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Papau, Tashi Anna

The purpose of my research is to explore whether a collaborative working relationship between English teacher and content area teachers can improve literacy instruction in the content area classroom. This focus emerged from my observation that students, who demonstrated strong literacy skills in my English classroom did not, according to my content area colleagues, demonstrate these same skills in other subject areas. At the time of the study, staff at my school were discussing the possibility of incorporating scheduled collaborative times for teachers to work together to improve teaching practice and I began to wonder if a collaboration between content area teachers and an English teacher might be an effective method of improving student use of literacy strategies in their content area classes. The literature regarding both content area literacy and collaboration as a tool for affecting teaching practice indicates that this would be an effective method to address this problem. This qualitative study explores the nature of a collaboration involving three biology teachers and me in our attempt to improve content area literacy instructions. Data collected include questionnaire responses, field notes, email communications and artifacts created during the collaborative process. Data were coded and analyzed for major themes based on the literature regarding both content area literacy and collaborations. Findings of this study indicate that a collaborative working relationship between English teacher and content area teachers can have a positive impact on content area literacy instruction and can be beneficial to all teachers involved.

Text

University of British Columbia. LLED 590

Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library

10.14288/1.0078033

Education, Faculty of; Language and Literacy Education (LLED), Department of

Graduate

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