Integration of Students with learning difficulties

Espinoza, Maria

Dube, F., Bessette, L., & Dorval, C. (2011). Differentiation and explicit teaching: Integration of students with learning difficulties. US-China Education Review B, 2, 167-184. doi: 1548-6613

Summary: Using flexible grouping and explicit teaching, the school divided all six years into three cycles and then into subgroups before implementing the program.  All three cycles showed a reduction of errors in activity 1 and 2 but on activity 3 it went up (however, it was still lower than the errors they got in activity 1.  After seeing the results, it seems that using these two approaches can benefit students with difficulties.

Evaluation: I found this article very informative because it not only looks into differentiation but also explains flexible grouping (which makes subgroups to compliment the students’ needs) and explicit teaching (which helps the student know more about their difficulties and get self-confidence through modeling, guided practice and independent practice).  It also very descriptive about how these approaches were used and allows the reader to duplicate their study

Literacy Through Collaboration

Ringwood, Jessica

Bishop, K. & Larimer, N. (1999). Collaboration: Literacy through collaboration. Teacher

Librarian: 27(1), 15-20.

Summary: This article provided multiple collaboration ideas appropriate for all levels of school-aged children.   The methods, activities and goals of most projects are explained briefly.  All the projects had the shared goal of increasing student information literacy, and all projects explained outlined the steps that teachers and librarians took to collaborate.

 

Evaluation: This article serves as a strong reminder that a librarian at the high school level must extend themselves and reach out to high school teachers if the goal is collaboration because many teachers at the high school level struggle to make time for collaboration (there is no time for collaboration structured into their day), or they do not know what the library has to offer.  The librarian may be surprised by the amount of time collaboration takes, but in cases shared in the article, collaboration resulted in faculty that were more willing to collaborate and use the library in the future.  

Toward a Theory of Collaboration for Teachers and Librarians

McMullen, Shaun

Montiel-Overall, P. (2005). Toward a theory of collaboration for teachers and librarians. Retrieved from

Here the author defines collaboration between teachers and librarians and distinguishes it from other co-operative activities. A very interesting article that posits that co-operation between teachers and librarians has to be deeper in order for it to be truly collaboration.

Collaboration between Special Education Teachers and Teacher-Librarians

Justice, Ashley

Canter, L., Voytecki, K., Zambone, A., & Jones, J. (2011). School librarians: The forgotten partners. Teaching Exceptional Children, 43(3), 14-20.

Summary: Collaboration between special education teachers and teacher librarians is encouraged because of the similarities between the standards each group is responsible for teaching in a school year. Special educators’ responsibilities can be organized into three groups: managing educational environments, teaching and learning, and program administration. For each of the standards within these three broad categories, teacher librarians are responsible for a similar standard, but because of a lack of collaboration, these two groups are generally not aware of this overlap. To begin this relationship, special educators should work to create a foundation for mutual respect and understanding. Then, a focused purpose for collaboration should be decided upon, with a written plan to follow. Collaborative activities of mutual responsibility should then take place. The final step of a successfully collaborative relationship between a special education teacher and a teacher librarian is to record, document, and celebrate the collaboration.

Evaluation/Opinion: This action plan is beneficial for all teachers, not just special education teachers. I also think the teacher librarian could be the professional to initiate the relationship.

It’s hard to break old habits and work with someone who does things differently than you, but the current educational trend definitely stresses collaboration based on the benefits related to student success. My school is currently trying to develop collaborative relationships between content classes, and this article will be helpful in evaluating where we may have fallen short this year.

Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration - Higher Education

Campbell, Margaret

Mazella, D., Heidel, L., & Ke, I. (2011). Integrating reading, information literacy, and literary studies instruction in a three-way collaboration. Learning Assistance Review (TLAR). 16(2) 41-53.

Below is my review of the article, and below my review is Telia Sherwood's review from Spring, 2012.

This article describes a successful three-way collaboration among professors from three separate disciplines to solve the problem of students not being able to master the skills needed to create an annotated bibliography. It is interesting that this successful collaboration resulted from solving a specific problem with a specific set of students. This was not a fuzzy, "let's get together to collaborate and make the class better" situation. In addition, the instructors became aware of the shortcomings of their own instruction, instead of thinking there was something wrong with the learners.

Because of this self-reflection, the instructors came to a "double-loop learning" process that can show specialists where they may have limitations in their own isolated approaches. In the article, the authors describe a typical vertical flow of information within a university discipline that compartmentalizes knowledge and inhibits the flow of ideas and insights from outside. This vertical structuring of "idea flow" inhibits a cross-discipline, and potentially extremely fruitful, horizontal "idea flow."

Once again, as in other readings on collaboration, space or the environment is mentioned as a support or barrier. In universities, the physical separation of one discipline from another, creates chasms across which it is difficult for in-real-world professors to cross. One would think that with the presence of virtual worlds and virtual campuses, these chasms would disappear. But collaboration within virtual spaces is not yet common in higher education. The authors identify a problem with in-virtual-world experiences: an academic bias against out-of-classroom, out-of-university "informal" learning which is associated with anything that happens within a virtual space.

The article includes a detailed explanation of the techniques used to teach the annotated bibliography skill and attributes the success of the class to collaboration. "We believe that this teaching model helped to achieve results that could not have been accomplished using the traditional, one-shot presentation" (p. 52).

 __________________________

Telia Sherwood's Review (Spring, 2012) 
This article explores how three professionals came together to help college students through the in depth process of an annotated bibliography. An English teacher, a librarian and a learning strategies counselor came together to create a series of presentations to help the students. This article is unique because it uses a three way collaboration model in higher education. Many of the disciplines do not collaborate with each other, and when they do, rarely more than two individuals are involved. What I found interesting was the element of team teaching in this scenario. All three teachers had something to bring to the table, so the meshed their skills to give the best education to the students.
 -- Telia Sherwood, Spring, 2012

Collaboration Traps and Benefits

Campbell, Margaret

Hansen, M. (2009). Collaboration: How leaders avoid the traps, create unity, and reap big results. [Internet-delivered summary: Summaries.Com]. Harvard Business Press: Boston. Retrieved from http://www.summaries.com/Platinum/Collaboration.pdf

Sometimes it is beneficial to step outside the realms of education and librarianship and take a peak into research being done in economics and business. Hansen's impressive biography as a Stanford graduate, a former professor at Harvard Business School, a current professor of management in the School of Information at UC Berkeley, and his ten years of specifically studying collaboration, influenced me to take a close look at his research and ideas.

In the summary, Hansen suggests that it may not always be profitable to collaborate, and in true economic fashion, he supplies an equation for determining collaboration profitability. Although much of the information and detailed instructions for creating collaborative processes may be stringent for some, it is a clear guideline that may be helpful, especially in situations where collaboration is not clearly understood.

There are many diagrams and flow chart explanations that may appeal to administrators or school system "time-keepers" that can be repurposed to make a solid business case for collaboration, when simple requests and pleas for collaborative time do not work.

The barriers to collaboration, the strategies, and the tools presented are extremely well-outlined, making this summary more like an essential collaboration "how-to" than like a research-based article.

Hansen concludes that disciplined collaboration is essential, and that the primary barriers to the practice of collaboration are personal shortcomings that must be overcome.

Collaboration and Comparative Advantage

Campbell, Margaret

Ridley, M. (2010). When ideas have sex. Proceedings of TED Global 2010. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLHh9E5ilZ4

Summary

After reading about the unwillingness of some teachers to spend time with librarians in order to design lessons that incorporate 21st Century learning standards, I realized that the problem is very similar to the different groups of chimpanzees described in Ridley's TED Talk. The problem with groups of chimpanzees keeping out of each other's way is that they cannot reap the collective benefits of comparative advantage. It seems that, in many areas, even modern humans have not yet come to realize the evolutionary leap that comparative advantage provides.

Evaluation

Ridley describes it like this: 
1) Exchange (of talents, expertise) creates a momentum that creates more development of talents and expertise, that in turn, creates a momentum for more exchange...if there is the investment in and valuation for exchange to begin with.
2) When we work for each other, we are able to draw upon the benefits of specialization.
3) Through sharing specializations, we have, as a society, created the ability to do things that we do not even understand... to go beyond individual capabilities.
4) Individual intelligence has little relevance...what is relevant is how well individuals collaborate... we are at a point where our contribution is as "nodes in the network" of a collective brain.