How Teachers Would Spend Their Time Teaching Language Arts: The Mismatch Between Self-Reported and Best Practices

• Published in: Journal of learning disabilities 2009-09, Vol.42 (5), p.418-430
• Main Authors: Cunningham, Anne E., Zibulsky, Jamie, Stanovich, Keith E., Stanovich, Paula J.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Activities; Arts; Attitude; Beliefs; Best practice; Child; Childrens Literature; Correlation; Culture; Data Collection; Disabilities; Education, Special - standards; Educational activities; Elementary education; Elementary School Teachers; Experts; General Education; Grade 1; Humans; Implicit beliefs; Inservice Training - standards; Knowledge Base for Teaching; Language Arts; Language Arts - standards; Language teaching methods; Learning disabilities; Linguistics - education; Literacy; Medium of instruction; Outcomes of Education; Phonics; Policy making; Preservice Teachers; Professional Competence - standards; Public Policy; Reading Instruction; Special education; Special Education Teachers; Special Needs Students; Student teacher relationship; Teacher Attitudes; Teacher Characteristics; Teacher Educators; Teacher Effectiveness; Teachers; Teaching; Teaching - standards; Teaching Experience; Teaching Methods; Time; Time Factors (Learning); Time Management; Time use; United States; Urban Schools
• ISSN: 0022-2194; 1538-4780
• DOI: 10.1177/0022219409339063

As teacher quality becomes a central issue in discussions of children’s literacy, both researchers and policy makers alike express increasing concern with how teachers structure and allocate their lesson time for literacy-related activities as well as with what they know about reading development, processes, and pedagogy. The authors examined the beliefs, literacy knowledge, and proposed instructional practices of 121 first-grade teachers. Through teacher self-reports concerning the amount of instructional time they would prefer to devote to a variety of language arts activities, the authors investigated the structure of teachers’ implicit beliefs about reading instruction and explored relationships between those beliefs, expertise with general or special education students, years of experience, disciplinary knowledge, and self-reported distribution of an array of instructional practices. They found that teachers’ implicit beliefs were not significantly associated with their status as a regular or special education teacher, the number of years they had been teaching, or their disciplinary knowledge. However, it was observed that subgroups of teachers who highly valued particular approaches to reading instruction allocated their time to instructional activities associated with other approaches in vastly different ways. It is notable that the practices of teachers who privileged reading literature over other activities were not in keeping with current research and policy recommendations. Implications and considerations for further research are discussed.