Systematically designed literature classroom interventions: design principles, development and implementation: an introduction

Abstract

This study answers a call for more transparency in descriptions of literature interventions that might inform future work in professional development design as well as literary pedagogy. The study draws on design-based research models to describe how principles of literary pedagogy were enacted in two iterations of a professional development program for U.S. secondary Language Arts teachers. The first iteration of the PD focused on surfacing teachers’ beliefs about literature, helping them to leverage learners’ everyday interpretive practices, to use affect ive evaluation to build literary interpretations, and to ask questions born of genuine curiosity. The second iteration revised the enactment of some principles and integrated activities designed to build trust in the learning community and make time for reflection on and integration of new concepts into current practice. Along with description, the study presents a preliminary experimental finding: teachers in the second iteration reported greater satisfaction with their learning experience and were more likely to implement professional development practices in their classrooms. The study hypothesizes that these gains result from the integration of time and trust into the learning design. We describe the design and development of a technology-based inference-making intervention system that includes a set of interactive learning modules, each of which engages students to (a) view age- appropriate children’s videos, (b) learn vocabulary words that are central to main ideas in each video, (c) respond to inferential questions, (d) receive scaffolding and specific feedback for each ques-tion, and (e) engage in a set of read-aloud lessons implemented by the classroom teacher and designed to promote transfer of inferencing from non-reading to reading contexts. First, we present the design principles that guided development, drawing on an integrated language comprehension framework. Next, we describe the design process, drawing on a field test of the usability and feasibility of the intervention system. Findings revealed that students and teachers found the system to be usable and helpful for support inference-making, and that it was feasible for classroom use. Then, we provide evidence from a field trial that showed that children who used the intervention system made gains in language comprehension, and that a version with ‘offline’ questioning (questions asked after viewing videos) was slightly superior to an ‘online’ version (questions asked during viewing). Finally, we high-light lessons learned that are informing additional development. students in the Netherlands, which aimed to foster their insight into human nat ure―insight into themselves, fictional others, and real-world others. Starting from a model of transformative reading, an exploration of the educational context, and a review of previous intervention studies, we designed an intervention in an iterative process. We evaluated the validity and practicality of two versions of the intervention. From teacher and student data, we concluded that the validity and practicality of the first version were suboptimal and identified various suggestions for improvement. In a second iteration, the initial design principles were reoperationalized. Based on these reoperationalized principles, we designed a second version of the intervention, which was found to be sufficiently valid and practical. In addition, the second iteration led to specifying the initial design principles, by formulating subprinciples for operationalization in the classroom. All in all, this study demonstrates that an iterative design process is needed to arrive at a valid and practical intervention, and that this process may have the potential to further specify initial design principles. Studies show that teachers’ continuing professional development (CPD) is essential for educational quality, and moreover, when it comes to reading, key for students’ success in education and participation in our 21st-century society. Most of the research investigating professional development programs on improving teachers’ self - efficacy for teaching reading and in particular on fostering students’ reading motivation, however, fails to include clear and detailed descriptions of the design principles underlying the programs. Therefore, the present study provides a comprehensive description and operationalization of the design principles of a CPD program for primary school teachers focusing on promoting students’ reading motivation combining Desimone’s (2009) framework for effective professional development with Self-Determination Theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000). Consequently, the CPD program’s core features as distinguished by Desimone (i.e., content focus, coherence, active learning, collective participation and duration) and the need for autonomy, competence and relatedness as put central in SDT are analytically described and elaborated on. In view of reporting on the implementation check of the CPD, we further provide insight into whether these operationalized design principles were also perceived as such by the teachers participating in a first iteration of the CPD intervention.