Silver, Rita

"This study examines the extent to which negotiation for meaning (NFM) enhances primary school students' English reading comprehension in the Singapore context." -- p. 7.

The study follows up on prior research on the key role of negotiation for meaning (NFM) in increasing second language learning and oral comprehension (e.g., Ellis & Heimbach, 1997) and on reading comprehension (Van den Branden, 2000). The investigation described in this report considers whether and in what ways classroom discussions can encourage the types of interactions that are beneficial to language and literacy learning, especially reading comprehension. The intervention encourages a more thoughtful, questioning approach to reading comprehension, integrated with oral interaction that encourages NFM.

The purpose of this project was to follow-up on a prior project1 which investigated the use of Questioning-the-Author (QtA) (e.g. Beck & McKeown, 2002; Beck, McKeown, Sandora, Kucan, & Worthy, 1996) with negotiation for meaning (NfM) (e.g. Pica, 1994) in Singapore Primary 4 (P4) reading lessons (OER 29/08 RS). A 2-year collaborative project was undertaken to assist teachers in understanding and using QtA and negotiated discussions. The intervention also intended to lead to sustainable, school-based teacher development through introducing different ‘generations’ of teachers to join the project year-by-year and by encouraging the first generation (Gen 1) of teachers to act as mentors and leaders to the second generation (Gen 2).
Research Questions 1. How do teachers understand reading comprehension in the local, P42 school setting (i.e. what do teachers understand reading comprehension to be and how do they understand the development of student reading comprehension)? 2. In what ways do teacher understandings of reading comprehension change through participation in a long-term (3 year) professional development project? Specifically, in what ways do teacher understandings change at different points of time (1 year, 2 years, 3 years) and when engaged in different roles (trainee, trainer, observer, evaluator)? 3. How successful are the different stages of the intervention (Direct Instruction, Reflection & Adaptation, Lesson Study) in changing teacher classroom practices for reading comprehension?

In this article, we describe and reflect on a collaborative, school-based professional development project (an ‘intervention’) intended to encourage innovation in classroom teaching. Specifically, the intervention included a collaboration between university-based researchers/mentors and primary school teachers in Singapore who were interested in discovering new strategies for reading comprehension instruction. The results show that by working together, over time, teachers were able to innovate by adopting new strategies for leading reading comprehension discussions and adapting the new strategies to fit the local teaching context. Crucially, the innovation found that ‘learning’ the new strategies was insufficient; teachers needed professional support from the teacher trainers and their collaborating colleagues as well as time—over three years—to develop their expertise and their confidence in the implementation of the new strategies.