohesive group identity through common

language and group norms that emerge over time. Learning communities are a site for deeper

connection and a sense of belonging for professionals within a large educational institution.


My participation in a learning community has really changed how I feel about working at

the college. I feel more connected and grounded here. There was a time when I questioned

if this college was the right place for me. Now that I’m involved in the learning community,

I feel a great sense of pride being a part of this college. I know I’m where I belong. I wear

my college sweatshirt with pride and I let my students know that. It’s important for all of

us to get involved and to feel connected. (Faculty Member)

Category 4: Unintended Outcomes

Professional development. Although not an initial intention when joining their learning

communities, in hindsight, members recognize their learning community experience served as a

site for professional growth and development. Learning community participation inspires further

professional development pursuits.

New professional identity. Learning community members bring different identities,

perspectives, and practices into their learning community, and, in relationship, influence each

other. Some develop new professional identities, becoming boundary-crossers.

Gain self-confidence. Support staff report gains in self-confidence as a result of

participation in a learning community with faculty members and/or administrators. Learning

communities that include faculty, support staff, educational developers, and administrators are


47

breaking down the walls between these employment classifications to build authentic collegial

relationships across differences in expertise and role.


I used to find it a little intimidating talking to the Academic Dean or a Professor. That

always made me nervous because my level of education is not what theirs is. I've always

shied away from formal discussions with people in those positions. As we all got to know

each other in the learning community, I came to see that we are just people working on a

project together. I feel genuinely respected by the faculty leaders. I would have been much

more uncomfortable speaking up earlier on; I think I've benefited from participating in the

learning community meetings and being encouraged to contribute my ideas. The learning

community has definitely helped me develop my self-confidence. It’s an important aspect

of the learning community because we’re breaking down the walls between us. (Support

Staff)

Category 5: Constraints and Opportunities

Champions of the work of learning communities. Because the innovative projects of

learning communities push the boundaries and norms of the institution, they need senior leaders

to champion their work in word and deed, through policy, advocacy, practices, and funding.


For learning communities to succeed, they need to be initiated from the bottom, they have

to have financial support from the top, and also a clear statement from senior management

saying they believe learning communities are important, and then, eventually, the influence

of the learning communities will move to the middle ranks. It’s got to be both bottom-up

and top-down. (Faculty Member and Educational Developer)

Financial support for learning communities. Learning communities are functioning on

year-to-year funding from a variety of sources including faculty release time from the college,

student success project funding, research grant funds, and project funds from external sources. To

be able to implement multi-year and increasingly complex programs, learning communities need

sustained operational funding.

Connect learning communities to strategic plan. To secure sustained operational

funding, learning communities are working to include the goals and vision of their projects in the

next iteration of the institutional strategic plan.

Discussion of Major Findings

The learning communities in this study emerged as inclusive gatherings of colleagues from across

employment classifications and roles. These diverse colleagues with shared curiosities initiated

the learning communities, which served as sites for professional development for faculty, support

staff, educational developers, and administrators. The data in this interpretive inquiry showed that


48

once a critical mass of learning communities was established, they organically formed what some

research participants—and Roxä & Märtensson (2015)—refer to as microcultures within the

institution. According to participants in this study, these microcultures then influenced educational

and organizational policies and practices. The diverse experiences shared in the inquiry

conversations of this study led the researcher to understand this collection or network of learning

communities as a complex rhizomatic cluster of connected, non-hierarchical roots and stems

(Lather, 1993) that sprouted throughout the college, transforming the institutional culture from a

primary focus on credential-granting toward a learning organization (Cox, 2001; Senge, 2006).

This study found that the rhizome of learning communities (a) supported faculty and professional

development, (b) promoted educational innovations, and (c) effected organizational change.

Faculty and professional development. Although it was not their main goal, high quality

professional learning was achieved when colleagues in the learning communities were wrapped

up in a complex project that required they learn or build new knowledge together. This LC model

thus resulted in faculty and professional development as a by-product of passionate, project-based,

peer engagement.


Sometimes in the learning community meetings we would engage in pretty vigorous

debates, from very different disciplinary perspectives. It took some thinking and re-

thinking, but eventually I started to see that my own perspective was limited; then I found

I was opening myself to a broader view of our role as educators. It helped that when we

got into these oppositional discussions we found ways of laughing at our own narrow

thinking. (Educational Developer)

Recognizing the diverse faculty development needs within the academy, the results of this

study have reinforced the importance of supporting faculty-driven and staff-driven learning

communities as significant sites for professional learning across roles, disciplines, and

departments. Faculty development units may wish to explore how they can participate in and

support the emergence of learning communities within their institutions. While faculty learning

communities, which are exclusive to faculty members, are a fruitful format for faculty

development (Tovar, Jukier, Ferris, & Cardoso, 2015; Cox, 2004), engaging in and supporting the

emergence of professional learning communities opens opportunities for educational developers

and faculty development service units to participate in cross-institutional, integrative approaches

to faculty development.

Educational innovation. Learning communities in this study were powerful sites for

pushing the college in new educational directions, influencing decisions about the allocation of

special project resources and faculty release time funds, and gradually shifting the college culture.

The findings demonstrated that once educators are informed and knowledgeable about scholarly

teaching and high impact pedagogical practices, they feel morally and socially compelled to

implement these practices in support of student learning.


49


It wasn’t as if everyone was starting from zero. One of the things we learned in the

community is that we were already practising some of these scholarly teaching approaches

without realizing it. By exploring these pedagogies in the learning community, we were

deepening our existing practices, acquiring the language to identify what we were doing,

and gaining understanding about the benefits of these approaches for student learning.

(Faculty Member)


College should not just be about passing students through courses and issuing diplomas.

Both students and faculty in our learning community are pushing the learning boundaries;

they're not stagnant at all. They're all thinking and learning all the time. I understand

where the attitude comes from, when people treat us like a whimsical pet project, especially

when resources are tight. People don’t want money to be wasted. But we see this as money

being invested into transforming education. And we’re in it for the long haul. (Support

Staff and Faculty Member)

Based on findings from this study, participation in an emergent professional learning

community (PLC) is an effective way for colleagues to develop proficiency and expertise in

scholarly teaching and high impact pedagogies. Emergent PLCs are indeed sites for educational

innovation; that is, emergent PLCs enable the development of new, locally-relevant, scholarly

teaching practices in support of improved student learning experiences. Institutions of higher

education can reasonably expect transformational results from investing in and supporting

emergent PLCs as one avenue towards educational innovation. Benefits beyond educational

innovation, such as cross-institutional collaboration, increased employee sense of belonging, and

increased pride in the institution can also be expected.

Operational Change.


I think the college is being challenged to see what kind of institutional change is possible.

I think the inspiration for that discussion to even take place is coming from all the learning

communities. We’ve reached a critical mass of learning communities at the college that

are now speaking loudly enough that the college is noticing what a positive impact learning

communities are having on student learning. Our learning communities are gradually

influencing a shift in the institution and its culture. (Faculty Member)


It’s only recently, looking at the network of learning communities that has emerged at the

college, that we are starting to make sense of it all by calling each group a learning

community. Previously, we did not have the kind of paradigmatic structure of the learning

communities to say, “Oh, that’s how we do things.” We started it on a small scale in many

different places, throughout the whole institution. When we look back now, we see at a


50

certain point, there were enough initiatives organizing themselves either consciously or

unconsciously as learning communities, that they shifted the culture of the institution. Now

we’re thinking about innovative initiatives within the framework of learning communities.

(Administrator and Faculty Member)

Through the relationships of trust and the significant conversations (see Narrative

Vignettes 10 and 11; Roxå and Mårtensson, 2009) that occurred in the emergent PLCs in this

study, the educational focus, organizational structures, and culture of the college started to shift.

When they saw the beneficial effects that learning communities were having at the college in terms

of faculty and professional development and educational innovations in support of improved

student learning, senior administrators were inspired to consider re-organizing the college using a

learning communities model. However, this initiative raised a conundrum: How can the college

institutionalize learning communities in order to better support and sustain their functioning

without compromising the strength of the grassroots, self-organizing nature of learning

communities?

For learning communities to emerge and thrive, support from senior administrators is

needed—most especially support for implementing relevant college-wide organizational changes.

The most important changes needed are increased flexibility and responsiveness from operational

systems (e.g., physical space), scheduling, information technology, hiring policies, and funding

cycles. To support the emergence of PLCs, coordination and alignment of service units with

educational (pedagogical) innovation, long-term, sustained financial support, and strategic plans

and policies that recognize and institutionalize emergent PLCs are critical organizational changes.

Flexible, responsive organizational systems will facilitate the development and continuing success

of learning communities.

Conclusion

Learning communities in this study served as sites for professional development, formed

microcultures within the institution, and through a rhizomatic cluster of non-hierarchical

microcultures influenced improvements to educational and organizational policies and practices.

As Cox (2017) reports on the organizational and cultural change agents that emerge from faculty

learning communities, in this interpretive inquiry the rhizome of learning communities

transformed the institutional culture from one focused primarily on credential-granting toward a

genuine learning organization.

Integration of educational development practices within faculty- and staff-initiated

professional learning communities significantly benefits the institution by effectively responding

to the professional development needs of all actors. This cross-institutional, integrative approach,

using a project-based emergent professional learning communities model, opens new pathways for

thinking about and designing faculty development programming. If faculty development aims to

support and celebrate a culture of scholarly teaching and learning across the institution, perhaps


51

the one-time teaching strategies workshop and the singular one-on-one consultation approaches to

faculty development are insufficient.

Through this study, I have been compelled to reflect on the influence that a groundswell of

emergent PLCs and their corresponding microcultures can have within an institution. I am drawn

towards faculty development practice that espouses an integrative philosophy. This study has

revealed and reinforced that when colleagues who share a scholarly and/or practitioner curiosity

or challenge come together across roles, disciplines, and divisions, the quality of professional peer-

to-peer learning that occurs has profound and sustained effects on individual professional practices

(Roxå and Mårtensson, 2009). When several of these groups of colleagues emerge within a

postsecondary institution, they have the potential and power to transform the institution’s

professional development, educational, and organizational cultures.

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http://www.mdrc.org/sites/default/files/full_421.pdf


53

Appendix A: Thematic Findings by Category

Category Theme

1. The nature of a learning

community

1. Collaboration and co-design

2. Degrees of participation

3. Peer mentoring and exchange or give and take

4. Diversity of participation

5. Interdisciplinary

6. Productive and goal-oriented

7. Share similar values

8. Research or evidence-based

9. Organic emergent process

10. Self-selected participants

11. Sub-culture or microculture

2. Learning community motivations

and goals

12. Improving practices

13. Improving student experience, complementing

classroom learning, or learning as fun

14. Create and provide resources or connection to

information and networks

15. Institutional cultural change

16. Educational change

17. Systems change

18. Phase founding leaders out of key leadership

3. Participant motivations for joining

learning community

19. Interest in topic or process

20. Belonging, having trusted colleagues, or sense of

group identity

4. Unintended outcomes 21. Professional development

22. New professional identity

23. Gain self-confidence

5. Constraints and opportunities 24. Champions of the work of learning communities

25. Financial support to learning communities

26. Teachers as independent or autonomous

27. Connect learning communities to strategic plan


Vol. 12, No. 2 (December 2018), pp. 54–69


54

The Effects of Holistic Diagnostic Feedback Intervention on

Improving Struggling Readers’ Reading Skills

Dr. Edith H. van der Boom

University of Toronto

Dr. Eunice Eunhee Jang

University of Toronto

Abstract

The present study examined ways in which young readers respond to customized

diagnostic feedback interventions. Individualized feedback and intervention

support were provided to six junior elementary students whose profiles were

developed based on multiple data sources which considered students’ interests,

learning preferences, and reading readiness levels. A multiple case study

approach was applied to examine how each of the students uniquely responded

to the diagnostic feedback intervention. The study findings show that providing

students with individualized feedback that is skill-based and provides strategies

to target chosen areas gives them a far greater understanding of their strengths

and weaknesses and how to best target these areas over simply providing an

achievement level. Assessment which informs students’ current skills of reading

comprehension can support students’ learning. Intervention that moves between

teacher and student allows for the adjustment of students’ cognitive and

metacognitive processes. Providing students with skills and strategies through

feedback allows them to increase their self-regulation and motivation to learn.

Introduction

The purpose of the present study was to investigate junior elementary school students’ reading

skill profiles through cognitive diagnostic assessment and further to examine the potential of

diagnostic feedback intervention for struggling readers. We focused on junior elementary school

students because it is during this pivotal period that students have moved from learning to read to

reading to learn (Best, Floyd, & McNamara, 2008; Jitendra, Burgess, & Gajria, 2011). More

importantly, academic achievement gaps among students begin to grow during this period whereas

their level of literacy engagement tends to decline (Eccles, 1993; Pressley, 2002). There is an


Journal of Teaching and Learning 12(2) E. H. van der Boom & E. E. Jang

55

increasing need to identify students who struggle with reading comprehension skills and provide

them with a more targeted intervention.

Understanding individual students’ strengths and weaknesses in reading comprehension

skills requires detailed diagnostic information beyond interpretations based on aggregated total

test scores. Cognitive diagnostic assessment (CDA) aims to fill this gap by combining the cognitive

psychology of learning with advanced statistical scoring methods to provide dependable diagnostic

skill profiles (Embretson, 1998; Jang, 2005, 2007; Leighton & Gierl, 2007a, 2007b; Nichols, 1994;

Pellegrino & Chudowsky, 2003). Research shows that when students are given feedback, they

become motivated (Black & Wiliam, 1998); however, little research offers insight into how

students with different profiles respond to diagnostic feedback intervention.

The present study was the second phase of large-scale research project. The first phase of

this study looked at how cognitive diagnosis modeling could be used to characterize the literacy

skill mastery profiles of over 120,000 Grade 6 students in Ontario public schools (Jang, Dunlop,

Wagner, Kim, & Gu, 2013). The purpose of the second phase was to examine ways in which

students respond to diagnostic feedback generated from their reading skills profiles and further the

extent to which their psychological attributes (e.g., goal orientation, perceived ability) mediate

their responses to the feedback (see Jang, Dunlop, Park, & van der Boom, 2015). The present paper

pays attention to six struggling readers who received seven diagnostic feedback intervention

sessions over eight weeks. Specifically, by taking a multiple case study approach, this paper is

intended to provide thick descriptions about how individual struggling readers uniquely respond

to diagnostic feedback intervention. The present study was guided by the following research

questions:

1. How does diagnostic feedback inform students in setting and monitoring learning

goals?

2. How does intervention bring about changes in ways in which students’ approach

learning tasks?

3. How does the use of diagnostic feedback together with intervention direct students to

self-assess their own reading ability?

Literature Review

Reading Struggles in Junior Elementary School Years

Successful academic performance relies heavily on a student’s ability to not only decode

but to be able to comprehend what they are reading (Eason & Cutting, 2009). As students progress

to higher grades in school, some students face challenges in comprehending increasingly complex

academic text with abstract vocabulary (Cirino et al., 2013). Reading comprehension is a

multifaceted undertaking that requires one to use many different cognitive processes that are both

automatic and strategic (Cain, Oakhill, & Bryant, 2004). For example, readers may operate

multiple cognitive skills, such as finding the main idea, identifying important supporting details,

making predictions, drawing inferences, and summarizing information (Jitendra et al., 2011).

Improving Struggling Readers’ Reading Skills Journal of Teaching and Learning 12(2)

56

Since students who struggle with reading comprehension may or may not have difficulty with all

of these skills, it is important to understand what kind of challenges they experience and what kind

of support they need (van den Broek, White, Kendeou, & Carlson, 2009). Besides the ability to

decode words, reading requires the continuous monitoring of comprehension of increasingly

complex academic text, and self-regulation of reading strategies to meet the reading goals set out

(Alexander & Jetton, 2000).

Effective reading comprehension for young adolescents also requires the development of

the metacognitive ability to monitor and self-regulate their comprehension processes (Pazzaglia,

De Beni, & Cacciò, 1999). The monitoring of reading comprehension is essential for the reader to

be able to both plan and evaluate the information that is available to them such that they can make

sense of what they are reading (Kolić-Vehovec & Bajšanski, 2006). Young readers tend to have

difficulty self-identifying inconsistencies in their text comprehension (Kolić-Vehovec &

Bajšanski, 2006) and yet regardless, less proficient young readers tend to overestimate their

reading ability (Anderson & Beal, 1995; Jang et al., 2016; Zabrucky & Ratner, 1986). During

adolescence years the correlation between students perceived use of reading strategies and their

actual comprehension increases (Kolić-Vehovec & Bajšanski, 2006).

Goal Orientation

Along with students’ metacognitive ability to self-regulate their own reading

comprehension processes, their orientations to learning and reading influence how they approach

reading text. According to Dweck’s (1986) goal orientation theory, learners with a mastery goal

orientation tend to enjoy tasks that are challenging and strive to enhance their knowledge and skills

with a focus on understanding. These learners are interested in improving their own knowledge

and skills and tend to compare their achievement with their own prior achievement. They are open

to constructive feedback that helps them make gains in their learning. When reading tasks fail to

challenge mastery-oriented readers, these students may lose interest in the tasks. On the other hand,

learners with a performance-prove goal orientation focus on how they demonstrate their ability

compared to others. They like to demonstrate their competence to others and tend to use others to

compare themselves to. These performance-prove readers can be academically as successful as

mastery-oriented students; however, when tasks have high stakes and are too challenging, they

may not persist as well as expected. Meanwhile, learners with a performance-avoid orientation

avoid learning tasks due to their concern about failure. These students tend to mask their emotional

anxiety and frustration resulting from reading difficult text with boredom and disengagement.

Students of each orientation may share equal ability, but they show significant differences in

response to challenging reading tasks and diagnostic interventions. Effective diagnostic

interventions require a deep understanding of individual students’ orientations to reading as well

as their cognitive and metacognitive capabilities.

Diagnostic Feedback-Mediated Interventions

Feedback is described by Winne and Butler (1994) as “information with which a learner

can confirm, add to, and overwrite, tune, or restructure information in memory, whether that


57

information is domain knowledge, meta-cognitive knowledge, beliefs about self and tasks, or

cognitive tactics and strategies” (p. 5740). Previous research on feedback has been predominantly

focused on feedback type and feedback delivery mode (Jang, 2014). Further, feedback also tended

to be treated as a fixed stimulus to which learners respond uniformly (Ferris, 2003). Evaluative

feedback in the form of a mark, comment, or object (e.g., ‘good,’ ‘perfect,’ stickers, smiley face)

is still commonly found in students’ workbooks despite their detrimental effects on the

development of students’ intrinsic motivation (Black & Wiliam, 1998; Chappuis & Stiggins,

2002). The purpose of feedback needs to focus on having students become more committed,

responsible and effective learners by engaging in metacognitive strategies that support self-

regulated learning such as goal setting, monitoring, and reflection (Afflerbach, 2016; Black &

Jones, 2006).

Dialogue between teacher and student needs to include “questioning, answering, adjusting,

listening, demonstrating, observing, imitating, criticizing—all are chained together so that one

intervention or response can trigger or build on another” (Schön, 1987, p. 114). Feedback that

offers scaffolding through mediated interventions provides a student with the answers of the how

or why of learning (Clark, 2012). This notion of mediation, which is well recognized by dynamic

assessment (Kozulin & Garb, 2004; Lantolf & Poehner, 2004), stresses the importance of

interactions between an assessor and a learner. Wang (2011) notes that “with consolidated teaching

activities and assessment, learners can achieve better learning by interacting with teachers. During

dynamic assessment, teachers can help learners improve learning effectiveness by providing them

with support” (p. 1063).

Dynamically-mediated assessment through diagnostic feedback may well serve the needs

of struggling readers, as its main feature is the emergence of cognitive functions through

collaborative interaction (Kozulin & Garb, 2004; Lantolf & Poehner, 2004). Teachers can help

learners improve learning effectiveness by providing them with support (Wang, 2011). Student-

teacher reading conferences are shown to elicit more authentic student responses, address student

needs better, and provide deeper conversation about what has been read (Porath, 2014).

Furthermore, Kletxien and Bednar (1990) report that oral feedback in dynamic assessment can

benefit struggling readers as it helps them become more confident and responsible for their own

learning. Zimmerman (2000) identifies three phases of self-regulated learning (SRL): the first is

the planning phase in which learners analyze tasks, set goals, and plan behaviors; the second phase

is the performance phase in which learners control and monitor their behaviors, emotions, and

motivation; and the third phase is the evaluation phase in which learners self-reflect based on

feedback, which can further support students to use self-regulatory strategies to internalize external

feedback (Bandura, 1986; Black & Wiliam, 2009; Irving, 2007). Diagnostic feedback delivered

through mediated interventions may help learners focus their efforts on goal-driven learning

(Ames, 1992). To our knowledge, there is little research on how young readers struggling with

reading comprehension respond to diagnostic feedback mediated through interventions. The

present study was intended to fill in this gap by seeking rich accounts of young readers’ responses

to diagnostic feedback.


58

Method

Measures

Reading achievement assessment. The reading achievement assessment included 32

multiple-choice reading questions based on five separate passages. The measure had been used in

a larger-scale study (Jang, Dunlop, Wagner, Kim, & Gu, 2013) that profiled over 120,000 Grade

6 students in Ontario schools. The following six literacy skills were identified and used to develop

diagnostic feedback student reports: (a) comprehending the details of the text, (b) understanding

the purpose of the text, (c) making predictions, (d) using English grammar properly, (e) using

vocabulary properly, and (f) summarizing. Reading skill profiles were developed based on the

conjunctive Reparameterized Unified Model (Jang, 2005; Roussos et al., 2007) which was retro-

fit to the Ontario provincial literacy assessment data in Phase 1. Forty-four students, including six

intervention participants, received holistic diagnostic reading profile reports.

Diagnostic reading profile report. A report was created for each individual student. As

shown in Figure 1, the mastery status of each skill was presented using a bar graph for each of the

six literacy skills assessed. There was no numerical score in the students’ reports. A walking man

figure was used to indicate the level of skill mastery determined through the application of CDA,

and a smiling face figure was used to indicate the student’s self-assessment of the same skill. The

blue portion of the bars indicated how much of the Grade 6 curriculum the student had learned.

The red portion of the bar indicated how much Grade 6 curriculum they still needed to learn. Below

each graph, students were given a list of things they would be able to do if they had fully mastered

this skill. Students were given the opportunity to provide a written reflection of what they thought

about this information. The report also included information about students’ goal orientations as

well as a learning contract that prompted them to plan for future learning.

Self-assessment questionnaire. The self-assessment questionnaire asked students to self-

assess the mastery of six reading skills measured in the reading achievement assessment. The

questionnaire was comprised of 12 items (2 items per skill) with a 5-point Likert scale (1=not at

all true, 5=very true). The questionnaire was administered twice, before and after the intervention.

Goal orientation questionnaire. A goal orientation questionnaire was constructed based

on three factors: performance-prove, performance-avoid, and mastery (Dweck, 1986; Midgley et

al., 2000). Our goal orientation (GO) questionnaire surveyed students’ orientations as well as their

perceptions about their parents’ and teacher’s goal orientations. We modified subscales from

Midgley et al.’s (2000) Pattern of Adaptive Learning Scales (PALS) so that the GO items were

appropriate for young children. The questionnaire had a total of 29 items measuring students’ own

goal orientations and their perceived parents’ and teachers’ goal orientations.

Data Collection

Forty-four students in the second phase of the study completed all the measures listed

above. They also received diagnostic reading profile reports. The students’ reading skill profiles

were constructed based on the application of a cognitive diagnostic model to provincial reading


59

I can make connections when I read text

In general, with the mastery of this skill students are able to:

• Predict what will happen next based on the evidence in a story

• Relate what they read to other stories, authors, or events

• Connect what they read to their own experience

• Draw appropriate conclusions after they read

What do you think of your achievement of this skill? Please share your thoughts by writing

them below.

___________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________

Figure 1: A sample section from the reading skill mastery report.

assessment data. Each individual student’s reading skill profile contained the posterior probability

of mastery (PPM) for each of the six skills. We also created students’ perceived ability profiles

from their responses to the self-assessment questionnaire. Discrepancy scores were calculated by

subtracting the perceived skill mastery score from its PPM estimate. The profiles also included

students’ goal orientation profiles based on their responses to the goal orientation questionnaire.

Factor scores associated with mastery, performance-prove and performance-avoid orientations

from the application of exploratory factor analysis to a larger data set that included an additional

group of Grade 6 students (n=92). Based on composite profiles that included skill mastery,

perceived ability, and goal orientations, we recruited six students whose profiles showed weak

skill mastery levels, performance orientations, and tendency to overestimate own ability.

Study Participants

Six students were selected from the group of 44 students who participated in phase two of

the study based on the results of the literacy assessment, self-assessed ability level, and mastery

skill profile. As shown in Table 1, students selected for intervention tended to not master any of


60

the six skills, overestimated their skill proficiency, and had a mastery and performance-prove goal

orientation. Pseudonyms have been used to represent each student.

Table 1

Students’ Pre-Intervention Profiles

Student Skill mastery Estimation of skill

proficiencies

Goal orientation

Erik no skills mastered overestimated mastery

Ken no skills mastered overestimated performance-

prove

Raymond no skills mastered overestimated performance-prove

and mastery

Rose no skills mastered overestimated mastery

Seth mastered implicit

understanding

overestimated performance-prove

Stewart mastered explicit

understanding, implicit

understanding, making

inferences, and grammar

underestimated mastery and

performance-avoid

These students were withdrawn from class for approximately half an hour for a total of

seven sessions. The researcher for these sessions had 28 years of experience teaching in both the

regular classroom and in special education settings. Each session provided an opportunity for

students to consider their learning profile, set learning goals, choose and practice reading strategies

meant to help them meet their goals, and then reflect on their learning. Throughout the sessions,

mediation was provided for students to work on specific reading skills they identified as goals,

monitor their progress by revisiting their goals, and self-assess their reading skills. We created a

pool of graded reading passages and a set of reading comprehension questions associated with

each passage for the intervention. Each student chose a passage of interest and worked on the text

and the associated questions over two sessions. All sessions were audio-taped and later transcribed

for further analysis.

Data Analysis

A multiple case study approach was applied to examine how each of the students uniquely

responded to the diagnostic feedback intervention. Qualitative data analysis was done by reading


61

through the transcribed audio recordings of each session. Each transcript was analyzed, and

common themes were identified. Specifically, research questions were considered for each

participant and results shared through narratives of individual students’ unique responses to the

intervention.

Results

How Does Diagnostic Feedback Inform Students in Setting and Monitoring Learning Goals?

The connections that the students made with the diagnostic reports proved to be essential

in this study. The reports provided individualized information about each students’ strengths and

areas of need such that the students set appropriate goals that they could successfully achieve.

Although the reading reports given to students focused on achievement of skills and not marks,

some students focused on the marks rather than the skills. For example, when given the diagnostic

report, Erik commented that he was surprised by his marks in explicit understanding, implicit

understanding, inferencing, and grammar. He expressed that they did not reflect his ability.

However, his low achievement in vocabulary and summarizing were not surprising to him as he

confirmed that he struggled with these skills. Other students focused on the next steps in their

learning as they focused on the skills they needed to improve. Rose for example, often commented

how she appreciated the feedback in the report as it helped her know what to focus on in the

upcoming year.

Overall, the responses given by students about their reports were ones of surprise. For the

most part, students were surprised at how poorly they had done in their achievement of each skill.

Specifying skills that are needed for reading comprehension made them more aware of what to

focus on when setting learning goals for themselves. In response to the diagnostic report, students

were also asked to comment on their goal orientation and what skills they wanted to work on in

the upcoming weeks. All students were in agreement with their goal orientation as stated in their

reports. They acknowledged that they enjoyed learning. When asked which skills they wanted to

work on in the next few weeks, all students identified summarizing, vocabulary, and/or grammar.

Students found success in meeting their goals and they gained confidence in their abilities.

During the final intervention session, students were asked if setting goals based on their

report was helpful. Their responses indicated that they used the goals to improve their skills and

thereby achieve the goals they set out for themselves. For example, Erik shared, “ummm, well I

used those goals to achieve it, and…umm…I was working through it and I got better at them.”

Rose expressed her growth in the area of grammar and using paragraphs:

Well, when I said proper grammar and now I am like you know, learning better even though

we are not doing grammar at the moment in our classes but when we have to do

assignments so I am looking over my work for grammar. Umm, well also now when I am

doing assignments, I know when to put paragraphs. When subject changes you need to put

a new paragraph.


62

Ken said that seeing his goals during the school day helped him stay focused on working towards

them. He shared that he kept his goals at the front of his binder where he would see them

throughout the day. This visual encouraged him to work towards the goals he had set out for

himself. Seth expressed that creating goals for himself helped him become a better learner. He

shared, “I wrote the goals that I want to work on and I became better in what I want to do. They

were helpful.” Seth also talked about asking his mom to help him meet his goals when he was

working at home: “and then like when I after that I go home like I try to put goals in about what I

understand in class and then like my mom could help me do action plans.”

After completing the literacy assessment, it was the feedback, through the use of the

reading skill profiles, that provided learners with positive aspects and areas of improvement in

their understanding of performance. The reading skill profiles generated from cognitive diagnostic

modeling served as feedback to provide learners with information that helped them reflect on their

learning in order to create learning goals and take action to meet those goals.

How Does Intervention Bring About Changes in Ways in Which Students’ Approach Learning

Tasks?

The study results showed differing degrees of growth among all the students who

participated. Overall, students expressed more confidence in the tasks at hand as they implemented

learning strategies that they had found effective. Students became more aware of how their efforts

positively led to their learning outcomes. Seth, who had a performance goal orientation commented

that the intervention sessions helped him listen more carefully in class: “I didn’t like quite like

listen a lot in class but now I do so most of the time.” When asked if he was worried about getting

the right answer during intervention sessions, he showed mastery goal orientation tendencies when

he commented that he would have learned from the process of looking for the correct answer. Ken

showed signs of moving from a performance goal orientation to a mastery goal orientation during

intervention sessions but continued to work with the performance goal orientation in his classroom.

He worried about getting the correct answer but noticed during the intervention sessions that that

was not the focus of the sessions. When asked if he was concerned about getting answers correct

in class he responded, “I kind of do because it kind of counts for my mark and they could maybe

hold me back another year…so I try to, I try to do it, I try really hard to get the right answers.”

During the intervention sessions Ken felt that he could focus on learning and not worry about

getting good marks.

The intervention brought about some changes in how students approach learning tasks. At

the end of the intervention sessions there were signs of a mastery goal orientation from some of

the students. Stewart shared: “because I know that I am just learning, it’s okay to make mistakes.”

However, there were also signs of students who continued to focus on a performance orientation.

For example, Erik shared: “I want to get a good mark.” Rose’s remarks showed that it was

confidence that helped her move from a performance orientation to a mastery orientation.


63

Researcher: When we did the questions and read those stories together were you ever worried

about getting the wrong answer?

Rose: Yeah. (giggle)

Researcher: Tell me about that.

Rose: I didn’t know, like if there was a right or wrong answer, and I like maybe wanted to get good

mark. Yeah.

Researcher: Okay, so you were concerned about the mark. And did you continue to worry about

getting the answers right or wrong as we worked together?

Rose: No.

Researcher: Okay, what changed?

Rose: Umm, I got better and better and I felt more confident.

Overall, the findings in this study showed that students with a performance-prove goal

orientation became more confident in their skills and became more mastery goal-orientated in this

study. Students with a mastery goal orientation, sustained their orientation throughout the

intervention sessions. The students who had mastery goal orientations commented that they got

better at the skills they were working on and were more confident as learners.

How Does the Use of Diagnostic Feedback Together with Intervention Direct Students to Self-

Regulate Their Own Reading Ability?

As part of our cognitive feedback interventions, students were encouraged to think about

their own engagement and effort during learning sessions. Students were reminded to use learning

strategies (e.g., rereading sections of the passage, clarifying what the question was asking, etc.)

throughout the sessions. Providing students with a regular opportunity to practice reflecting on

their own learning encouraged them to better understand their own strengths and areas of need and

ideally lead them to become better learners.

The study results further indicate the improvement of students’ self-regulating ability. The

students commented that they were reading the questions more carefully. For example, Stewart

shared that he was using the strategies he was taught to read more carefully.

Researcher: Do you think you are a better learner now than you were when we first started working

together?

Stewart: Mmm, yeah, I think I am.

Researcher: Why? How so?

Stewart: Well because I have been using…umm, like some of the strategies. I have been…umm,

I have been reading the ans…the questions more carefully.

Erik also commented that he was able to understand passages easier because he was reading more

carefully.

Some students found it helpful to work together in a small group and described the

experience as fun. They felt it was useful to hear others’ perspectives during the session. For

example, Raymond shared: “if I work with a lot of people it would be also good for me to get more


64

ideas how…uh other people think beside me.” Seth felt that it moved things along faster and more

interesting.

Towards the end of the intervention sessions, students were asked to redo the self-

assessment questionnaire that they had filled out during the initial assessment period. Their scores

showed that they had changed their view of themselves as learners over the 6 months that had

passed since they first filled out this questionnaire. This can be understood as evidence of their

attention to their own ability with more care. The intervention sessions helped students to better

self-regulate their literacy skills in terms of both their strengths and areas of weakness. Students’

self-assessment scores prior to the intervention session and after the intervention session differed

for each student. For example, Erik showed greater variance showing that he was putting more

thought into assessing his skills (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: Erik’s self-assessment of skills before and after intervention sessions.

Ken and Raymond were more accurate with their scores, as they felt comfortable giving

themselves lower scores in areas that they continued to struggle with and higher scores in areas

that they felt they had made progress in. Stewart rated himself as “not having thought about it” for

his inferencing skills in the pre-assessment. In the post-assessment, he scored himself in each

category and gained significantly more confidence in his vocabulary skills. Seth and Rose showed

more confidence in a number of skill areas, but saw that inferencing was more challenging still.

These study results illustrate that reading skill profiles provided specific guidance to learners for

further improvement and facilitated students’ self-regulation skills as it prompted them to create

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5

4

4.5

Grammar Summary Implicit Explicit Inference Vocabulary

Ra

tin

g

Skills

Erik Before Erik After


65

learning goals that were focused on correcting conceptual errors and cognitive gaps. In this way,

learners were not simply responding to external feedback, but that they could filter the external

feedback given through the perceptions of their own abilities and learning orientations. Students

became more independent in their focus of the goals they set for themselves and the learning

strategies they were taught and were encouraged to use.

Discussion

Research on assessment claims that the information gathered from students’ assessment

performance can do more than just demonstrate student learning for accountability; it can actually

assist students improve their learning (Nichols, Meyers, & Burling, 2009). The main goal of

traditional education tests, however, is to compare an individual’s general ability to that of others

in the same normative group (Brown & Hudson, 2002). These types of tests lack the diagnostic

information that is necessary to inform students of both strengths and areas for improvement within

a specific academic area (Nichols, 1994). For assessment to be formative, it must produce evidence

of a gap between one’s actual and desired level of performance and should suggest steps needed

to close that gap (Wiliam & Black, 1996). There is a need to attend to struggling readers’ cognitive

and metacognitive strategy use. The purpose of this study was to examine how students respond

to mediated interventions when given diagnostic feedback.

Research has shown that diagnostic feedback has the potential to be more effective when

it gives students information about the progress they have made towards the goals they have set

for themselves (Jang & Wagner, 2014). “Diagnostic feedback provides learners with information

that can help them reflect on their learning in order to take remedial action” (Jang & Wagner, 2014,

p. 2). When students work towards goals that are both personally challenging and meaningful, they

are motivated be self-regulated learners (Butler & Winne, 1995; Hattie & Timperley, 2007). This

study provided students with an opportunity to set goals based on the diagnostic feedback they

received, apply effective learning strategies, and make gains in both their learning and skills as a

learner.

Diagnostic feedback was designed to support teaching and learning on a continuous basis

through student researcher collaboration. Students were encouraged to think about and monitor

their own learning as a means to improve their reading skills. When students were provided with

diagnostic feedback, they were better equipped to regulate metacognition, which in turn helped

them persist in learning tasks (Zimmerman, 2000; Black & Wiliam, 2009). Stiggins (2002) states

that “students come to understand what it means to be in charge of their own learning—to monitor

their own success and make decisions that bring greater success. This is the foundation of lifelong

learning” (p. 764).

In the present study, students were provided with diagnostic feedback that directs students’

attention to their reading skill mastery levels as well as goal orientations. Subsequent interventions

focused on supporting students’ ability to plan, monitor, and self-reflect on their learning through

one-to-one interactions. The present study results indicate that students can benefit from

interventions targeting not only literacy knowledge and skills but also metacognition and self-


66

regulation (Harrison, Bunford, Evans, & Owens, 2013). Systematic diagnostic assessment can

provide detailed profiles of individual students’ strengths and weaknesses, which needs to be

subsequently used to provide customized interventions for students who struggle not only with

reading abilities but also who lack metacognitive and self-regulating abilities. Such diagnostic

profiles can guide teachers to offer individualized instructional strategies with different scaffolding

approaches (Stanford, Crowe, & Flice, 2010).

Conclusion

The importance of assessment that informs not only the teacher but also the learner is significant

to student engagement and learning (Black & Wiliam, 2009, 2011; Wiliam, 2011; Stiggins, 2007).

Based on the diagnostic intervention provided in this study, implications and recommendations

are proposed. It was found that diagnostic feedback intervention can be beneficial for students who

struggle with reading comprehension. While current assessment practice tends to measure a

student’s overall reading ability, it does not provide specific information about the skills needed

for reading comprehension. This information is not helpful from a pedagogical stand point.

Providing students with individualized feedback that is skill-based and provides strategies to target

chosen areas gives students a far greater understanding of their strengths and areas of need and

how to best target these areas.

Assessment should cognitively engage students. By giving students the opportunity to

implement learning strategies through individualized feedback and intervention, students can

experience increased self-regulation and motivation to learn. Assessment also needs to provide a

clear understanding of a student’s current skills and then adapt the intervention to best support

student’s learning progress. Assessment needs to constantly negotiate the intensity of intervention

while factoring in metacognitive traits to guide students in becoming self-regulated learners.

Finally, intervention must be dynamic, adjusting to student’s cognitive and metacognitive

processes. It should not be static but rather move between teacher and student and continuously

negotiate the scaffolding strategies needed to support student’s learning.

The paper reports a study that involved a small number of students. Further, the length of

intervention (20 minutes per session with a total of seven sessions) may not have been sufficient

for all students to achieve their desired levels of achievement. Although the length of intervention

is relatively short, however, this 20-minute intervention is similar to what teachers would spend to

work with a small group of students or an individual student on specific skills. Although changes

in their learning were observed in this study, more intervention sessions would have made the

results of this study more significant. Lastly, post-intervention assessments (immediate and

delayed assessments) would have provided empirical evidence for evaluating the effects of the

intervention on students’ target skills and other psychological traits. We call for more research that

involves a larger group of students whose profiles represent unique challenges and tracks their

growth over time longitudinally.

In order to better understand the effect of diagnostic feedback, it is important to recognize

how students interact with it. The way students think about learning and their part in it through


67

goal orientation and SRL are factors that play a part in understanding how they process diagnostic

feedback. However, as shown in this study, the use of diagnostic feedback in intervention benefits

all. Empowering students through intervention encourages them to take ownership of their own

learning and work towards goals that will carry them forward in life.

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada through the

Insight Program (No. 486987). Paper presented in April 2016 to the conference of Canadian Society for the

Studies of Education (CSSE) in Calgary, AB, Canada.

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Book Review:

Transforming Conversations: Feminism and Education in

Canada since 1970

by Dawn Wallin and Janice Wallace (Eds.)

Montreal, Quebec, Canada: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2018, 281 pages

ISBN: 978-0-7735-5357-6 (paperback)

Reviewed by:

Jillian Authier, OCT

Greater Essex County District School Board

Feminism has a lengthy and complex past in Canada. The work of first and second wave feminism

can be attributed to many of the gains Canadian women have made politically, socially,

professionally, and economically in the last century. Today, feminism continues to evolve. In an

era when the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, openly declares himself a feminist (Wallin

& Wallace, 2018), the term is both commonplace, and yet, still divisive. Feminism today often

includes the lens of intersectionality and the ways in which race, gender, class, sexual-orientation,

able-ness and ethnicity need to be considered when discussing the experiences of all women.

In the book, Transforming Conversations: Feminism and Education in Canada since 1970,

Dawn Wallin and Janice Wallace co-edit a collection of essays to look at the role feminism has

played, and continues to play, in Canadian education. Wallin and Wallace themselves are both

well-versed in the lived experiences of feminism and academia. Wallace is professor emerita at

the Faculty of Education in the University of Alberta and Janice Wallace is a professor and an

associate dean in the College of Education at the University of Saskatchewan. Together, they take

on the daunting task of trying to answer what they identify as their core question of the book:

“What effect, if any, has feminism had on Canadian education since the Royal Commission on the

Status of Women, and to what end?” (Wallin & Wallace, 2018, p.10). Wallin and Wallace also

state that their hope for this book is that it allows readers to look back on how feminism has helped

shape our education system as it exists now, while prompting conversations about the ways

feminism can shape future avenues in education.

https://jtl.uwindsor.ca/

Journal of Teaching and Learning 12(2) – December 2018 Authier

71

Wallin and Wallace are upfront in stating the near impossibility of addressing all areas of

feminism and all feminist theories in one book. Indeed, the introduction spends a great deal of time

outlining what the book is not and recognizing the potential shortcomings in not being able to

include all voices from all feminist theories. They state, “we recognize that it is impossible to

present a fully encompassing text on the influence of feminism in Canadian education. Rather, we

view this book as an invitation to a critical conversation that continues” (Wallin & Wallace, 2018,

p. 10). Remarkably, Wallin and Wallace are able to curate a collection of essays that include

perspectives from women who have been doing the work for decades at various levels of the

education system. They weave these narratives into a book that is both honest and poignant about

feminism’s impact on Canadian education.

Transforming Conversations: Feminism and Education in Canada since 1970 is broken

down into three parts. Each part contains a collection of essays from other feminist scholars and

activists that speak to various ways feminism has impacted and influenced their lives and the field

of education. Part One, entitled “Discourses of Teaching: Speaking Up,” examines the historical

impact feminism had in the classrooms and lives of feminist educators in the elementary and

secondary school systems. Part Two, “Discourses of Leadership: Speaking Out,” examines how

feminists in academia have impacted the post-secondary academic environment through their

work, values, and research. Part Three, “Disrupting Discourses: Speaking Back to Feminism,”

investigates postmodern, postcolonial feminism, the role of intersectional feminism to address

issues faced by all women, not just white, middle-class, heterosexual women who largely benefited

from first and second wave feminism. The essays that Wallace and Wallin have collected in this

book represent the experiences of eight women, in addition to themselves. Included in some of the

essays is the use of oral interviews, which lend voice to the experiences of additional women who

have worked in education and the struggles they have faced in searching for equality while

navigating patriarchal systems, including education. Several authors use autoethnographic

accounts throughout their essays, which helps the reader connect to the personal and professional

experiences of the author.

The essays in this book provide clear examples to demonstrate that feminism has indeed

impacted education in Canada since the Royal Commission on the Status of Women, which is the

guiding question of this book. For example, Rose Fine-Meyer (2018) highlights in her essay,

“Pedagogical Change to Curriculum in Toronto Schools” how teachers altered and supplemented

curriculum to include more feminist perspectives and women’s experiences and the impact this

had overtime on the curriculum. As well, in Jean Hewitt’s (2018) essay, “Feminist Influence on

Ontario Schools” she concludes by stating that, “The impact of feminism on practices and policies

within the Ontario school system from 1960 to 1985 was substantial” (p.83). Wallin and Wallace

find a balance in the essays they present to provide the reader with an understanding that despite

the gains made through feminism, educational systems in Canada have also struggled to embrace

these changes.

In conclusion, Wallin and Wallace are successfully able to assemble a collection of essays

that provide insight into their core question about the effect that feminism has had on Canadian

education since the 1970 Royal Commission on the Status of Women. Readers will come to

Book Review: Transforming Conversations Journal of Teaching and Learning 12(2) – December 2018

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understand the varying, and sometimes nuanced ways, that feminism has impacted Canadian

education, while also recognizing the continued work that needs to be done. Further, the authors’

invitation for readers to view this book as a stepping stone to continue the critical conversations

about feminism in education is well received. In particular, readers may find themselves reflecting

on how feminism has impacted and benefited their education, or how feminism has failed to

include their voice and experience in education thus far.

References

Fine-Meyer, R. (2018). Pedagogical change to curriculum in Toronto schools. In D. Wallin & J. Wallace,

(Eds.), Transforming Conversations: Feminism and Education in Canada since 1970 (pp. 42-70).

Montreal, QC: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Hewitt, J. (2018). Feminist influence on Ontario schools. In D. Wallin & J. Wallace, (Eds.), Transforming

Conversations: Feminism and Education in Canada since 1970 (pp. 71-90). Montreal, QC: McGill-

Queen’s University Press.

Wallin, D., & Wallace, J. (Eds.). (2018). Transforming conversations: Feminism and education in

Canada since 1970. Montreal, QC: McGill-Queen’s University Press.



https://jtl.uwindsor.ca

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Book Review:

Making Men, Making History:

Canadian Masculinities across Time and Place

by Peter Gossage and Robert Rutherdale (Eds.)

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada: UBC Press, 2018, 454 pages

ISBN: 978-0-7748-3563-3 (hardcover)

Reviewed by:

Alethea Cassano

University of Windsor

Making Men, Making History: Canadian Masculinities across Time and Place situates the study

of masculinities within the Canadian cultural context. Through a carefully-selected collection of

essays, Gossage and Rutherdale open a vista onto the Canadian landscape. This vista is made all

the richer by its range, as the collection draws on a divergence of both time and place in order to

address gendered constructs. Beyond these temporal and geographical glimpses, the anthology is

divided into six sections: expertise and authority, masculine spaces, performing masculinities,

boys to men, men in motion, and faces of fatherhood. What may on first glance seem an arbitrary

structuring, the collection takes on the tones of a symphonic arrangement, enticing the reader to

listen for those notes that strike a relevant chord within one’s own understanding of gender within

Canada. Ultimately, of course, it invites researchers to sound those chords that are the most

intriguing and relevant to their own research. The anthology offers an orchestration of complex

and far-ranging variations on the theme of manhood, and it is in this variety and richness that one

finds a book which lends a compelling contribution to the field of masculinities.

The high-interest content of this volume renders it just as relevant and accessible to the

casual reader as to the historian or scholar. This anthology can easily be imagined as a core text in

a course offered within gender studies, Canadian history, or more specifically, the history of

masculinities. Masculinities is in itself a relatively recent category of historical research and the

attempt to plant its seeds on Canadian soil has, through this anthology, been both fruitful, and one

would imagine, quite sustainable. From the middle-class men of the Edmonton packinghouses

(1947-1966), to the dynamics of the gay bars of Montreal, the book leads the reader through a

https://jtl.uwindsor.ca/

Book Review: Making Men, Making History Journal of Teaching and Learning 12(2) – December 2018

74

historical portal to the past. Whether it is examining the eco-masculinity of the Canadian seal hunt,

or the lives of the blue-collar boys who grew up on the periphery of Motown, or even the eternally

boyish masculine ideal embodied by our national hero, Terry Fox, this anthology binds these men

together into an eclectic and complicated brotherhood. In so doing, it weaves an intricate and multi-

tonal tapestry of masculinity as diverse and sometimes fraught as the history, culture and landscape

of Canada itself.

The book begins with an introduction which acknowledges that while the conversation

surrounding Canadian manhood and masculinity is not new, this anthology seeks to offer

directions for further study by providing a thematic framework to the conversation. The volume

stops just shy of explicating these themes, and the summaries before each section tend towards the

descriptive rather than providing an exegesis. In the afterword, drawing heavily on musical

metaphors, the editors thoughtfully reflect on the “harmonic variations” of the themes that each

section elicits. The editors also trace some of the seminal critics’ contributions to the study of

masculinities, such as Raewyn Connell’s (by way of Gramsci) hegemonic masculinity, John

Tosh’s contributions on the Victorian family and masculinity, and Robert Griswold’s work on the

history of fatherhood.

Further to this, each essay itself provides a portal into each time and place. Such glimpses,

while interesting in and of themselves, simultaneously underscore the complexity of gender

studies. For instance, Chapter 3, entitled, The Spiritual Aspect: Gordon A. Friesen and the

Mechanization of the Modern Hospital addresses the undertaking of re-structuring and de-

centralizing the working space of the nurse so that she (and it was most often she in the days of

Friesen’s hospital-planning firm, 1954-1976) can spend more time with the patient. While on the

one hand, this attempt to elevate the nurse’s status may be seen as liberating, the Friesen concept

of the nurse as the “low man on the totem pole” (Theodore, 2018, p. 73) belies the complexity

involved within the realm of masculinities discourse. By way of contrast, Chapter 10, Sea

Shepherds, Eco-Warriors, and Impresarios: Performing Eco-masculinity in the Canadian Seal

Hunt of the Late Twentieth Century demonstrates a softer, gentler alternative to the traditional

masculinity of the warrior. Robert Hunter’s activism invokes “an eclectic spiritualism,” as he

becomes the “mystic, the guru, (indeed), the shaman of the group” (Keough, 2018, p. 220).

Sometimes contradictory, and often unexpected variations on the theme of masculinity are offered

in this anthology. The result is often incongruous, sometimes paradoxical, and always quite

revealing to read.

The notion of men making history, while relatively commonplace and unremarkable in its

own right, is imbued with new meaning through this volume. Making Men, Making History:

Canadian Masculinities across Time and Place deconstructs the very mosaic of the Canadian

identity through the narratives of men. With accounts as varied as Skwxwú7mesh Lacrosse and

the performance of indigenous nationhood to the gender politics of the draft dodgers during the

Vietnam War, to the outlaw motorcycle clubs in Post-war Ontario, this compilation leaves the

reader to imagine vast channels yet to be navigated. Gossage and Rutherdale take us on a journey

through time and place, and yet, as we return to the here and now, we are left to wonder: what

Journal of Teaching and Learning 12(2) – December 2018 Cassano

75

next? There is ample space here for the reader, for the critic, and for the curious to forge ahead in

any one of many different directions.

References

Keough, W. G. (2018). Sea Shepherds, Eco-Warrioers, and Impresarios: Performing Eco-maculinity in the

Canadian Seal Hunt of the Late Twentieth Century. In P. Gossage & R. Rutherdale (Eds.), Making men,

making history: Canadian masculinities across time and place (pp. 218-237). Vancouver, BC: UBC

Press.

Theodore, D. (2018). The Spiritual Aspect: Gordon A. Friesen and the Mechanization of the Modern

Hospital. In P. Gossage & R. Rutherdale (Eds.), Making men, making history: Canadian masculinities

across time and place (pp. 64-84). Vancouver, BC: UBC Press.

Journal of Teaching and Learning 12(2) – December 2018

76

ISSN: 1911-8279 (online)

The Journal of Teaching and Learning (JTL) acknowledges the land we operate on as part of the traditional territories of the Three Fires Confederacy of First Nations, comprised of the Ojibwe, the Odawa, and the Potawatomi. There are few places on earth where others have not walked before us or called it home. The JTL is an international, peer-reviewed journal. The journal seeks manuscripts that provide a critical examination of historical and contemporary educational contexts. The journal publishes original research that contributes to theoretical and applied questions in teaching and learning. These may include: issues related to indigenous education, gender, class, race, ethnicity and diversity, educational policy, teacher education, educational leadership, and theories of teaching and learning. The journal also welcomes critical and exploratory essays that focus on current educational issues. The JTL is published twice a year. Submissions to the JTL are anonymously peer-reviewed.

Editor:

Editorial Assistant:

Book Review Editor:

Kara Smith

Brandon Sabourin

Kara Smith

Advisory Board:

Christopher Grieg, University of Windsor Terry Sefton, University of Windsor Janice Waldron, University of Windsor

Editorial Board: Jonathan Bayley, University of Windsor Patricia Daniel, University of Wolverhampton, UK Benedicta Egbo, University of Windsor Larry Glassford, University of Windsor Tim Goddard, University of Prince Edward Island Asha Gupta, Punjab University, India Susan M. Holloway, University of Windsor Roseanne Menna, University of Windsor Siegbert Schmidt, University of Cologne, Germany Miles Turnbull, University of Prince Edward Island

Address: 401 Sunset Faculty of Education University of Windsor Windsor, Ontario, Canada N9B 3P4

Telephone: (519) 253-3000; ext. 4068

Email: [email protected]

Website: http://www.uwindsor.ca/jtl

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.uwindsor.ca/jtl

For more information about the Journal of Teaching and

Learning, please visit our website:

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