Teachers of English Learners Negotiating Authoritarian Policies

75 Pages·2012·0.742 MB·English

by  Lucinda Pease-Alvarez, Katharine Davies Samway (auth.)

SpringerBriefs in Education
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Lucinda Pease-Alvarez
Katharine Davies Samway
Teachers of English Learners
Negotiating Authoritarian
Policies
123
LucindaPease-Alvarez Katharine DaviesSamway
Department of Education College ofEducation
Universityof California K-8Teacher Education
SantaCruz,1156HighSt. San JoséState University
SantaCruz CA 95064 OneWashington Square
USA San JoseCA 95192-0074
USA
ISSN 2211-1921 e-ISSN2211-193X
ISBN 978-94-007-3945-1 e-ISBN978-94-007-3946-8
DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-3946-8
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the teachers, students, and principals who participated in
the studies we discuss in this volume. They were incredibly generous in sharing
theirinsightsandtime.Weadmiretheirdedicationtolearningandteachingaswell
as their efforts to negotiate a difficult policy environment. We also would like to
thanktheanonymousreviewerswhoprovidedfeedback.Finally,wewouldliketo
acknowledge the University of California Linguistic Minority Research Institute
(LMRI) for funding much of the research reported on in this volume. The LMRI
has been responsible for supporting research that has had an important impact on
research and policy aimed at enhancing the opportunities to learn available to
language minority youth throughout the United States.
v
Contents
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
U.S. Educational Policy and English Learners. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
A Brief Overview of How Literacy Has Been Taught in the U.S.. . . . 3
Contrasting Views on the Role of Teachers in Policy Making . . . . . . 6
Poststructural Perspectives on Agency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Teacher Agency and Educational Policy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
The Three Studies Reported on in This Volume . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2 Teachers of ELs Negotiating Top-Down Literacy Initiatives in
Two Urban Districts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Research Design and Data Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Findings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Teachers Made Principled Adaptations to the Program. . . . . . . . 17
People Overseeing Teachers’ Implementation of OCR
Influenced Teachers’ Actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Administrators Differentiated Enforcement of the
OCR Mandate. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Supportive Principals and Colleagues Affected
Teachers’ Actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Resistance as Principled and Accommodating. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3 Case Studies of Teachers Negotiating a Top-Down Literacy
Mandate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
The Case Study Teachers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Data Collection and Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Classroom Observations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Post-Observation Interviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Findings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Teacher Talk Predominated . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
vii
viii Contents
Whole-Class Instruction Characterized Almost all Teaching. . . . 29
OCR Skill and Strategy Instruction Predominated . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Teachers Frequently Read the OCR Texts Aloud to Students . . . 34
Students Had Very Few Opportunities to Read Independently. . . 34
Students Had Virtually No Opportunities to Write. . . . . . . . . . . 35
Teachers Were Concerned About How OCR Was Not Meeting
Their Students’ Needs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Over Time, the Teachers Became More Compliant with the
District Policy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
A Desire to Remain Part of the Burgess Community Motivated
Teachers to Conform. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Institutional Authority Exerted a Tremendous Influence on
Teachers’ Actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Professional Roles and Relationships Influenced Teachers’
Actions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
4 Teachers’ Collective Efforts to Resist the Policy Environment:
The Case of Educators Advocating for Students (EAS) . . . . . . . . . 45
Organizing for Collective Resistance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Teachers’ Perspective on EAS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
EAS was a Safe Space to Talk with and Learn from Others. . . . 48
EAS Members Advocated for Drawing on Multiple Discourses
When Resisting Authority. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
EAS Had an Ongoing Yet Transforming Relationship
with the Union . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
5 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Top-Down Influences and Teacher Agency Affected Policy
Implementation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Mandated Policies Constrained Teachers’ Provision of Excellent
Instruction for ELs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Collaborative Action as a Powerful Assertion of Professional
Agency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Professional Development Aligned with Policy Mandates Not
Usually Effective. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Some Final Thoughts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Appendix A: Open Court Teacher Interview (Core Questions) . . . . . . 63
Appendix B: EAS Statement Published in Newspapers. . . . . . . . . . . . 65
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Chapter 1
Introduction
Keywords Educational policy (cid:2) Language policy (cid:2) Educational mandates (cid:2)
Standards (cid:2) English learners (cid:2) No Child Left Behind Act (cid:2) High-stakes
accountability (cid:2) Literacy teaching (cid:2) Pedagogical innovations (cid:2) Teacher agency (cid:2)
Institutional control (cid:2) Poststructual perspectives on agency (cid:2) Principled teaching
The research that we report on in this volume focuses on the beliefs and actions
of teachers of English learners (ELs) when confronted by school district, state,
and federal educational policies and literacy teaching mandates. In this chapter,
we begin by providing a brief overview of U.S. educational policy (particularly
as it relates to ELs) and a summary of how, in recent decades, literacy has been
taught in the U.S. We then explore scholars’ contrasting views of the role of
teachers in policy making, with a particular focus on teacher agency. We close
this chapter with a synopsis of the three studies that we conducted and that are
reported on in Chaps. 2, 3 and 4.
U.S. Educational Policy and English Learners
In the United States, states typically have had considerable rights to initiate their
owneducationalpoliciesandstandardsforstate-fundedschools,includingwhatto
teach, the materials used when teaching, and what and how to assess student
achievement. This has often resulted in variation in educational standards for
students, instructional materials that are adopted,and how student achievement is
assessed.This reality contrasts withothercountries, such asthe UnitedKingdom,
where the national government and its policy-generating and decision-making
bodies make educational policy and generate mandates for the entire country.
Increasingly, the national/federal government in the U.S. has generated educa-
tional policies, which take precedence over state laws and mandates, if a state
L.Pease-AlvarezandK.DaviesSamway,TeachersofEnglishLearners 1
NegotiatingAuthoritarianPolicies,SpringerBriefsinEducation,
DOI:10.1007/978-94-007-3946-8_1,(cid:2)TheAuthor(s)2012
2 1 Introduction
acceptsfederalmoney.Onestrikingexampleisthe2001federalact,NoChildLeft
Behind (NCLB), which was intended to close the achievement gap between
students who are midde class, many of whom are white, and students from
low-income and minority homes, including ELs. Most recently, the federal
governmenthasbeenresponsibleforthedevelopmentofCommonCoreStandards,
whichhavebeenadoptedbythemajorityofstates.Theadoptionofthesestandards
has been described as the ‘‘most sweeping nationalization of the K-12 curriculum
in U.S. history’’ (Bomer and Maloch 2011, p. 38).
IntheU.S.,federalandstatepoliciesoftenjeopardizeELs’opportunitiestolearn
(Gutiérrez et al. 2000; Gutiérrez et al. 2002; Valdés et al. 2011). This is all too
apparent in California, the state that has the greatest number of ELs enrolled in
school.BeginningwiththepassageofProposition227in1998,whichrequiresthat
ELsbetaughtinEnglish,thevastmajorityofEnglishlearnersinCaliforniahavehad
little,ifany,accesstotheirprimarylanguagesinschool,therebylimitingtheirability
tolearnacademiccontentandfurtherdeveloptheirprimarylanguagesinschool.In
addition,avarietyofinitiativesintendedtoguidethecontentoflanguageinstruction
availabletoELsdrawonnarrowconceptionsofEnglishproficiencyandacademic
language.Forexample,approvedEnglishLanguageDevelopment(ELD)textsused
inCaliforniaclassroomsmustfocusontheteachingofexplicitgrammar,phonics,
and vocabulary (Valdés et al. 2011). Also, the California Reading/Language Arts
FrameworkrequiresthatmaterialsusedwithELsfocusonEnglishskills.AsValdés
et al. point out, these policies are likely to undermine children’s development of
languageandsubjectmatterknowledgenecessaryforacademicachievement.
AsimilarfocusonmonolingualEnglish-onlyskills-basedinstructionisevidentin
severalprovisionsthatconstituteNCLB.Oneoftheeffectsofthisacthasbeenthe
over-relianceonasingletypeofassessmenttool,thehigh-stakesstandardizedtest
(Darling-Hammond2004).Ofparticularinterestarethetestingandaccountability
provisionsoftheact,whichrequirethat95%ofeachstudentsubgroupingrades3–8,
includingstudentsdeemedtobeEnglishlearners,betestedeachyearinEnglishon
standardizedtestsinreading/languagearts,mathematics,andscience.Schoolswith
studentsubgroupsthatfailtomeetyearlytargetsinthesesubjectsaredesignatedas
failing,evenwhenstudentachievementhasactuallyimproved,orwhenstateshave
sethigherstandardsthanotherstatesandschoolsfailtomeetthestandards,orwhena
single group ofstudents(e.g.,studentswith disabilities orELs) does notmeet the
standards (Darling-Hammond 2004). These ‘‘failing’’ schools are subject to sanc-
tions,whichincludeprovidingparentswiththeoptionoftransferringtheirchildrento
another school, restructuring the curriculum and its ‘‘delivery,’’ and offering sup-
plemental tutoring. For schools that repeatedly fail to meet benchmarks, conse-
quencesmayincludereassigningstaffandschoolclosures.
Inordertoavoidsanctionsassociatedwithnotmeetingtestingbenchmarks,states
andschooldistrictshavetendedtomoreforcefullymandateandcloselymonitorthe
faithful adoption of skills-based reading programs (Cummins 2007; Land and
Moustafa2005).Manydistrictshavemandatedprescriptivereadingprogramsand
teacher-centered instructional practices in hopes of improving the academic
achievementofminoritystudents.Nowherehasthisbeenmoreevidentthaninthe
U.S.EducationalPolicyandEnglishLearners 3
increasingnumberofdistrictsthatrequireelementaryteacherstoimplementcom-
mercial reading programs(Altwergeretal. 2004). Oneofthese programsisOpen
Court Reading (OCR) (SRA/McGraw Hill 2004), which has been widely imple-
mentedinschoolsthroughoutthenation;thisincludesCalifornia,wherewework,
andwhereEnglishlearnerscompriseroughly33%ofelementarystudents(Achin-
stein et al. 2004; California Department of Education 2003; Moustafa and Land
2002).ThewidespreadimplementationofthisprogramwithELsisstrikingasitwas
notdevelopedforthispopulation;instead,itwasdevelopedformonolingual,Eng-
lish-speakingchildren(RumbergerandGándara2004).Also,despitelongstanding
lawsprotectingtherightsofELstoreceiveanappropriateeducation(e.g.,Lauvs.
Nichols1974),underthesekindsofmandates,ELsareoftennotprovidedwithan
appropriateeducationthatacknowledgestheirstatusandneedsasnonnativeEnglish
speakers.Forexample,justbeingimmersedinEnglishinschoolwillnotguarantee
academicandlinguisticsuccess(SamwayandMcKeon2007).Thisisparticularly
trueforolderlearnerswherecontroloverandexperiencewithavarietyoforaland
writtengenresisneededforsuccessfulacademiclearning.
Theeffectsofthesepolicieshavebeentypicallylessdraconianinmorewell-off
school districts, where test scores are higher. However, in school districts and
schools where test scores are lower, such as districts and schools with large
numbersofELs,theimpacthasbeenprofound,andschoolsandteachershavebeen
penalized for the perceived underperformance of students on high stakes tests.
Penaltieshaveincludedthe‘‘reconstitution’’ofschools,whichhasoftenledtothe
disruptionofschools’faculties.Insomecaseswherethishasoccurred,facultieshad
a deep commitment to their schools, students, and communities, and had been
workinghardandcollaborativelytoaddressthespecificlearningneedsoftheirEL
students(e.g., Pease-Alvarez et al. 2010).
A Brief Overview of How Literacy Has Been
Taught in the U.S.
ArelianceontextbooksforteachingliteracyintheelementarygradesintheU.S.is
not a new phenomenon. In fact, historically, elementary grade teachers in the
UnitedStateshavefrequentlyusedtextbooks.However,whatisstrikingaboutthe
impact of NCLB is that in the past, teachers often had considerable freedom over
whether to use textbooks (and if so, which ones and how), whereas since the
passage of NCLB, there has been a move towards more rigid state and district
mandatesrequiringthatteachersuseparticulartextbooks,andusethemaswritten
(i.e., no flexibility in how to use them or the degree to which teachers use them).
Arelianceontextbooksforteachingliteracyisofconcerntomanyeducatorsas
it typically involves considerable whole class teaching, limited attention to the
needs of individual learners, teaching of skills in isolation, and assessing student
achievementthroughhigh-stakesteststhatrelyonmultiplechoiceanswers.Inthis
4 1 Introduction
kind of environment, there is limited emphasis on developing excitement about
and authentic purposes for learning in general, and reading and writing in par-
ticular. Instead, there has been more emphasis on whether students can pass a
spelling or reading comprehension test than on whether students are avid and
critical readers and writers who integrate the skills they have been taught into
active and vibrant literacy lives. Also, when ELs are taught using textbooks
designedfornativespeakers,itisinevitablethatthespecificlanguageandliteracy
needs of these students will tend to be ignored.
Despite an historical tendency to rely on packaged literacy programs such as
textbooks, there have been some efforts to reverse the trend and implement lear-
ner-centered teaching. For example, in the late 1980s and 1990s, some teachers
adopted a progressive or whole language approach to teaching reading, which
focusedonteachingskillsasneededandinthecontextofreadingacompletetext,
rather than, for example, completing reading skills worksheets. Whole language
was informed by the reading process research of psycholinguist, Kenneth Good-
man (1965). Goodman (1982, 1986) argued that reading isn’t simply a matter of
decoding letters and clusters of letters into sounds, but whathe called a linguistic
guessing game, and a primary purpose of reading is to make sense of a text.
Goodman was joined by others who articulated practical applications of this
psycholingistictheoryofreadingtoteachingnativeEnglishspeakers(e.g.,Edelsky
etal.1990;Goodmanetal.1987;Harsteetal.1984;Routman1988,1994;Weaver
et al. 1990) and English learners (e.g., Bird 1989).
Another attempt to focus on the learner, build on learners’ knowledge and
strengths, and address the needs of learners is balanced literacy (e.g., Cappellini
2005; Chen and Mora-Flores 2006; Fountas and Pinnell 2001). Balanced literacy
focuses onoffering studentsavarietyoflearningexperiences thatprovide highto
low teacher support. For example, in balanced literacy classrooms, children par-
ticipate in read-alouds conducted by the teacher (high teacher support), shared
reading using enlarged texts (substantial teacher support), guided reading (some
teacher support), and independent reading (low teacher support). Despite the
impactofNCLBduringthelastdecade,abalancedliteracyapproachhasmanaged
to survive in some districts where there has been a strong central office commit-
ment to it (and high test scores).
Other instructional innovations have arisen in the past two decades out of a
wishtofocusonlearners(particularlychildrenfromdiverseculturesandlinguistic
backgrounds), rather than implement programs. These include multicultural edu-
cation, culturally responsive pedagogy, and cross-cultural education, which all
stresstheimportanceofdrawingonthesocioculturalresourcesthatstudentsbring
to their schools and classrooms. These resources include the languages and lan-
guage practices that are available to youngsters in a variety of settings. Several
educators and researchers have developed and implemented classroom-based
innovations,suchasfundsofknowledge,whichdrawontheliteracyandlanguage
practices that are part of ethnic minority children’s cultural communities and
social networks outside of school (e.g., Gonzalez et al. 2005). Although this
perspectiveisnotreflectedinspecificpolicydocuments,includingNCLB,features