The Article

Professors Taffy Raphael (Oakland University), Susan Florio-Ruane (MSU’s College of Education), and a group of teachers (Marcella Kehus, MariAnne George, Nina Levorn Hasty, and Kathy Highfield) describe in this article their efforts to tackle the difficult issue of how to re-engage low-achieving readers through the collaborative process of a teacher study group.

Discussion

The authors are part of the Teacher Learning Collaborative (TLC), a network of three teacher study groups that number 30 Michigan teachers and teacher educators. It was the teachers’ frustration and isolation in trying to re-engage low-achieving readers that spawned their collaboration in the TLC. Through their conversations in their study groups they became convinced that they needed “a new, or at least a substantially modified, curriculum.” They met in book clubs and study groups for experience in conversation-based learning, and working within a community of learners to solve problems. The led them to design, teach, and assess the curriculum they developed call Book Club Plus. In Book Club Plus, the educators created thematic units that enabled them to take advantage of reading, writing, and talking about text. The units were grouped under Literacy Block and Book Club. Each was extended periods of time in the school day within which important activities took place, each serving a different purpose in students’ learning. In Literacy Block, activities related to the skills and strategies of reading and writing were taught and practiced. They included writers’ workshops, practice activities to foster word-level decoding skills, and reading books individually or in peer groups. In Book Club, heterogeneous student-led book clubs were the sites where students applied the strategies they had been taught by discussing compelling, age-appropriate literature. The teachers taught the Book Club Plus curriculum for three years. The teachers also developed grade-level benchmarks and rubrics that allowed them to assess student progress. The experience allowed the authors to see the powerful potential of teachers working with peers, as well as with university-based researchers and teacher educators to investigate complex problems of both theory and practice. “Missing from the lives of teachers is the opportunity to articulate and investigate with others the means for improving our practice and the learning of those with whom we work. Study groups provide an activity setting in which these voices and views can be expressed as part of learning. In our collaborative research, we found that out of a dialogue … we constructed knowledge that might otherwise have eluded us if we had conducted either traditional university-based research or innovative school-based practioner research in isolation.”

What It Means to You

The authors make a strong argument for teacher study groups as a method of professional develop that can lead to deeper knowledge and understanding as well as serve a tool in dealing with persistent problems of practice.  Does your district foster teacher study groups? Could your district benefit from inquiry that results from study groups that link education researchers and K-12 teachers?

For More Information

Raphael, T.E., Florio-Ruane, S., Kehus, M.J., George, M., Hasty, N.L. & Highfield, K. (2001). Thinking for ourselves: Literacy learning in a diverse teacher inquiry network. The Reading Teacher, 54(6), 2- 11.

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