Addressing Literacy Difficulties in the Classroom

Addressing Literacy Difficulties in the Classroom Order Description You are required to carry out a small-scale investigation into your own practice using a qualitative-research-based approach and the collection of qualitative evidence. The aim of the project is to enable you to gather evidence to inform decisions regarding how you address and improve learning for those who experience difficulties in literacy. You will have been generating qualitative evidence in relation to your own professional practice which will inform the report you write for this assignment. This report will involve reflection on the evidence you have collected and include suggestions for actions you plan to take to improve learning for those who experience difficulties with literacy. Whatever your choice of focus for your report, you must be explicit about how practice and/or policy will change. Your rationale for change must be specifically linked to: • the literature you explored to clarify and analyse the problem • specific examples from the qualitative evidence you have collected. Assignment Structure 1. Identify your main research question and three or four sub-questions, and indicate why they are central to issues related to your own practice. 2. Identify how the literature you have encountered during your study of E801 relates to your research questions by drawing on E801 readings and other relevant published research literature. In your review of this literature, clearly identify how specific areas in the literature relate to your research questions. Also indicate how the research has informed the development of the final version of your research questions. 3. Discuss how you collected evidence from your own practice in relation to your research problem. Drawing on feedback from earlier TMAs, examples of evidence collection documented in the E801 readings and other literature related to qualitative research methods and practitioner research, provide a rationale for and critically evaluate how you approached your data collection. Comment on any ethical considerations and issues you may have encountered and identify any problematic aspects. Indicate how your collection of evidence for this project informed your data analysis. Briefly describe how you attempted to or intended to analyse your evidence, and include a rationale justifying the way you could approach your analysis of the data you collected. 4. With reference to specific examples from your evidence, critically evaluate the extent to which the evidence you have collected could or has answered your research questions, and comment on how you would extend your collection of evidence to investigate the problem or other problems which emerged from your investigation for future practitioner-based projects. 5. Critically consider how you will change practice (institutional and/or within your own particular teaching environment) for learners who experience literacy difficulties. Some examples you might choose to discuss include how you would: o change institutional policy o promote particular activities, programmes, approaches o develop continuing professional development for yourself and colleagues with whom you work o extend your initial study through specific actions to include colleagues and in further reflective cycles driven by identifying relevant problems and evidence collecting and reflection. Note To writer: My chosen area of reseach is how to improve the learning of students with comprehension difficulties with particular emphasis on the link between comprehension difficulties and dyslexia (including the controversies in definition and existence of dyslexia) and the role of contectualised/prior knowledge in text comprehension.