Research

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Research Presented at the Second Annual CFG Research Forum

Research Presented at the First Annual CFG Research Forum

Other CFG Research





Research Presented at the Second Annual CFG Research Forum
Program of Presentations
Seattle, Washington
January 24, 2007

Session #1
Exploring the perspectives of newly trained CFG coaches
Michaelann Kelley, Eisenhower High School

Promoting a culture of learning through community building
Deborah Zawislan, John Carroll University

Session #2
CFGs and transformation: An emergent theory of action
Ross Peterson-Veatch, Indiana University

Teachers + Reform + 7 years + Portfolios = Fruitful Change: a report on a cross-district, cross-institution CFG in Houston
Tim Martindell, Houston A+ Challenge

Session #3
School coaching as follow-up support
David Leo-Nyquist, Vermont NSRF

Keeping the yeast alive active: Nurturing CFG coaches to impact teaching and learning
Donna Reid, Houston

“We’ve Carried a Lot”: Addressing Equity and Advocating for School Change as a Collaborative Inquiry Team
Tom Malarkey, Bay Area Coalition for Equitable Schools and Univ. of California-Berkeley

Session #4
Learning to analyze student work: The use of protocols to develop teachers’ candidates’ assessment skills and dispositions
Patricia Norman & Angela Breidenstein, Trinity University

Reflection as empowerment: A look at increased awareness, dialogue, and agency in one school
Katherine Jelly, Vermont College of Union Institute & University

Session #5
Enhancing Achievement in High Poverty elem Schools Through Building Prof Learning Communities
Alyson Adams, Dorene Ross, Nancy Dana, Walter Leite, Donald Pemberton, & David Quinn, University of Florida

Adult Learning: Turning the Corner to Instructional Change
Brinton Ramsey & Mary Beth Lambert, Small Schools Project/CESNW

Session #6
Developing a process for purposefully improving our work
UPDATE - Final Thesis: The Development and Evaluation of a Self-Study Process for Critical Friends Groups
Ellen Key Ballock, Pennsylvania State University
Please email Chris Jones, cjones@nsrfharmony.org, for the associated Facilitator's Guide

Critical Friends Groups: Building Teacher Knowledge Through Collaboration and Reflection
Michaelann Kelley, Eisenhower High School

General Session
NSRF: What the database tells us
Kevin Fahey, Salem State College

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Research Presented at the First Annual CFG Research Forum
Denver, Colorado
January 11, 2006

Do They Make a Difference? A Review of Research on the Impact of Critical Friends Groups (184Kb)
- Ellen Key

Teachers Talking about Teaching and School: Collaboration and Reflective Practice via Critical Friends Groups (304 Kb)
- Lisa Kuh

Back On the Road: Reflections on the power of Critical Friends Groups to improve school climate and student learning at an urban elementary school (72 Kb)
- Mary Matthews

Friends School of Baltimore: Critical Friends Groups in one Quaker School (132 Kb)
- Sandi Morton

Beyond Implementation: Sustaining Whole School CFGs via Sustained Coaches’ Support (72 Kb Powerpoint Presentation)
- Patricia J. Norman, Ph.D. and Angela Breidenstein, Ed.D.

A Theory of Action: What is Sustainable Change and How Do CFGs Support It? (80 Kb)
Relationship between various models of learning and change (80 Kb)
- Ross Peterson-Veatch

Leavening the Dough: Growing Quality Teaching by Supporting CFG’s (100 Kb)
- Donna Reid

Developing, Embedding and Sustaining Professional Learning Communities: What Have We Learned?
(104 Kb)
-Debra Smith and Hallie Tamez

A review of research on professional learning communities: What do we know? (164 Kb)
- Vicki Vescio, Dorene Ross and Alyson Adams

Elevating the Conversation: Building Professional Commun ity in Small High Schools (220 Kb)
- Catherine A. Wallach and Chrysan Gallucci

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Other CFG Research
Critical Friends Groups: The Possibilities and Limitations Embedded in Teacher Professional Communities Aimed at Instructional Improvement and School Reform (128kb)
- Marnie Curry

Critical Friends Groups: Teachers Helping Teachers to Improve Student Learning
- Faith Dunne, Bill Nave, and Anne Lewis

Collaborative Inquiry: The View from the District Office
- Kevin Fahey

Facilitator’s Guide to Critical Friends Group Work
- Jill Hudson

If Polly Had Been There: An Uncommon Journey in Teacher Induction and Development
- Thomas Van Soelen

For information or inquiries about research please contact Kevin Fahey, kfahey@salemstate.edu, Research Coordinator for the NSRF.

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Critical Friends Groups: Teachers Helping Teachers to Improve Student Learning
- Faith Dunne, Bill Nave, and Anne Lewis
The NSRF program has grown from an initial cohort of eighty Critical Friends Groups in sixty schools in 1995 to more than 1000 CFGs in nine hundred schools in 2002. To provide concrete information about how, and how well, CFGs are working, the Annenberg Institute for School Reform commissioned a two year study of CFGs that was started during the 1997-98 school year to determine their effectivness in meeting interim and long-term objectives.

The institute conducted a theory-based evaluation, which assumes that every program is based on a theory about how and why it will work. The theory about how and why CFGs will work is that teachers or activities, seek each others advice about professional issues and problems, and count on most staff members to help out anywhere, anytime; became more thoughtful about the connections among curriculum, assessment, and pedagogy as they participated in the CFG activities; have higher expectations for students than do teachers who do not participate; effectively challenge traditional norms and definitions of time, privacy, and adult learning.

You can read the results of this study published by Phi Delta Kappa in their December 2000 Research Bulletin at http://www.pdkintl.org/research/rbulletins/resbul28.htm.

 

Collaborative Inquiry: The View from the District Office
- Kevin Fahey
This paper presents the research findings of the collaborative inquiry efforts of one school district’s administrative team. The team learned and used two discussion protocols, the Collaborative Assessment Conference and Consultancy Protocol, as a way to build a more reflective, collaborative team that could deprivatize its practice, focus on issues of teaching and learning, and create a set of shared norms and values. Drawing on both quantitative and qualitative evidence, the paper demonstrates that the learning and use of these protocols built a more professional collaborative community and increased team learning, but did not leverage substantial organizational learning because of inattention to making the practices more normative generally.

During the 1999-2000 and 2000-2001 school years, one suburban school
district’s administrative team-- the superintendent, assistant superintendents, directors, principals and assistant principals--met monthly for two hours with an outside facilitator to learn and use the protocols. The meetings were supported by a state department of education grant that promoted innovative leadership development strategies at the district level. Download PDF of summary (76k)

 

Facilitator’s Guide to Critical Friends Group Work
- Jill Hudson
Critical Friends Group Training is professional development aimed at helping teachers examine their practice together in a structured, safe and analytical environment. Teachers use methods of collaboration, inquiry and reflection on their instruction and curriculum, refining their practice and leading to improved student learning.

This facilitator’s guide helps experienced CFG coaches learn how to design and teach CFG coaches seminars, with self-assessment questions focusing each chapter. Each chapter begins with a thought-provoking question: How do we meet the challenge of change? What are the components of an effective professional development model? How do individuals learn these new and difficult concepts such as collaborative inquiry? How do individuals use frameworks (Beliefs, Functions & Structures) and tools (Cycle of Inquiry) to make change? How do we teach collaborative inquiry in our seminars? How do we set up structures to enhance learning? How do we use questions to help others examine their beliefs? How do we know if our work is effective? What are the steps for continuous growth as a facilitator? Throughout each chapter, a review of the research, examples from actual seminars, and diagrams are used to answer these questions.

New facilitators will use the most effective models of professional development to teach others how to set up robust CFG programs in their schools. This training draws from recent research on change, collaborative inquiry, effective instruction and curriculum, systems thinking and group learning. With the facilitator’s own growth in mind, the manual also provides assessment tools that further examine the facilitators’ effectiveness as well as the efficacy of CFG programs overall.

 

If Polly Had Been There: An Uncommon Journey in Teacher Induction and Development
- Thomas Van Soelen
The purpose of this study was to investigate the learnings of a novice teacher learning community. The researcher coached this Critical Friends Group, which was composed of six first-year middle school teachers representing a variety of content areas and specialties. The group met monthly during the second semester of the 2002-2003 school year, examining issues of educational practice emerging from their own classrooms. Structured conversations using protocols developed by organizations such as the National School Reform Faculty drove the use of time during meetings. The researcher used portraiture (Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, 1997) to position himself to collect data about the group, individual members’ thinking, and his own facilitating and coaching dilemmas.

The principal of the building allowed one novice teacher to discontinue membership in
the group after the first meeting. Her words from that meeting are used to frame the authentic topics that the novice teachers pursued during the study, such as accountability, authentic assessment, content, and relationships with colleagues. Paired stories pose what might have happened if she had continued her membership in the group.

These novice teachers did not view issues of classroom management of high priority,
rather, questions surrounding assessment and meaningful learning activities permeated the conversations. Several members engaged in risk, offering their work or the work of their students for feedback. These artifacts often caused conceptual conflict (Wang & Odell, 2002), increasing the depth of the dialogue. Although the group was homogeneous in terms of years of full-time teaching experience, individuals’ experiences both in and out of the classroom provided a diversity that fueled and generated important knowledge and actions. Finally, a notion of a mentoring community emerged in which novices assumed multiple mentoring perspectives (Wang & Odell, 2002) in their interactions with each other and the group.
Download entire Thesis (1 MB)