In this poster presentation, literacy educators will share their experiences and the results from a qualitative study focused on several unique instructional methods utilized with undergraduate students in an Early Childhood/Special Education Program. During a Literacy Assessment course, they collaboratively worked with teacher candidates within the contexts of an assessment and reading laboratory. Following the laboratory sessions, teacher candidates engaged in weekly debriefing sessions within the format of Socratic Seminars. Debriefing sessions provided students with opportunities to reflect on their performance in the assessment and reading lab, to share their questions related to the implementation of the assessments, and to discuss their learnings about their elementary student. These course methods replaced more traditional, lecture oriented instructional approaches as a means to provide authentic, practical learning experiences as teacher candidates’ completed a literacy assessment course.
Of primary importance is the impact this laboratory experience had on teacher education candidates. The combination of interactive teaching methods in the Literacy Assessment course, authentic teaching opportunities in the laboratory, and debriefing through Socratic Seminars resulted in teacher education candidates making meaningful and long-lasting connections between theory and praxis. As a result, teacher education candidates demonstrated shifts in their knowledge, understanding, and beliefs about literacy assessment and overall field-based experiences as they learned to administer and analyze reading assessments and plan standards-based reading lessons that target the individualized literacy needs of their students.
Findings will be presented that explain the kinds of knowledge and skills the teacher candidates developed this semester related to literacy assessment, assessment-driven individualized instruction, explicit teaching of literacy skills and comprehension strategies, and instruction that considers students’ interests, and developmental, emotional, and cultural needs. The findings offer support for more extensive and intensive field-based teacher education programs and courses. Additionally, these findings support the idea of professional development communities in providing support for teacher candidates, in-service teachers, and elementary school students. Although this research was implemented in a literacy assessment course, the results could demonstrate how field-based methods could be replicated in other teacher education courses.