Running Head: DAP IN ALERNATIVE SCHOOLS

Developmentally Appropriate Practice in Alternative Schools Emily Sniegowski University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

2 DAP IN ALTERNATIVE SCHOOLS Abstract This study is an observational study which examines the use of developmentally appropriate teaching strategies for early adolescent middle-school students at an alternative school setting. Students who are at-risk are especially in need of DAP in the classroom. This study uses the naturalistic observation of one teacher with two small classes of students in a Language Arts classroom at an alternative school in central Illinois. It observes and records the use, misuse, or absence of developmentally appropriate teaching strategies in an alternative school context.

3 DAP IN ALTERNATIVE SCHOOLS Developmentally Appropriate Practice in Alternative Schools The purpose of this study is to work toward answering the question of how developmentally appropriate practice (DAP) is being used in classrooms with at-risk students. Developmentally appropriate practice, for the purpose of this study, is defined as the use of teaching techniques which cater to the social, emotional, and/or cognitive development of early adolescent students. Developmentally appropriate practice in teaching early adolescents is an important factor in improving the education of children. In my searches, I have found that many studies have been conducted on the subject of best developmentally appropriate practices, whether or not teachers are employing these practices in their classrooms, and how students are benefiting from them. However, there seems to be a lack of study on how DAP can apply to atrisk students, whose development may be slightly different from that of average early adolescents. For this specific study, I will examine the use of DAP in an alternative classroom setting with exclusively at-risk students. Research has been done on the topic of employing developmentally appropriate practice in many different ways, from many different angles. One particular study, Instructional Practices in the Middle Grades: A Mixed Methods Case Study examines the alleged use of DAP in middle school classrooms across five different schools in East Tennessee (Teague, Anafara, Wilson, Gaines, & Beavers, 2012). The researchers surveyed middle grade teachers on their classroom practices and teaching strategies. They then observed these teachers in the classroom, watching for certain instructional practices. The results found that there was a discrepancy between how often the teachers claimed in the survey to use these instructional practices, and how often they were actually observed using them in the classroom. Teachers claimed to use DAP more than they were observed using it in the classroom. The results seem to indicate a lack

4 DAP IN ALTERNATIVE SCHOOLS of knowledge of developmental appropriateness. The researchers ultimately pointed to a need for better professional development and teacher training. While this study seems to shed light on the lack of developmentally appropriate practices in middle schools, I wondered if there were more studies based in alternative settings which dealt with at-risk students. A study done by Martin and Calabrese (2010) indicates possible improvements to DAP for at-risk students. This study conducted student interviews at an alternative school using an approach called Appreciative Inquiry, or AI. Involving students in the AI cycle allowed the researchers to examine students opinions on their own education by giving them the opportunity to transform their learning environment and strategies used by their teachers. The study found several interesting factors from the students evaluation of their education. First, students found experience-based hands-on learning to be very important. Next, a respectful and cooperative relationship with the teacher and other students is essential to learning. Also, learning should be as enjoyable as possible, and finally, the concept of family is a strong metaphor in connection to how students feel a good learning environment should resemble. The study emphasized the importance of all these factors in the alternative school setting and contributed to the empowerment of at-risk students by using AI and putting them more in control over the type of education they think they deserve. The researchers prove that AI and general student involvement in the structure of their education to be an important tool for boosting at-risk students confidence in an academic setting. The findings above imply that perhaps students know better what will help them succeed, while teachers often remain ignorant to developmentally appropriate practice. Whether or not this is true is not an easy speculation to confirm. Regardless, the need to differentiate instruction to serve all students remains an important goal. This studys goal is to examine such practices in

5 DAP IN ALTERNATIVE SCHOOLS an alternative middle school Language Arts classroom. A study titled Increasing Comprehension for Middle School Students with Moderate Intellectual Disability on AgeAppropriate Texts is particularly relevant for its examination of alternate reading strategies with students who have mild learning disabilities (Shurr & Taber-Doughty, 2012). The researchers found that showing and discussing images related to the text before and after reading it aloud to students increased students ability to comprehend the text. Although developmentally appropriate practice was not mentioned in the study, this is an example of working with alternate teaching strategies to cater towards students who struggle with school. I wish to gain insight into the practices of teachers who work with such students, and how their practices are or are not developmentally appropriate. In this study, I observed in an alternative school environment for the practice of developmentally appropriate techniques for at-risk early adolescents. I predicted that I would see some evidence of DAP in an alternative setting, but that there will certainly be gaps or room for improvement. Method Participants This study includes the observation of a teacher and her seventh grade Language Arts students at an alternative school in central Illinois. The teacher is a White female in her thirties, with several years of teaching experience at the school. The students are one classroom of eight students, four male and four female. The majority of the students are African American, including all four girls and one boy. The remaining students included two White boys and one Latino boy. All students are placed in the alternative school after being expelled from their regular schools mostly for behavioral related issues.

6 DAP IN ALTERNATIVE SCHOOLS Design The research method employed was naturalistic observation of the teacher and her students during regular classroom instruction. Measures For this study, I did not use any data collection tools other than my own observational skills and recording what I observed in my notes (see Appendix). Procedures I observed the class of students for one morning of instruction. While in class, I observed the teachers strategies along with the students responses to the strategies and recorded them in my notes. I then analyzed what I observed in terms of DAP to determine what DAP strategies were employed or not employed. Results I found that the teacher I observed in the alternative school setting employed some developmentally appropriate practices in her teaching methods. Based on the cognitive development of the students, the teacher seemed to use productive strategies that where developmentally appropriate. One example of this was the Daily Oral Language exercise. After students made appropriate corrections to incorrect sentences on the board, the teacher reviewed with students why each change was made. She explained why the original version was incorrect, what the new version should be, and why the new version is now correct. When one student asked if an alternative way of correcting the sentence was acceptable, she told him that it was. Many of the students are in the concrete operational stage of cognitive development, and need the logical reasoning skills that the teacher provided them when she explained the logical reasoning behind each correction. She also encouraged higher-level thinking in allowing the one

7 DAP IN ALTERNATIVE SCHOOLS student to present his alternate way of correcting the sentence, showing that there is more than one way to solve a problem and encouraging alternate corrections. The concept that there can be more than one right answer is important to emphasize with students whose minds are developing and expanding to consider more viewpoints. This happened again later on when the teacher asked about a novel they were reading. The question was about which character had the biggest monkey on their back, to which no right answer was concluded upon, because either answer could be correct if you have a good reason to support your answer. This again encourages more formal, abstract, and complex thinking. The teacher employed further cognitive DAP with the reading of the text. Repetition is important for students to retain information, and the teacher repeated and reviewed the text in several ways by reminding students what happened previously in the novel and making connections to previous information. At the end of the chapter, the teacher explained many implicit meanings in the text that were not literally said, but implied. This is important for nurturing the formal operation process in early adolescents in thinking abstractly rather than simple comprehension of the text. Her discussion of the chapter included deeper meanings implied from the text that encourages abstract thought. She did not ask them questions of this magnitude, but rather explained while the students listened. In regards to social and emotional DAP, the teacher tended to encourage socializing in the classroom, which is less typical in standard non-alternative classrooms. Often when students began conversing, the teacher would join in conversation with them, instead of telling them to be quiet. This happened several times throughout the class period. One particular comment the teacher made was reflective of early adolescent social development. When discussing the correct ordering of events on a timeline, many students began agreeing with each other, to which the

8 DAP IN ALTERNATIVE SCHOOLS teacher said, Are you riding the bandwagon or do you know? The teacher understood that once one student noticed an answer and another agreed, more students were likely to agree not because they knew the right answer, but because the rest of the class was agreeing. Though the teacher did not change her practice because of this, she exhibited understanding of this element of social development in the classroom. One final DAP strategy I observed was in the discussion of the students monkeys on their backs. The teacher explained the concept and asked students to share what kind of monkeys they had on their backs. The students were hesitant to share or admit they had any burdens at all. The teacher then started giving examples, including personal examples of her own. This demonstrated the use of empathy and personal connection to the students in order to get them to feel more comfortable talking about this topic in class. They are at an age where heightened sense of self might make them feel embarrassed or ashamed because they think everyone else might judge them. The teacher showed empathy to this by sharing. Discussion My observations found that some DAP strategies were used in this particular alternative school classroom, that some strategies were indeed different or slightly altered from a conventional classroom, and that some areas needed improvement. For example, one way the teacher could have improved her DAP would have been to not read the chapter aloud straight, but to pause and review or ask questions about the text at every page or so. This would have retained the students attention better and reinforced more information through active engagement with the text, rather than passive listening, by stimulating their brains more. However, the difficulty of being in an alternative classroom often challenges what normal developmentally appropriate practice is. For instance, the teacher lectured on the book chapter

9 DAP IN ALTERNATIVE SCHOOLS and the inferences and implications about the text without asking for student input. This could be criticized as not allowing the students to formulate abstract answers for themselves, but the alternative students here changed the DAP slightly. This is probably because when the students start responding to questions aloud, they will easily get off task and stop listening. This way, the teacher was sure to get her point across without distraction or interruption. Additionally, it seemed as if the teacher on the whole had a slightly permissive style of classroom management, as evidenced by the amount of extraneous conversation which the teacher took part in with the students, when in a conventional class, the students would be asked to keep quiet and get to work. The teacher I observed seemed of have a good handle on her classroom behaviorally on the day of the study, though disruptions are a typical occurrence in this school, as I have learned through my placement there this semester. While these alternative teaching strategies seemed to be productive for controlling students behavior in the classroom, there were none necessarily applied to develop or improve their academic achievement. In this type of setting, the first priority is to get students to learn how to behave in school, and academic work is only a secondary concern. It showed, in answer to my original question, that DAP takes on a different meaning in different school settings. This study improved my ability to discern what DAP is in alternative contexts. DAP can be adapted to students who have trouble behaving properly in school to focus more on social and behavioral issues than on cognitive development. I have learned that DAP can, and must be, differentiated to fit the needs of students who do not succeed in conventional school settings. In my own practice, I will be critical of my own teaching and consider the needs of my students by continually adapting my practice to my students developmental needs through action research.

10 DAP IN ALTERNATIVE SCHOOLS References

San Martin, T. L., & Calabrese, R. L. (2011). Empowering at-risk students through appreciative inquiry. International Journal of Educational Management, 25(2), 110-123. Shurr, J., & Taber-Doughty, T. (2012). Increasing comprehension for middle school students with moderate intellectual disability on age-appropriate texts. Education and Training in Autism and Developmental Disabilities, 47(3), 359-372. Teague, G. M., Anfara, V. A., Wilson, N. L., Gaines, C. B., & Beavers, J. L. (2012). Instructional practices in the middle grades A mixed methods case study. NASSP Bulletin, 96(3), 203-227.

11 DAP IN ALTERNATIVE SCHOOLS Appendix Observational field note narrative: Class begins with a Daily Oral Language exercise (DOL) which consists of two sentences filled with grammar and spelling mistakes. Students are told to write these sentences in their class journals. This is a routine activity that is done as a common class-beginning exercise, so students are familiar with it. The students are very talkative, and some are resistant to participating in activity. One says, I dont wanna, to which the teacher replies, Yes you do. Two particular male students are quietly writing. The teacher checks up one talkative student by asking him if he is done. She does not wait for everyone to finish writing, but lets an eagerly participant student go up to the board to correct the first sentence. Teacher steps out of the classroom for a moment while the students works at the board and sits back down. The teacher comes back and reads aloud the sentence, briefly explaining each correction, why its wrong, what it should be, and why its now correct. One student offers an alternate solution to the sentence structure, and she explains that that would also be a correct way of correcting the sentence. There is a lot of conversation in the class, but the teacher engages with them in conversation, rather than telling them to be quiet. The next activity is a timeline of events in the novel the students are reading. Events are on the Smart Board and must be moved into the correct order of the book. The teacher raises her voice to talk over students who are still talking. When talking doesnt stop, she calls out problem students by name, and they settle down. She encourages students to come up to the board and move the timeline events around and offers them help when needed. As a class, they order the timeline, and when a mistake is made she asks the class if they agree or disagree and how to fix it. When students begin agreeing with each other, she says Are you riding the

12 DAP IN ALTERNATIVE SCHOOLS bandwagon or do you know? She moves the events by direction of the students, asking whats next. She explains that the timeline is the order of events chronologically, not necessarily the order they are talked about in the book. She asks a few questions about the story like why is Puerto Rico significant? and reviews the importance of dogs in the book. The teacher then reads the next chapter aloud to the students, after explaining briefly where in the story they left off. She reads with inflection and expression, at a conversational speed, without stopping until the chapter is done. Students are quiet and following along in their own books. She then summarizes the meaning of the chapter, especially the things that are not explicit, but implied in the text. She makes connections between what they previously talked about and how it leads to what happened in the current chapter. The final activity is on the Smart Board, to define and make examples on a phrase from the chapter, monkey on your back. She defines the phrase and asks students questions to get examples from them about monkeys on their backs. The conversation is easy-going and comfortable, and the teacher calls out students to talk. Students are hesitant to talk about or admit they have monkeys on their backs. After generating some examples, they write on the board what the monkeys are on the characters backs in the novel. The teacher asks who the students think has the bigger monkey in the novel, and no agreement is reached because it is an open-ended, debatable question with multiple right answers. The students are then asked to write a few sentences about what their personal monkey are. The teacher gives some examples and calls out students who are not writing. Many are talkative, and instead of telling them to be quiet, the teacher talks with them. Students turn in their papers as they finish, which takes a long time because many are resistant to writing, and the students and teacher talk for the remainder of the class period.