Emily's Place

Year 1

This is a Design Experiment with teachers from Emily’s Place. Six teachers, an administrator (the pre-school Director), university faculty, and GAs participated in a generative approach to professional development during a yearlong study group gathering, which met once or twice a month. The teachers and the Director identified challenges in their current practices, curriculum, and curricular materials. During group discussions, these challenges were addressed both conceptually and practically. As a result of this process, a community situated story-based curriculum and respective learning engagements were created to leverage cultural, social, and linguistic assets of the students, families, and communities EP serves. This curriculum will be implemented in the 2011-2012 academic year. Study group agendas, field notes of sessions and meetings with the director, teachers’ inquiry questionnaires, session evaluations, conceptual notes were collected as pilot data. A 20-minute end-of-year interview with the teachers was also conducted with each of the six teachers so to assess their professional development and to inform our next year’s agenda.

Year 2

In Year 2 this project will continue with the six EP’s teachers and Director as the community situated story-based curriculum is implemented. A focus on the impact of such curriculum on children’s language and literacy development (through observations, teachers’ diaries, and family interviews) will be added to the current design. Also, in the Spring of 2012 the project will aim to understand the relationships between EP’s participating cooperating teachers and our pre-service teachers around the concepts of community as resources and stories.