Research Grant Awarded to Christine Edwards-Groves and Christina Davidson
The
Primary English Teaching Association Australia (PETAA) is proud to
announce that the inaugural 2015 PETAA
Research Grant of $75,000 has been awarded to a research
team based at Charles Sturt University (CSU) in Wagga Wagga, NSW and lead by Dr
Christine Edward-Groves and Dr Christina Davidson. The successful CSU
submission is entitled:
Researching dialogic pedagogies for
literacy learning across the primary years
This
research will study how changes in classroom teacher’s interaction practices
will lead to improved opportunities and experiences for students’ oral language
and literacy development. In doing so, the
project aims to develop and produce a number of shorter and longer-term
deliverables to assist classroom teachers understand and enact dialogic
pedagogies in their classrooms.
These deliveries include:
·
Production of digital resource – representation
of dialogic approaches
·
PETAA Publications: print and
digital materials to support the online digital resource
·
Interim reports and a final research
report
·
Researchers sharing their research
and presenting at PETAA conference/s.
In awarding the Research
Grant, The PETAA Research Grant Advisory Group engaged in extensive review and
debate in choosing from a strong and highly competitive field. Selecting the successful submission was a
close and difficult task. The group, which included internationally acclaimed,
leading literacy researchers Professor Peter Freebody and Professor Barbara
Comber, felt that classroom talk and its relationship to literacy learning is an
area requiring a great deal of attention and has substantial potential as its
insights relate to pedagogic relationships.
The
project will identify, describe and represent academically enriching teaching
of English, oral language and literacy through dialogic pedagogies that support
teachers to enact this key aspect of the curriculum. Developing dialogic,
explicit and learning focused practices will improve student literacy learning
by building substantive knowledge and high level communication skills. Enacting
dialogic pedagogies requires understanding classroom talk as pedagogical
practice that can be changed to enhance oral language, learner participation
and engagement.
The
project has two broad aims:
1.
to assist participating teachers develop
dialogic pedagogies through critical participatory action research (CPAR) that
support students in primary school classrooms to develop oral language through
acquiring and communicating knowledge with clarity and a high degree of
intellectual focus. Action research is concerned with the development
of social practices – in this case, practices of teaching and learning English,
oral language and literacy.
2.
to produce digital exemplars of
dialogic pedagogies ‘representations of practices’ that may support teachers
(both in-service and pre-service) to acquire academically enriching teaching
practices.
Classroom
teachers from Stages 1, 2 and 3 from primary schools in New South Wales will
work with project team members to develop action research studies that examine
and develop talk and interaction in lessons. The selected schools offer diverse geographical, cultural
and socio-economic variances.
On announcing the successful candidates,
PETAA President, Associate Professor Robyn Cox, commented that: The findings of this work funded by teachers
to support the development of their own practice based on research findings may
well start a new era in evidence based practice in Australian primary schools. The grant further confirms PETAA’s ongoing
commitment in support of educational research in the field of literacy; an
initiative embedded within PETAA’s Strategic Plan.
