The project presented in this chapter followed several steps, some of which were planned from the beginning and others which were added as they progressed. The first phase of the project consisted of action research training on teaching comprehension strategies. The subsequent steps, which are part of a transfer and dissemination process, are conducive to the results and fruits of this research.
1.3.1. Step 1: appropriation through collaboration, training and support
Since this project focused on the professional development of teachers over a long period of time, it was necessary to maintain a dynamic relationship with the various actors involved. In this regard, Bissonnette and Richard (2010) surveyed more than 5,000 Francophone school stakeholders to determine the factors considered most beneficial for professional development. Three categories emerged from this study: personal factors, professional factors and relational factors. The collaboration project between researchers and teachers is based in particular on these factors.
1.3.1.1. The personal dimension
The first factor is the personal dimension. Professional development activities must correspond to teachers’ values and needs, and be in line with their recent requests for training or support. This personal dimension of development and training for practitioners is crucial. Indeed, when the needs and problems are those that teachers have identified themselves from their practice, the professional development attached to them is likely to make much more sense than when the problem and needs come from outside.
With regard to this first dimension, the collaborative project was initiated following a discussion with teachers who had worked with students in late elementary and early secondary school stages (ages 10 to 14). According to them, students’ comprehension strategies were not consolidated when they entered secondary school, which did not allow everyone to read independently in all subjects. It is in this context that the project was designed on the basis of a possible solution: to start teaching strategies for understanding informative texts earlier and in a more structured way. Teachers invited to participate in the project later on therefore already had an interest in experimenting with new ways of doing things that would meet these expressed needs.
1.3.1.2. The professional dimension
The second factor is the professional dimension. According to Bissonnette and Richard (2010), professional development activities must allow new practices to be tested quickly with a minimum of new resources being created. This professional dimension of activities implies not wanting to disrupt teachers’ practices and knowledge, but rather provoking imbalances and questions. It is therefore not only a question of exchanging practices, but of taking the means to improve them through an approach aimed at continuous experimentation, monitoring and reflection.
In terms of the professional dimension, this project has articulated a diversity of modalities allowing teachers to receive training, both at a theoretical and practical level. Some training was given during the school year in sub-groups to encourage exchanges and the sharing of experiences, while at other times, teachers could request individual support in the classroom.
To structure this support and encourage teachers to discuss their experiences together, the team developed activity sheets that proposed teaching certain comprehension strategies based on a common text. The following eight strategies were specifically taught: predicting, activating knowledge on the subject of the text, identifying the structure of the text, making inferences, asking questions when reading, understanding substitute words, understanding new words in use, using context and morphological cues, identifying the main idea, both explicit and implicit. Each week, a strategy was introduced to the students; the teacher explained its usefulness, modeled its use and proposed many guided and autonomous practices in order to encourage the strategy to be used in various contexts for reading informative texts. Every three weeks, reading activities were planned to use all the strategies previously seen.
These sheets were also subject to major revisions and modifications based on teachers’ comments and the reviews of students who had used them. In addition, at the beginning and end of the school year, reading comprehension tests were developed to see students’ progress in their skills and strategies for understanding informative texts. The test items all corresponded to the strategies taught, which made it possible to observe to what extent the development of a strategy, for example, useful for understanding an unknown word in a text, had borne fruit after its teaching. All these steps allowed teachers to take action and take risks, while benefiting from the support of their peers or researchers.
1.3.1.3. The relational dimension
The third factor is the relational dimension. As stated in Bissonnette and Richard (2010), professional development activities must include follow-up and support over time in order to be considered beneficial. According to them, facilitators, researchers and coaches, must have expertise and great dynamism when they offer training and direct support. Finally, when several teachers from the same school are involved, the exchanges are even more beneficial.
In our project, at least three teachers from each of the four schools participated in order to engage collaboration and exchanges, both formal and informal, on the strategies taught. In addition, this relational dimension was provided by a team composed of a researcher, a pedagogical advisor and a master’s degree level remedial teacher. These three participants with complementary expertise proposed a schedule of sub-group meetings and classroom support, as well as content based on a theoretical model (Irwin 2006). Training was carefully thought out and planned, concrete examples were provided, and activities involving new knowledge were designed so that teachers would take ownership of the knowledge and strategies before teaching them.
As mentioned previously in this chapter, at the beginning and end of the school year, students were tested, which allowed them to view their progress. In addition, these results were presented to teachers in order to allow them to reflect on the scope of the new practices developed. Classes of students not participating in the project had also agreed to complete the assessments at the beginning and end of the year, which allowed for comparative analyses and a better understanding of the project’s impacts on student learning. This gave rise to rich reflections among the team of researchers and te...