S

ome English language learners (ELLs) do well in school

despite coming from school and home environments

that present many obstacles for learning. It is important to know why these students, who are at risk of academic

failure, are resilient and successful in school while other ELLs

from equally stressful environments are unsuccessful or nonresilient. This educational resiliency perspective is meaningful because it focuses on the predictors of academic success

rather than on academic failure. It enables us to specifically

identify those “alterable” factors that distinguish successful

and less successful students. The thrust in this area of research is to extend previous studies that merely identified

and categorized students at risk of failure and shift to studies that focus on identifying potential individual and school

processes that lead to and foster success (Wang, Haertel, &

Walberg, 1994; Winfield, 1991).

During the past 4 years of the CREDE project, “Improving Classroom Instruction and Student Learning for

Resilient and Non-Resilient English Language Learners,”

we conducted research with approximately 1,000 fourthand fifth-grade students from 21 classrooms in three elementary schools identified as having large proportions of ELLs

(i.e., more than 80%) as well as having students from highpoverty families (about 90% received free or reduced-cost

lunches). Classroom teachers were asked to identify their

population of students at risk (e.g., students from families

of low socioeconomic status, living with a single parent, relative, or guardian). Students identified as “gifted or talented”

or “special education” were excluded from the population

in order to avoid potential effects related to ability differences. From the final pool of students at risk of failure, teachers selected up to three “resilient” and three “non-resilient”

students in their class. “Resilient” students were high achieving on both standardized achievement tests and daily school

work, were very motivated, and had excellent attendance.

“Non-resilient” students were low achieving on both standardized achievement tests and daily school work, were not

motivated, and had poor attendance. The following sections

briefly summarize some of the key findings from our work

as we focused on the concept of resiliency.

Classroom Observation Results

Systematic classroom observations were conducted to

examine if there were differences between the classroom

behaviors of resilient and non-resilient students. The observations showed teachers using whole-class instructional settings about 80% of the time. During this time, teachers

generally assigned tasks in which students were required

to spend large proportions of time working on passive

learning activities, such as written assignments, watching, or listening. Students were observed working in individualized settings and small group settings approximately

10% of the time. Both resilient and non-resilient students

were observed interacting with their teacher only about 10%

of the time and with other students only about 8% of the

time. Resilient students were observed being “on-task” about

83% of the time, whereas non-resilient students were observed being “on-task” only 63% of the time.

Classroom Learning Environment and Student Interview

Results

Resilient and non-resilient students completed questionnaires to determine their perceptions of their classroom and

instructional learning environment. The learning environment findings indicated that resilient elementary school

students perceived a more positive instructional learning

environment and were more satisfied with their reading

and language arts classrooms than non-resilient students.

In addition, resilient students had higher self-concepts in

reading than non-resilient students. On the other hand, nonresilient ELLs reported that they had more difficulty with

their classwork than resilient ELLs.

In addition to the self-report questionnaires, students

were individually interviewed by trained researchers. The

student interview results revealed several distinctive background and attitudinal differences between the two categories of students. Resilient students, for example, reported

speaking Spanish more often to their parents and friends

than non-resilient students. About 44% of the non-resilient

students indicated that they had repeated a grade in school,

whereas only 11% of the resilient students said that they

had repeated a grade. Nearly twice as many non-resilient

students as resilient students listed reading as their hardest

subject and indicated that they do not like reading. Furthermore, non-resilient students reported that they got in trouble

in school more often than resilient students. Nearly 60% of

the resilient students indicated that they had positive relationships with their classroom teachers, whereas only 28%

of the non-resilient students indicated that they had positive relationships with their teachers.

Students also completed an adapted version of the Reading Strategies Questionnaire (Hahn, 1984; Padrón &

Waxman, 1988) which measures the extent to which students report using a variety of “weak” and “strong” cognitive reading strategies. We found that resilient students used

strong reading strategies significantly more often and weak

strategies significantly less often than non-resilient students.

Resilient students, for example, reported using the strong

strategies of thinking about what I am reading, focusing on

the main ideas, and telling the story in my own words significantly more than non-resilient students. On the other hand,

non-resilient students used the weak strategy of skipping parts

of the story I did not understand significantly more often than

resilient students.

Research Brief #7 (November 2000)

Improving Classroom Instruction and Student Learning for Resilient and

Non-resilient English Language Learners

Yolanda N. Padrón, Hersh Waxman, Ann P. Brown, and Robert A. Powers, University of Houston

Center for Research on Education, Diversity & Excellence • University of California • 1156 High St. • Santa Cruz, CA 95064 •

831-459-3500 • 831-459-3502 (fax) • crede@cats.ucsc.edu • www.crede.ucsc.edu
Teacher Interview Results

Each teacher was interviewed individually during the

second year of the project. The findings revealed that each

teacher could easily identify several patterns of behavior

that distinguished resilient students from non-resilient

students. Teachers perceived parent involvement, student

self-motivation, and student self-esteem to be the major factors contributing to students’ resiliency. The teachers reported that almost any instructional approach worked with

resilient students, whereas they said that cooperative learning, a structured curriculum, and “hands-on” activities were

the most effective strategies for non-resilient students. The

teachers also reported that teacher-directed instruction was

the most ineffective instructional approach for both resilient and non-resilient students.

It is noteworthy that these are the same teachers who

were observed using teacher-directed instructional approaches most of the time. In other words, there is a great

discrepancy between what teachers say are the most effective instructional practices and the actual instructional practices that they typically use in their classrooms.

Discussion

Through our observations, we found that the instructional context or culture of instruction that permeated nearly

every classroom, every school, and every year was the teacherdirected instructional model where teachers actively lead and

control all of the activities in the classroom, while students

passively respond to instruction by merely watching or listening. Instructional activities such as small group work and

independent work were seldom observed. Furthermore, we

found that the intellectual level of the curriculum was low

and that the culture of the classroom focused on “getting

work done” rather than on more authentic or culturally relevant learning situations. The curriculum focused on low

levels of learning, and there was an emphasis on “drill and

repetition” in order to prepare students to answer questions

on the state-mandated assessment tests. These instructional

practices constitute a basic skills, mastery orientation, or

“pedagogy of poverty” approach, that has pervasive, negative effects on student motivation and learning (Haberman,

1991; Padrón & Waxman, 1999).

Changing the culture of teacher-directed instruction to

a more student-centered instructional model that is based

on effective pedagogy standards, however, is not an easy task.

We used the results from our research to develop an instructional program called the Pedagogy to Improve Resiliency

Program (PIRP) to enable teachers to change their classroom practices and foster the educational resiliency of ELLs.

This program incorporates generic instructional components, such as reciprocal teaching and culturally relevant

instruction, along with CREDE’s Five Standards for Effective Pedagogy (Tharp, 1997). PIRP focuses on providing

teachers with knowledge of several resiliency-building strategies such as (a) offering opportunities to develop close relationships with students, (b) increasing students’ sense of

mastery in their lives, (c) building social competencies as

well as academic skills, (d) reducing stress in children’s lives,

and (e) generating school and community resources to support the children’s needs (North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, 1994). Within the PIRP design, we also

present teachers with feedback based on systematic observations of their classroom instruction, the classroom learning environment, and the differences between the resilient

and non-resilient students in their classrooms. The feedback

is designed to help teachers understand and reflect on their

current instructional strengths and weaknesses and consequently improve their instruction (Waxman & Huang, 1999).

While conducting this research, we became greatly concerned by the fact that nearly all of the teachers could easily

identify the resilient and non-resilient students in their

classes, yet they took little action in the areas of remediation

or individualization. The teachers knew that there were differences between the two groups of students, but they were

never observed adapting their instruction to accommodate

the needs of non-resilient students. Furthermore, many

teachers indicated during their interviews that teacherdirected instruction was the most inappropriate instructional approach for non-resilient students, yet it was the

predominant approach used in most classrooms. We are

optimistic, however, that programs like PIRP, that focus on

improving classroom instruction, creating a positive classroom learning environment, and fostering resiliency in children, will improve the learning of all students and reduce

the current educational gaps between resilient and nonresilient ELLs.

References

Haberman, M. (1991). Pedagogy of poverty versus good teaching. Phi Delta Kappan, 73, 290-294.

Hahn, A. L. (1984). Assessing and extending comprehension:

Monitoring strategies in the classroom. Reading Horizons, 24,

231-237.

North Central Regional Educational Laboratory. (1994). Resilience research: How can it help city schools? City Schools,

1(1), 11-18.

Padrón, Y. N., & Waxman, H. C. (1999). Effective instructional

practices for English language learners. In H. C. Waxman &

H. J. Walberg (Eds.), New directions for teaching practice and

research (pp. 171-203). Berkeley, CA: McCutchan.

Padrón, Y. N., & Waxman, H. C. (1988). The effect of ESL students’ perceptions of their cognitive reading strategies on

reading achievement. TESOL Quarterly, 22, 146-150.

Tharp, R. G. (1997). From at-risk to excellence: Research, theory,

and principles for practice (Research Rep. No. 1). Washington, DC and Santa Cruz, CA: Center for Research on Education, Diversity & Excellence.

Wang, M. C., Haertel, G. D., & Walberg, H. J. (1994). Educational

resilience in inner cities. In M. C. Wang & E. W. Gordon (Eds.),

Educational resilience in inner-city America: Challenges and

prospects (pp. 45-72). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Waxman, H. C., & Huang, S. L. (1999). Classroom observation

research and the improvement of teaching. In H. C. Waxman

& H. J. Walberg (Eds.), New directions for teaching practice

and research (pp. 107-129). Berkeley, CA: McCutchan.

Winfield, L. F. (1991). Resilience, schooling, and development in

African-American youth: A conceptual framework. Education and Urban Society, 24, 5-14.

For more information on PIRP and the research supporting it, contact Dr. Yolanda Padrón, College of Education, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204-5872, Email: Ypadron@UH.edu, or visit

http://www.crede.ucsc.edu/Programs/Program5/Project5_4.html.

This work is supported under the Educational Research and Development Center Program (Cooperative Agreement No. R306A60001-96), administered

by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), U.S. Dept. of Education. The findings and opinions expressed here do not necessarily

reflect the position or policies of OERI.