Teachers' adaptations during planning and instruction, their vision for teaching, and their students' understanding of reading comprehension

UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
Walter Scott Howerton IV (Creator)
Institution
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/
Advisor
Samuel Miller

Abstract: Thoughtfully adaptive teaching has long been thought to be an important component of teacher effectiveness, as well as being a logical and intuitively appealing idea (Anders et al., 2000; Hoffman & Pearson, 2000; Gambrell, Malloy, & Mazzoni, 2007; Snow et al., 2005; Williams & Baumann, 2008). Despite the many appealing qualities suggested by theorists of thoughtfully adaptive teaching, no empirical data existed to substantiate those claims. To extend earlier TAT research (Duffy et al., 2008; Parsons et al., 2010), my study investigated two teachers in three areas: (a) teachers' on-the-fly adaptations vs. adaptations made during planning, (b) whether adaptations are influenced by visioning, and (c) whether thoughtfully adaptive teaching is associated with student understanding of reading comprehension. Findings showed that, teachers made a three-fold increase in on-the-fly adaptations compared to previous studies, most likely due to their teaching experience and the ways their instruction was less imposed by district mandates. Compared to on-the-fly adaptations, teachers adapted five times less during planning, most likely due to the lack of ambiguity present during planning time. Over half of their adaptations were designed to promote reading comprehension; despite the 50% increase of student responses from pre-to-post-interviews, no relationship could be linked to the teachers' adaptations. Minimal evidence was found linking their adaptations to their visions. Future studies are needed to investigate the link between teachers' adaptations and student outcomes relative to the lesson's objectives and standardized tests.

Additional Information

Publication
Dissertation
Language: English
Date: 2011
Keywords
Conceptual Understanding, Reading Comprehension, Teacher Decision Making, Teacher Visioning, Thoughtfully Adaptive Teaching
Subjects
Effective teaching
Teacher effectiveness
Adaptability (Psychology)
Reading comprehension $v Case studies

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