Project Activities
This study will progress in two stages: an iterative design phase in partnership with middle grade educators that will refine and expand the existing curriculum so that it spans 1 academic year and a quasi-experimental pilot study of the expanded curriculum in two school districts.
Structured Abstract
Setting
The project will take place in schools in Tennessee and Texas that serve large numbers of multilingual learners.
Sample
For the iterative design phase, 12 educators and their approximately 180 ML designated students in grades 4 to 6 will participate in the study. In the pilot study phase, a total of 60 teachers (30 treatment and 30 control) and their 1200 ML designated students (600 treatment and 600 control) will participate.
Teachers will provide 41 weeks of instruction using TRANSLATE (four 10-week units as well as 1 introductory week; four 45-minute lessons per week, 168 lessons total). TRANSLATE combines culturally responsive pedagogies with high-quality reading instruction and is designed to bolster ML's reading comprehension by (1) teaching strategic reading stances and providing access to developmentally appropriate topics, conceptual knowledge, and academic language necessary for comprehending text; (2) fostering English word reading and fluency skills; (3) engaging students in systematic study of language by harnessing students' existing multilingual and metalinguistic skills; and (4) meeting pre-adolescents' developmental need for agency through frequent engagement in collaborative language production in speech and writing. The curriculum will be fully aligned to state and national instructional standards, including the WIDA standards, and will embed formative assessments of students' academic language development, reading fluency, and strategic comprehension skills (inclusive of multilingual strategy use) to inform targeted instruction within the TRANSLATE materials. The resulting curriculum is intended to be adaptable in school settings serving students with diverse levels of English proficiency, including new arrival students, students with interrupted formal education, and students formally designated as long-term English learners.
Research design and methods
In phase 1, the researchers will refine and develop the TRANSLATE curriculum materials to support MLs' reading comprehension as well as the professional learning (PL) materials and models that enable teachers to implement the TRANSLATE curricular approach. The researchers will work in close collaboration with middle grade educators to develop the curriculum in a usable and feasible manner through iterative cycles of feedback. They will work with 12 teachers and will visit them once per month to observe their practice. The teachers will complete digital reflective logs in response to a standard set of prompts each week. Teachers and students will be interviewed to identify which practices support the instructional aims and which require revision. In phase 2, the researchers will conduct a pilot study with 60 educators using a quasi-experimental design. They will use observations, interviews, audio recordings of classroom interactions, and standardized and researcher-created measures of student to establish contrasts between the approaches.
Control condition
Control condition teachers will use district mandated curricular materials and instruction in the counterfactual condition will be compared to the TRANSLATE program using a reliable and valid classroom observation measure.
Key measures
Key measures include the Tennessee state test of reading comprehension, the Northwest Evaluation Association Measures of Academic Progress (NWEA MAP) assessment, and FastBridge assessments of reading comprehension; researcher-designed measures and existing formative measures; and classroom observation protocols.
Data analytic strategy
For phase 1, the researchers will collect data on how 12 teachers implement instruction to evaluate the usability and feasibility of the existing 22-week curriculum and use this information to revise and expand the TRANSLATE curriculum using an iterative feedback cycle. In phase 2, the research team will employ multi-level modeling to account for nested data structures and to examine differences between TRANSLATE and comparison conditions.
Cost analysis strategy
The team will conduct a cost-analysis using data from professional development costs, and materials costs. They will use the Center for Benefit-Cost Studies of Education (CBCSE) methods for this cost analysis.
People and institutions involved
IES program contact(s)
Project contributors
Products and publications
Products: This project will result in a fully developed, 41-week TRANSLATE curriculum that will support reading comprehension for ML students in grades 4 through 6. The project will also result in peer-reviewed publications and presentations, a cost analysis, and additional dissemination products for researchers, practitioners, and district and school leaders.
Project website:
Publications:
ERIC Citations: Find available citations in ERIC for this award here.
Questions about this project?
To answer additional questions about this project or provide feedback, please contact the program officer.
