CENTER FOR INNOVATIVE TEACHING AND LEARNING
(CITAL)
FY 1998-99



Table of Contents:

Abstract
Assessment of Project's First-year Accomplishments
Description of Continuation Project Goals
Description of How Second-year Activities Will Vary from First-year Activities
Plan for Wide Spread Dissemination of Results from First-year Activities
Description of Second-year Funding Requests
Evaluation

ABSTRACT

    This continuation project includes the following primary goals:  (1) To strengthen the community of scholars by designating university elementary education faculty to act as support facilitators in the development of pedagogical and technological skills; (2) To designate two members of the education faculty as academic liaisons between the elementary education technologically-enhanced math methods course instructors and the Department of Mathematics content instructors as well as between the children's literature course instructors and the reading methods course instructors; (3) To continue to revise the elementary education program of study within the Department of Mathematics and the Department of Curriculum & Instruction to include increased attention to practical and creative uses of technology to strengthen content and pedagogical knowledge: (4) To promote and develop the currently constructed "Community of Scholars" web site as a technological tool for continually strengthening pedagogical growth in a supportive professional community; (5) To provide children at risk with curricular opportunities that focus on the development of hierarchical categories necessary to organize knowledge of the literate world.
    The community of Scholars project will continue to integrate technology in numerous components of the elementary teacher education program including two math courses, the children's literature course, the reading/language arts methods course, and the math methods course.  In addition, as many field experiences as possible will take place in the four participating elementary schools, three of which are virtually completely at risk.  The major new strategy of this continuation project is the establishment of three Education faculty members to collaborate as on-site support personnel in the participating elementary schools and in the Department of Mathematics.  These individuals will work with a specified group of current and prospective teachers in the classroom setting.  They will support them in strengthening design, implementation, and assessment practices for at-risk learners.  The faculty members will also sere as a liaison between instructors in the Department of Mathematics and the Department of Curriculum and Instruction.
 
 

Assessment of Project's First-Year Accomplishments

    Thanks to the first year of the Board of Regents CITAL grant, systemic change in the pre-service elementary teacher education program at LSU has been successfully initiated through the development of a "Community of Scholars".  This academic community building has involved a collaborative effort between university faculty from the Department of Curriculum and Instruction and the Department of Mathematics, elementary school administrators and teachers, and pre-service elementary teacher education students.
    As a result of the project's first-year efforts, the use of technology has been incorporated into both university level content and methodology courses as well as in the public school and laboratory school field experiences of elementary teacher education students.  The 1999 graduates of the elementary education program of study are better prepared to utilize and support the application of technology and to implement enhanced pedagogical practices as they begin teaching in K-3 classrooms.  Increased teacher competence and confidence relative to pedagogical and technological practices resulted from progress toward the project's five goals.  Accomplishments toward each of the first year goals are discussed below.
Goal 1:  To create an actively cooperating "Community of Scholars" to include academic faculty, teacher education faculty, elementary school teachers, and pre-service elementary teacher education students.
    From June 1998 to February 1999, the community met as a whole five times:  (1) initial retreat in June; (2) technology training week in June; (3) initial sharing workshop in October; (4) tech safari and mid-term retreat in January; (5) KOZ web site workshop in early February.  In addition, various members of the community met to observe each other and to share ideas.  During the fall semester, co-director Dr. James Madden spent two half-days per week in the East Baton Rouge Public Schools observing teachers and discussion with school administrators.  Dr. Elizabeth Willis, reading/language arts instructor at LSU, actually taught the basic reading methods course in an available classroom at Highland Elementary School, a designated "at-risk" school.  During this current semester, LSU pre-service student teachers have been placed in the classes of grant-participating teachers at Highland.
    An important factor in creating the community has been the association with KOZ, a communication technology firm based in North Carolina.  Since their educational representatives are interested in building community between schools and universities, the company has made available our program an unlimited amount of web space.  Lucy Miller, education consultant for KOZ, recently wrote the following about LSU's CITAL project to Dr. Barbara Fuhrmann, Dean of the College of Education:

"The Community of Scholars Program at LSU will serve as an exemplary model and lead for other University programs to follow.  The hard work, dedication, and obvious enthusiasm by your faculty and teachers will continually stimulate your collective vision.  This positive reach for the future will strongly enrich the classroom to tomorrow!"
While this "community" has emerged, it is critical that it be nurtured further.  The problem has been to redefine the university faculty's relationship with classroom teachers in this new vision for effective teacher preparation.  Although faculty, principals, and those teachers with advanced technological skills have established very good collegial relationships, it has been more difficult for individuals with less expertise in technology.  The latter express fear in using technology and tend to "stick with their own" or colleagues who support and often retain traditional teaching practices.
Goal 2:  To promote the adoption of enhanced content and pedagogy practices in classrooms of students with diverse learning needs including students "at risk" of failure or experiencing a learning disability.
    After eight months of work, we are witnessing applications of technologically enhanced content and pedagogy practices in the elementary school classroom.  Both the teachers and our pre-service students have made significant efforts to reach the project's stated goals.  The two quotes below are testimony of those efforts:
"21st Century . . . Here we come!  We have worked our way into integrating the computer into the different subjects.  Here are some examples.  We are writing and typing stories on the computer.  This is to get the students familiar with work processing.  Then they are illustrating their stories on Kid Pix.  We are using the digital camera to create personalized cards and graphs.  And many more!  We are learning along with the students."

"My students have benefited by having access to computers in the classroom which they would not have if it were not for this grant.  Skills they have gained include: (1) keyboarding, word processing, daily journal entries; (2) practicing and applying literacy skills in authentic ways, using punctuation, current and prospective italicization, and writing complete sentences in their stories and journals on the computer (national technology standards for 1st grade); (3) all students have learned to import graphics into their writings."

Goal 3:  To infuse technology into pre-service teacher education programs and classrooms serving children at risk.
    Infusion of technology has occurred at both the elementary classroom level and in the pre-service elementary teacher education program.  Classroom teachers in the four participating schools have become familiar with the technology provided in their classrooms through CITAL.  Pre-service teachers are assisting these classroom teachers as they fulfill their field experience requirements and they are individually experimenting with activities they were exposed to in workshop settings and learning the software made available to them.
    As concerns the infusion of technology among pre-service students, two activities were scheduled specifically with them in mind.  The first was a "technology camp" held three days prior to the beginning of the fall semester.  Almost 150 elementary education majors participated in this event.  The second event was held the two days prior to the beginning of spring semester classes.  It involved a technology safari wherein students were assigned to spend the morning visiting a special campus unit with digital camera, video camera, and numerous questions, returning in the afternoon to put together a multimedia presentation to be used in the classroom.
    Unanticipated obstacles beyond control impeded acquisition of equipment at he anticipated time.  For example, the six computers that were ordered for each school were ready for delivery almost immediately.  However the accompanying monitors were on back order for more than a month and the CDrom components were not available until even later, delaying shipment of the machines to the schools.  Probably the most frustrating problem has been the difficulty of obtaining external connections for on line communication and information access.  The technology supervisor for the EBR parish schools system was confident that all the participating schools would be on line early in the school year.  Two schools continue to communicate on our web site through their schools' only online computer or through participants' home computers.  Much of the problem is associated with the age and existing wiring of the buildings.
Goal 4:  To revise college curriculum to increase future teacher competence and confidence and enhanced content and pedagogy in K-3 reading and mathematics instruction.
    The university courses involved in this project included two math courses, a children's literature course, a reading/language arts methods course, and a math methods course.  In all cases the curriculum was changed to include and require sufficient experiences in technology to assure teacher competence and confidence in its use.  The math courses used the computer lab extensively and the students were required to purchase a workbook and software to accompany Grometer's Sketchpad.  In addition, the math instructors are in the process of putting these two courses on the Web.
    Students in the eight sections (four each semester) of the children's literature course have been introduced to a revised curriculum for that course.  It includes the integration of technology in the following ways: (1) students become familiar with children's literature software especially Living Books; (2) students become familiar with web sites and listserves established by famous authors and illustrators of children's books; (3) students write a research paper using a minimum of four sources at least two of which must come from the web.
    The curriculum of the reading/language arts methods classes and the math methods classes have been revised to include a significant amount of technology and to schedule the three-week field experience in the four participating schools.  For example, all students in two sections of the math methods class must demonstrate competency in designing "Power Point" presentations and/or Hyper Studio interactive lessons.
Goal 5:  To ensure that all elementary education majors have significant experiences in teaching reading and mathematics using enhanced content, enhanced pedagogy, and technology in schools with high populations of at-risk students.
This goal was achieved by placing as many LSU elementary education students as possible in the four participating schools for the early field experiences attached to EDCI 3126 (Math Methods) and EDCI 3200 (Reading/Language Arts Methods).  The same held true for the student teaching experiences which are scheduled the semester after they have taken the math methods.  Since the project was limited to the early grades, not all student teachers, nor all early field experience students could be assigned to the four participating schools.  In a math methods class, the pre-service teachers made email connections with students in their assigned elementary school prior to the beginning of their field experience.
 
 

Description of Continuation Project Goals

    Having realized progress toward all goals, the "Community of Scholars" has specific second-year goals focusing on needs revealed during the first-year initiation phase.  As university faculty reviews research supporting current learning theory, it becomes imperative that this new knowledge be translated into practices within the at-risk classroom.  For the most part, traditional classroom practices are not currently meeting the needs of at-risk children as many of them continue to fall below basic achievement levels.  Innovative practices advocated by university faculty emphasize the need for learners to have models and to be supported or "scaffolded" when attempting new tasks.  However, when student teachers are sent into classrooms to implement these new practices, few have had the practice modeled for them, and during their first attempts, they are usually without the supportive presence of a facilitator.  The same situation is true for current teachers having completed workshops centered on innovative practice; they are usually on their own during implementation.  Awareness of this phenomenon mandates that substantive support is offered where it is most needed:  in the elementary classroom.
    Not surprisingly, technological tools that could enhance new practices are used in limited and isolated ways that do not offer low SES children the needed organizational structure that their middle SES counterparts acquire by school age.  Middle SES children have the necessary organizational schemes by school age because of their experience with storybooks and other parent-child interactions in early childhood.  These experiences help them organize and orient their thinking toward literacy (Hart & Risely, 1995 (1)) and allow them to connect to basic skill instruction in meaningful ways.  Current research (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998 (2)) suggests that embedding basic skills instruction within integrated and contextualized curricular practice makes learning more meaningful to lower as well as middle SES children.  For basic math and literacy skills to have utility they must be connected to at least rudimentary, conventional, and cultural understandings of time, space, number, geography, science, as well as other domains of the literate world.  If these structures are not present, they must be individually constructed from interaction with others.  Currently available productivity software provides concrete visual models of how the literate world is organized.  Such software permits primary age children to organize literate and mathematical content by graphing, concept mapping, charting, Venn diagrams, constructing stories, etc.
    Progress toward matching at-risk students' needs with classroom teachers' practices and technology skills are the primary focal point for year two.  Furthering year-one goals by establishing a "Community of Scholars" has created a positive alliance within the community.  However, year-two goals are efforts to move beyond the workshop or university classroom teacher training paradigms, and to provide support in authentic contexts. This need will be met by releasing three College of Education faculty members of a portion of their teaching time to form the On-site Support Team to act as modelers, consultants, and liaisons to the four participating schools, to the various methodology courses, and to the Department of Mathematics.
Goal 1:  To strengthen the community of scholars by designating university elementary education faculty to act as support facilitators in the development of pedagogical and technological skills.
    This goal will benefit not only current and prospective elementary teachers but will inform systemic curricular development, allocation of resources (materials of instruction, software, technology training and pro-active academic changes).  The two university elementary education faculty members will become on site support members scaffolding students completing field experiences and the current teachers in those classrooms to implement effective practices and linking their needs to the language arts and mathematics content courses in the university classroom.  This on site support member will continuously investigate explore and inform concerning the current needs for teacher preparation in today's classrooms.  The dissemination of needs will be accomplished by electronic mail, university/site-based faculty meetings, school newsletters, and web site.
Goal 2:  To designate two members of the education faculty as academic liaisons between the elementary education technologically-enhanced math methods course instructors and the Department of Mathematics content instructors as well as between the children's literature course instructors and the reading methods course instructors.
    The purpose of this liaison will be to provide the needed bridge between the departments to strengthen collaboration that will assist pre-service teachers in making important connections between mathematical concepts such as number sense, functions, and patterns and the elementary math curriculum.  A similar bridge will link the content of children's literature with the concepts taught in reading/language arts.
Goal 3:  To continue to revise the elementary education program of study within the Department of Mathematics and the Department of Curriculum & Instruction to include increased attention to practical and creative uses of technology to strengthen content and pedagogical knowledge.
    Technological applications can enhance the development of mathematics concepts among pre-service teachers by providing an interactive, enriched learning environment to supplement this year's transition to a problem-solving, hands-on approach in Math 1201 and 1202.
Goal 4:  To promote and develop the currently constructed "Community of Scholars" web site as a technological tool for continually strengthening pedagogical growth in a supportive professional community.
    Two university faculty who comprise the on-site support team will monitor web site activity, personally inviting project participants from both the university and the elementary schools to share ideas or to make inquiries related to teaching young children in the context of integrated learning practices.  Threaded discussions will be monitored and facilitated as well as periodic on-line discussions.  They will also provide descriptions of and hyperlinks to education web sites containing resources they deem to be of high quality.
Goal 5:  To provide children at risk with curricular opportunities that focus on the development of hierarchical categories necessary to organize knowledge of the literate world.
    Children from low-income families are in jeopardy of failing to read and write on grade level by third grade.  Snow, Burns, and Griffin (1998 (3)) reviewed research on predictors of reading difficulties and concluded that children who are academically successful have broader composite measures of language abilities.  Hart and Risley (1995 (4)) found low SES parents interact with their pre-school children with only 1/3 of the words spoken by the middle SES parents.  As a result low SES children enter school with fewer and less developed world knowledge and literacy experiences to connect with classroom learning.  For the development of basic skills in reading and math these children require concurrent learning experiences to acquire hierarchical categories and story structure elements, or the world knowledge middle SES children possess by school age.  Acquisition of basic skills must be contextualized within meaningful learning experiences rather than in isolated lessons.
 
 

Description of How Second-year Activities Will Vary from First-year Activities

    During the first year, integration of technology in the various university courses was initiated in selected section of reading/language arts methods, children's literature, math methods and math content courses.  The second year will involve all sections of these courses.  During the second year, there will also be an increase in the number of student teachers involved in the participating schools.  Each of the four schools will be assigned two outstanding student teachers who will assist the On-Site Support Team by integrating technology in classroom activities.  These math and language activities will be videotaped for the purpose of analysis in methods classes.
    The project will establish an On-Site Support Team to act as modelers, consultants, and liaisons to the four participating schools, to the various methodology courses, and to the Department of Mathematics.  The On-Site Support Team will work in collaborative sessions within and beyond the classrooms of current and prospective teachers and link integrated and balanced basic skills curricula and teaching methods for the benefit of children from diverse backgrounds.
    To insure those efforts to redirect and expand CITAL 1998-1999 goals are furthered, the continuation grant, CITAL 1999-2000, will reallocate efforts on two levels of field-based instruction.  Level one offers consistent support within the three East Baton Rouge Parish Y-Factor Schools (Y-Factor designates that 95% of the school's population is at risk), and continued support for innovative practice at the Lab School.  While level two promotes renewed efforts within the Mathematics Department content courses to develop mathematics modules representative of authentic elementary education curriculum content and pedagogical practice, as well as strengthening the connection among mathematics faculty members and field-based current and prospective teachers.
    Specifically, one On-Site Support Team member will be assigned to facilitate, consult, and coordinate the continuing systemic improvement for current and prospective teachers situated in three elementary schools:  Highland Elementary, Melrose Elementary and the Lab School, while a second On-Site Support Team member will be assigned to one elementary school, Greenville Elementary.  Working within the elementary school settings, the Support Team members will regularly support grant participants' efforts to improve learning/teaching experiences by attending grade-level meetings for curriculum planning, modeling proposed integrated and balanced basic skills lessons within each classroom setting, and developing authentic assessment tools for cross-curriculum and technology production.  Additionally, the Support Team, in conjunction with the classroom teachers and university faculty, will select a Common Software Toolkit to include specific software recommended for at-risk primary age children.  Members will also locate appropriate Internet resources.  The Support Team members will actively encourage current and prospective teachers to share ongoing classroom activities and student work, explore curriculum innovations, and seek peer support among participants through online chats and threaded discussions using CITAL's Schoollife.net web site.
    Level two designates mathematics department-based professional development with the third On-Site Support Team Member situated on the university campus for direct contact with Dr. James Madden, the grant co-director, and the three mathematics instructors who teach Math 1201 and 1202 (courses designed for elementary education majors).  The purpose of this affiliation will be to provide a bridge between mathematics content courses taught in the Department of Mathematics and mathematics pedagogy courses taught in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction, and to strengthen the collaboration between departments in regard to pre-service education.  This Support Team member will work as a liaison and consultant relative to the mathematics curriculum, texts, supplemental resources, manipulatives, and technology application.  The technology focus will be extended from the first year's goal to include applications to focus on concepts such as number sense, functions, and patterns through the integration and implementation of calculators and selected software.  The use of these technological applications will enhance the mathematics conceptual development of pre-service teachers by providing an interactive, enriching learning environment to supplement the problem-solving, hands-on approach already existing within Math 1201 and 1202.  Further, the Support Team member will also provide a valuable connection for the university math instructors and the classroom teachers involved in the project.  Opportunities will be provided for the university math instructors to conduct more focused site-visits to the four participating schools to observe and communicate with the classroom teachers.  Additionally, reciprocal visits by the classroom teachers to the Math 1201 and 1202 classes will focus on instructional format and content.  Furthermore, taking a leadership role, the Support Team member will plan further on-site support sessions that include discussion panels, where Math 1201 and 1202 instructors and site-based classroom teachers will be members for discussions of connecting teacher preparation, classroom practice, and content focus.  Other communication avenues, such as use of the "Community of Scholars" Schoollife.net web site, will be utilized to continue dialogue and exploration of elementary mathematics content, standards, and pedagogical practice.

Plan for Wide Spread Dissemination of Results from First-Year Activities

    As this developing Community of Scholars provides increased professional support aimed at effective teaching for meaningful learning, it will strengthen the morale and the personal fulfillment needed to sustain individuals in careers as teachers.  The benefits gained from this exploration into collaborative partnerships, enhanced by technology and supported by the resources of CITAL, will need to be shared with other communities and university teacher preparation programs of study.  There are many possible avenues for dissemination.

  1. 1.  CITAL presentation teams, signifying community in their composition of university faculty, classroom teachers, and student teachers, will attend three important state conferences.  These will include conferences of the Louisiana Reading Association, the state chapter of the National Council of Teachers of mathematics, and the Louisiana Association of Computer Using Educators (LACUE).  Additionally, a team will attend one regional conference to disseminate project benefits outside the state.
  2. 2.  The Community of Scholars web site can become a model as well a a resource for educators parish wide, statewide, and beyond as the material posted is increasingly supportive to teachers.  Additionally, EBR and State Department Supervisors of Elementary Education and Technology will be invited to electronically link with the Community of Scholars so that systemic change might be further extended.
  3. 3.  The Community of Scholars will need to formally come together to ensure adequate dissemination of innovative teaching and learning within the growing phenomenon.  This can be managed through even more exploration and experimentation with technology as we work to organize a compressed video conference.
  4. 4.  Students graduating from the LSU teacher education program will take knowledge of this experience as they transition to their own classrooms.  They will have access to appropriate web site resources and continue their participation in the community thus receiving university faculty support through electronic means during their critical first year of teaching.  Graduating students as well as participating teachers will be natural disseminators within their own schools and among colleagues in other settings.  They will use the community's web site to share innovative practices and other resources found there.


Description of Second-Year Funding Requests

    In contrast to the first year focus of funds on the acquisition of equipment, software, technology training workshops, and the building of relationships between grant participants, second year funding will focus on the areas of need revealed during the initiation process.  The primary need is for a liaison force to strengthen the connections between the elementary schools and the methodology component, and between the methodology component and the math department.  Release time from teaching responsibilities is imperative so that methodology faculty may invest the energies needed to more fully effect systemic change in teacher preparation, especially in the case of new teachers entering schools with high at-risk populations.  It is important to note that all funds for faculty course release time ($71,422) is provided in the LSU Cash Match, and in addition, $6,000 of the $27,000 for graduate assistants is also LSU Cash Match.  The two graduate assistants are knowledgeable concerning the areas of need.  One has a strong pedagogical background and the other possesses the technological background to serve as the project's webmaster.
    Travel funds are requested in order to disseminate the project's design and benefits.  It is also important to impart the challenges met as the project evolved into a viable support system.  Second year travel funds ($5400) are designated to assist Community of Scholars teams to disseminate project start-up and growth reports as well as potential linkage and/or replication.  These teams will consist of a university faculty member, a participating classroom teacher, and a lead student teacher.  A total of five presentations will be given with four being at in-state professional conferences and one at a southern regional conference.

Evaluation

    Documentation of qualitative classroom change and individual transformation will be recorded (digital photographs, digital video clips, audio recordings, and field notes) by the Support Team members during weekly classroom visits.  This documentation will also serve as  point of departure for discussions with elementary education faculty involved in teaching children's literature and reading/language arts methods courses.  The second-year goals will be evaluated as follows:
Goals 1 and 2:  Design and administer a Likert-type questionnaire to assess the impact of the On-Site Support Team (1) within the elementary school setting, and (2) within the university teacher education program.  These will be administered both in December and in May.
Goal 3:  Performance indicators of this goal include:  (1) existence of revised curriculum as evidenced by syllabi including a minimum of technology-based activities; (2) results of an attitudinal questionnaire administered to students in the designated elementary education courses.
Goal 4:  Monitor the number of hits on the web site, the rate and frequency of participant activity, and the amount of teaching material posted for sharing.
Goal 5:  Assess the results of one student-teacher taught unit per classroom on knowledge of story elements using a researcher created story map and knowledge of number sense using manipulatives on a place value chart (computer created).
 

Footnotes

(1)  Hart, Betty and Todd R. Risley 1995.  Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children. Baltimore:  Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co.

(2)  Snow, Catherine E., M. Susan Burns, and Peg Griffin (eds.) 1998.  Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children. Washington, D.C., National Academy Press.

(3)  Snow, Burns, and Griffin.  Opcit.

(4)  Hart and Risley. Opcit.

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