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Northwest Practitioner Knowledge Institute

Teachers, Professional Developers, and Researchers Share Experiences to Build Knowledge

Teachers and professional developers from Oregon, Idaho, Washington, Wyoming, and California met at the English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) Lab School at Portland State University to discuss emerging findings from Lab School research and to develop ways to apply these findings in their adult ESOL classrooms. The two-session institute, a project of NCSALL’s initiative, Connecting Practice, Policy, and Research (CPPR), provided teachers opportunities to interact with researchers and to explore research in depth. This kind of in-depth connection to research impacts teachers’ practice.  (See Applying Research Findings to Instruction for Adult English Language Students by Cristine Smith, Kathryn Harris, and Stephen Reder.)

During the fall 2004 session of the Northwest Practitioner Knowledge Institute, the practitioners learned about research being conducted by researchers at the Lab School on pair work and modified sustained silent reading for beginning English-as-a-second-language (ESL) students. The teachers made plans to implement strategies for pair work or modified sustained silent reading as suggested by the research in their own classes. The professional developers discussed how they might support the teachers and gave feedback on a professional development model developed by NCSALL.

In the spring 2005 session, the teachers shared the results of their work implementing research-based strategies and defined the evidence-based practice that they drew from the research at the Lab School. They ended the Institute session by evaluating their experiences.

The two areas of research conducted at the Lab School and discussed in further detail in this section are:

Updated 7/27/07 :: Copyright © 2005 NCSALL