Examining the Impact of Virtual Professional Development and Teachers’ Use of the Cooperative/Collaborative/Peer-Tutoring Strategies on English Learners’ Reading Comprehension, Oral Reading Fluency, and Oral Expression

Abstract

The purpose of this dissertation was to investigate the impact of a curriculum-based virtual professional development (VPD) and teachers’ use of the cooperative/collaborative/peer-tutoring (CCP) strategies on English learners’ (ELs’) reading comprehension, oral reading fluency, and oral expression. A research synthesis was conducted to comprehensively analyze the effectiveness of the CCP strategy for on ELs’ reading and oral proficiency development in the elementary settings. The findings indicated that the CCP strategy facilitated ELs’ improvement in English reading and speaking and ongoing professional development improved teachers’ quality of implementation of this strategy as well as ELs’ achievement. To examine how ongoing curriculum-based VPD improved the teachers’ application of the CCP strategy regarding the dynamics in EL classrooms, I utilized a large data set recorded by a multidimensional classroom observation instrument from a federal funded randomized controlled trial (RCT) study, Project English Language and Literacy Acquisition Validation Study (ELLA-V). Participants consisted of 77 first grade teachers from 41 schools in the state of Texas. They were observed three times a year, which resulted in 231 videos. Via a multi-layer cross-tabulation method, the teachers’ application of this strategy was micro-analyzed regarding the dimensions of Instructional Language, students’ Communication Mode, and teachers’ Instructional Activities. Results indicated that treatment teachers spent more instructional time in applying this strategy in higher-order thinking content instruction and provided more opportunities for ELs to practice their listening and speaking skills in English in the CCP learning activities. To investigate the impact of VPD and teachers’ use of the CCP strategy on ELs’ reading and speaking proficiency, I proposed a VPD solar system that was validated by large data sets drawn from Project ELLA-V. There were 1,198 Grade 1 ELs and 77 Grade 1 teachers from 41 schools included in the analysis. Three-level hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) approach were adopted to examine the impact of VPD and the effective dosage of the CCP strategy applied in English dense cognitive content instruction. The results indicated that VPD significantly improved ELs’ oral expression with medium to large effect size. Moreover, it was also found that the quality CCP learning that encourages ELs to engage in higher-order thinking activities in English needs to exceed 10.6% of total instruction time to be considered effective.