Domain II
Accessing and Using Research to Improve Practice and Student Learning
Education will always be evolving, and research is a tool to support teacher evolution. To support teams, leaders can access and maintain knowledge of the current research on strategies and instruction that support student learning. Utilizing data from their own community and communicating that data across teachers can support evolution among colleagues. Additionally, working with higher education institutions and executing action research support evolution to specific educational settings.
Artifact 1
As a part of my internship project to learn about coaching, I did a practice coaching session with a physical education specialist teacher at my school. After having our first coaching conversation, I synthesized that the teacher was struggling with the new social-emotional learning (SEL) class that had been added to their schedule. Specifically, during our conversations, I heard the desire to develop better assessments for the SEL units they were teaching. When I presented this idea to the teacher, they agreed, and I supported the teacher by researching best practices for assessing social-emotional skills. In my research, I found that social-emotional skills assessment runs into many similar issues as regular content assessment does. Note that in the summary of SEL assessment approaches from CASEL’s research on SEL learning, the ease of assessment, the time required to assess, and the qualitative nature of SEL are limitations to assessments. Taking these things into consideration and using the RAND assessment finder, I was able to locate two SEL assessments that, with adaptation for our students, will support the teacher in administering better assessments to students and gathering data on what students are learning during the SEL units.
CASEL-Gateway-Student-SEL-Competence-Assessment.pdfSEL-Metrics-update_1.5.21.pdfSEL-User-Guide.pdfArtifact 2
I was introduced to the concept of translanguaging last year after attending an EARCOS-sponsored professional development that was shared by my Director of Teaching and Learning. The PD was presented by Ceci Gomez-Galvez, and her passion and expertise on the strategy was so infectious that when it came time to conduct action research within my own school community, I knew that I wanted to focus on the impact of translanguaging. In my research on translanguaging, I learned more about its theoretical roots as well as its applications within education. After conducting action research within my own school to learn more about current language policies, current language strategies being used, and the incorporation of translanguaging, I got a better idea about the impacts and applications that tranlanguaging can have on students. Giving students the ability to use their home language or first language in partnership with their second language gives students the ability to build content knowledge using their language skills in addition to honoring their identity and cultural backgrounds. While translanguaging shows academic merit, it, perhaps more importantly, allows our students to develop an identity as bilingual in a way that makes them confident and proud of their own skills. My research on translanguaging has changed how I approach language usage in my classroom, and I hope to continue supporting its usage in school settings.
