Project Summary

As an elementary school teacher, doctoral student Kierstin Giunco—who is a 2019 graduate from the Lynch School’s Urban Catholic Teacher Corps program—investigated her own problems of practice. The resulting project shows the potential of practitioner research to positively influence student outcomes and contribute to understanding questions about inclusion, cooperation, and acceptance.

Approach

Teacher inquiry responds to problems of practice in a productive and empowering manner. This project shows the potential of practitioner research to influence student outcomes positively and contribute to understanding questions about inclusion, cooperation, and acceptance. It also reflects true collaboration among teachers, students, university faculty, and a teacher formation program. Kierstin’s students demonstrated their understanding of literacy as a powerful tool to advocate for their needs or larger social change.

Project History

A UCTC alumna, Kierstin was empowered by investigating her own problems of practice through practitioner research. Teaching in a first-grade inclusive classroom, she, another UCTC member, and a BC faculty member conducted a pilot study in her classroom, and later multi-site descriptive study, around a needs-based fairness curriculum. Later, moving into an upper elementary position, she collaborated with faculty at Emmanuel College and Merrimack College to explore how to affirm her students’ lived experiences and promote their views of themselves as advocates. This resulted in a three-year study around students’ literacy identities, representative texts, and a social justice-oriented curriculum.

Key Findings

• After engaging in an advocacy unit, students’ reading purposes broadened from focusing on in-school contexts to more complex and meaningful personal, community, and world contexts. 

• Students are empowered when they explore meaningful questions about their world and current events in their lives. 

• Teachers must consider the interplay between classroom context, students’ agency and identity, and literacy achievement.

• Text selection plays a crucial role in fostering student engagement.

• Allowing varied formats/modalities for student interaction with texts (i.e. journals, small group, or partner discussions) provides a richer picture of student engagement and enhances learning.

Data Points

• Four students were interviewed around their literacy identities in fifth, sixth, and seventh grade. 

• After engaging in an advocacy unit, students created a website around their social justice topics and presented corresponding speeches at a showcase, of which 100 stakeholders attended as audience members. 

• Two years of instruction was collaboratively coded for students’ purposes for reading and their negotiation styles, which showed powerful nuances in students’ evolving reading identities.

• Data from units around representative texts, needs-based fairness, and social justice topics were collected with an emphasis on literacy identities and digital literacies.