Teachers’ perspectives on planning for conceptual understanding in English language arts
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Date
2017
Authors
Nickerson, Warren Thor
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Abstract
This study explored the conceptual ideas of secondary English language arts (ELA) teachers when they planned backwards. ELA curricula in Western Canada had largely been framed as a set of literate processes and strategies, but some literacy research and ELA curricula have included a growing emphasis on conceptual understanding. This study examined the inclusion of concepts or “big ideas” among teachers who explicitly used backwards planning.
The researcher interviewed eleven secondary (i.e., grades 7 -12) ELA teachers to explore the conceptual understanding embedded in their learning designs and to find out whether their experiences with backward planning were helpful. The participants were purposefully sampled from a variety of settings – from public and private schools, from integrated to stand-alone courses, from three Canadian provinces and one American state. Using a constructivist grounded theory approach (Charmaz, 2006), the interview transcripts and related artifacts from these varied settings were analyzed, coded, and themed. The analysis and interpretation of the transcripts and extant documents revealed the nature of goals, assessment practices, instructional strategies, and resources.
One theme that emerged from analysis was that the concepts ELA teachers conceived for their unit plans varied in their source. Some ideas were derived from themes in texts, some concepts explored the artistry and craft within texts of various genre, and a third category of ideas went beyond texts to think critically and reflexively. The teachers’ interviews and planning documents also reflected the ways that they positioned texts in their courses: as a central object of study, as a marquee or headliner for a key idea, or simply as catalysts for students’ own lines of inquiry.
In addition to the nature of learning designs, the study also examined the experience of planning backwards with conceptual understanding in mind. Participants contended backward planning brought a sense of clarity, purposefulness, connectedness, and relevance to teaching and learning. Participants used innovative pedagogy, embedded formative assessment, developed authentic summative evaluation and offered student choice. Also, participants shared ideas about planning collaboratively, identifying necessary conditions for successful collaborative planning (flexibility, time, expertise, leadership, and norms and protocols for collaboration). The dissertation concludes with ideas for further research.
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Keywords
English language arts, Curriculum planning, Backwards planning, Curriculum design, Conceptual understanding, Teacher planning, Constructivist grounded theory