13th Dominican ColloquiumDr. Audrey Cohan, Dr. Maria Dove, Dr. Andrea Honigsfeld,

Dr. Charles Howlett, Dr. Laura Shea Doolan, Molloy College

Dr. Robin Finnan-Jones and Dr. Audrey Murphy- St. John’s University

Collaborative Approaches: ELLS Achieve Linguistic, Academic and

Social Success

Breaking the Mold

Breaking the Mold• Five volume series:– School instruction and organization – Pre-service and in-service teacher education– Cultural and linguistic diversity – Motivation and engagement – Classroom management (in press)

• Thematically organized collection of documentary accounts and case studies of successful, research-based educational innovations.

• A total of 130 chapters• Over 300 contemporary American and international

educational researchers and practitioners

Objectives

• To determine trends and patterns of research-based educational innovations .

• To recognize the themes which (a) undergird sustainable innovations, (b) may be able to be reproduced in other educational settings, and (c) promote the use of research-based practices to inform education.

• To generate an original model of educational innovation based on the degree of impact the innovations have achieved.

Findings

Dominant contextual factors that contributed to the emergence of an educational innovation:

(a)changes in federal or state (U.S.) or national (outside U.S.) regulations or policy;

(b)changes in demographics, such as immigration to the U.S., global migration to other nations, increasing cultural diversity within the school and the community;

(c)recognition of the need for stronger school-home/community connections;

(d)emergence of Web 2.0 technology; and(e)integration of local, state, or national learning standards, as

well as standards by professional organizations.

Findings

The most frequently cited theoretical frameworks:

(a)funds of knowledge (Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 1992;(b)culturally relevant pedagogy and critical race theory

(Ladson-Billings, 1995a, 1995b); (c)reflective practice (Schon, 1990);(d)21st century skills (Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2007); (e)second language acquisition theories and

bilingual/bicultural development (e.g., Cummins, 1991, 2001).

Findings

• The student populations most frequently affected by initiatives:

a)Students at the elementary levelb) English learners (who may or may not also be

immigrant children or children of immigrants)c) Socioeconomically disadvantaged students

Model of Innovation(Honigsfeld & Cohan, 2011)

Transformative

Reformative

Formative

Informative

An unanticipated finding

Behind almost all successful innovations there was a driving force of a visionary change agent and/or strong leadership support.