Researching and Reshaping Literacy Learning: Three Urban K-6 Teachers’ Ongoing Transformations through Everyday Action Research

Given the vast range of diversity among children’s backgrounds and needs, literacy educators must consider multiple ways in which children learn and interact with texts. Moreover, policies that increasingly require frequent assessments of children’s literacy achievement place pressure on educators to find immediate ways to impact children’s learning. This qualitative inquiry explores three graduate students’ yearlong engagement in literacy-related action research within ethnically and socioeconomically diverse, urban K-6 classrooms. Grounded in a social practice perspective on literacy and a sociocultural perspective on literacy learning, we examined participants’ constructions of action research as they developed research questions, entered various research sites, and engaged in a cyclical process of research-reflection-action in order to impact student learning in those classroom communities. With these case studies, we argue that for teachers to fully embrace and incorporate action research into their practice, they need to go beyond completing the steps to frame action research as a constant way of thinking, a daily practice, and an ongoing process of continuously spiraling mini-cycles that change instruction in incremental, yet ultimately powerful ways. I’ve grown leaps and bounds as a literacy educator this year. I’ve learned so much about the teaching of writing from my students. Careful observation of them, within the action research framework, has allowed me to pay attention to their growth and needs as writers. [I] expect to do meaningful action research in reading and writing for many years to come. In fact, due to the insights I’ve developed this year, there is no way I can live without doing action research since action research feels like it’s the An On-line Journal for Teacher Research Networks: Vol. 18, Issue 1 ISSN 2470-6353 Spring 2016 Rainville & Enriquez 2 only appropriate way to help students grow by differentiating instruction for each and every one of them. (Sarah, Action Research Project) In this article, we present the case studies of three in-service teachers enrolled in a graduate course on action research. The course was a Master’s level seminar in action research, a required course in a literacy specialist program, in which graduate students conducted action research projects around a self-chosen topic related to literacy as a culminating project for their degree. With these cases, we inquired into the ways the participants constructed meaning of action research as they developed their research questions in the course, entered various urban K6 classrooms as their research sites, and engaged in a cyclical process of research-reflection-action in order to impact student learning in those communities. Specifically, we wanted to investigate how the teachers took up action research practices in their classrooms and how action research impacted their understanding of literacy teaching and learning in urban classrooms. Given the vast range of diversity among children’s backgrounds and needs, literacy educators must consider the multiple ways in which children learn and interact with texts. Moreover, given the changing literacy landscape impacted by a political climate that assesses children’s literacy achievement on an increasingly frequent basis, the push to tie these achievement scores to annual teacher reviews, and newly adopted Common Core State Standards (CCSS) (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010), literacy educators often feel incredible pressure to find immediate ways to impact children’s learning. While many teachers engage in action research to tackle a specific challenge in their classroom, that process tends to be characterized and enacted as a single endeavor or project that is temporary, extracurricular, or exceptional, involving a process that takes a significant amount of time to complete. With these cases, we demonstrate that in order for teachers to fully embrace and incorporate action research into their practice, they need to go beyond completing the steps to frame action research as a constant way of thinking, a daily practice, and an ongoing process of continuously spiraling mini-cycles that has the potential to change instruction in incremental, yet ultimately powerful ways. The Cs of Action Research: Controversy, Context, and Cycles Action research falls under the umbrella of teacher research, or practitioner research. As a whole, teacher research has been greatly debated as its presence in teacher education programs and teachers’ classrooms has become widespread in the last twenty years. Critics find fault with the term teacher research, distinguishing between “formal knowledge” and “practical knowledge. ” However, Cochran-Smith and Lytle refute this dualistic setup as oversimplified and assert: [T]eacher research is about how students and their teachers construct the curriculum, co-mingling their experiences, their cultural and linguistic resources, and their interpretive frameworks. It is about how teachers’ actions are infused with complex and multi-layered understandings of learners, culture, class, gender, literacy, social issues, institutions, communities, materials, texts and curricula. (1998, p. 24) Other critics dismiss teacher research as lacking the methodical rigor or objectivity of traditional forms of research. Proponents of teacher research (and action research), however, argue that it is the epitome of responsive teaching; that is, through daily observations and assessments of Networks: Vol. 18, Issue 1 ISSN 2470-6353 Spring 2016 Rainville & Enriquez 3 students and regular reflections about teaching and learning, teachers ground their instruction in the real, present needs and identities of their students. Moreover, teachers’ epistemologies rise from knowledge that is nested in their interaction with students as knowers, reveals a set of values and social relationships, and leads to ethical stances and dilemmas about how to teach (Lyons, 1994). Action research, as a form of teacher research, concentrates on examining one’s own practice. It is primarily concerned with improving a particular context for learning and “balances a classroom culture that is personal, contextual, open-ended, and ever-changing with a research culture that is rigorous, structured, and systematic” (Caro-Bruce, 2004, p. 54). Across the literature, several principles guide the development and process of action research. The power of action research revolves around the connection of theory to practice, systematic collection and analysis of data about the learning process, significance of reflection, positioning of teacher as decision-maker and knowledge-producer, and immediate steps for change (Baumann & Duffy, 2001; Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1993, 1998; Mertler, 2006). Ideally, action research is never-ending. Unlike traditional types of educational or qualitative research, action research is not linear; nor is it terminal. Rather action research is most commonly conceived as a cycle of collecting research, reflecting on the research, implementing change through action, and then reflecting on the action taken. The cycle repeats itself as teachers’ reflections on the action taken should compel further research and therefore the start of a new cycle. A number of materials have been published over the past decade to help practitioners implement action research in their classrooms (e.g., Anderson, Nihlen, & Herr, 1994; Falk & Blumenreich, 2005; Hubbard & Power, 2003; Mertler, 2006). These texts serve largely as guidebooks that walk teachers step-by-step through the action research process. Perhaps one of the greatest testaments to the promise of action research is the growing body of literature written by teachers who describe how action research inspires and empowers them to design meaningful, effective literacy instruction for their students. For example, Cooper and White (2006) document a school-based initiative that used action research to determine ways to develop critical literacy strategies for both “early at-risk students and their teachers” (p. 86). Campano (2007) shares the story of how, by taking a teacher-inquiry approach to questions about culture and immigration, a Hmong girl in his fifth grade class began producing rich narrative writing. Before then, she had been labeled an “at-risk” and “low-achieving” student. Examples like that of Cooper and White (2006) describe schoolwide collaboration and action research, while those like Campano’s (2007) account detail the powerful transformation of one teacher’s instruction and of students’ learning within a classroom. What is largely missing from the literature is a close examination of how teachers make sense of action research, how they negotiate their roles as teachers and researchers, and how they pursue action research practices across multiple cycles within a particular classroom context. In other words, how do teachers move from seeing action research as a method (i.e., the particular steps for data collection, analysis, etc.) to a methodology (i.e., a theory for using particular methods) for learning about classroom instruction? In what ways do teachers in a culminating graduate literacy research course take up research practices within their particular classroom contexts? Finally, how does action research impact teachers’ understanding of literacy teaching and learning in urban K-6 classrooms? Networks: Vol. 18, Issue 1 ISSN 2470-6353 Spring 2016 Rainville & Enriquez 4 Theoretical Framework We grounded this study in a social practice perspective on literacy and a sociocultural perspective on literacy learning. A social practice perspective on literacy suggests that literacy is always situated in particular social activities, which shape and are shaped by the social interactions and power relations inscribed in social institutions (e.g., schoo