Browsing by Author "Lenters, Kimberly A."

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    Exploring a Literacy Partnership to Inform Educational Leadership: The Story of Calgary Reads
    (2019-07-22) Devitt, Laura; Brandon, Jim; Lenters, Kimberly A.; Seidel, Jackie; Spring, Erin; Anderson, Jim
    Abstract. This study focuses on a significant challenge in an educational leader’s role; working to ensure success for all students. Consistent, strong leadership at both school and district levels can positively impact outcomes for students. While school leadership can create the conditions that encourage high-quality teaching and improved outcomes for students, education system leadership can create the conditions that allow school leaders to be successful. It is widely recognized that a child’s journey to becoming literate is closely linked to future learning. In such complex and demanding work, educational leaders often find themselves grappling for the best possible approaches and practices to improving literacy outcomes. In some instances, educational leaders seek opportunities to collaborate with community support. The purpose of this narrative inquiry was to investigate one such community program in an attempt to inform the literacy practices of school-based and system-based educational leaders. The community program examined in this study was Calgary Reads, a literacy-focused agency which collaborates with schools and school districts around literacy, including providing early literacy interventions in elementary school settings. Interviews with the organization’s executive director, one district leader, four school-based leaders, twelve classroom teachers and eight children, all who are supported by Calgary Reads, provided the study’s data. In total, 26 participant stories were gathered, presented, and thematically analyzed. The narrative analysis revealed the strongly expressed need for ongoing, meaningful professional learning opportunities in early literacy for leaders and teachers. From this overarching narrative theme, recommendations regarding system and school supports, leader and teacher professional learning needs and decision-making approaches regarding early literacy in schools and school systems are provided. Keywords: educational leadership, literacy, professional development, community.
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    Indian Residential Schools: Perspectives of Blackfoot Confederacy People
    (2021-03-02) Fox, Terri-Lynn; Louie, Dustin William; Lenters, Kimberly A.; Hanson, Aubrey Jean; Poitras Pratt, Yvonne; Burke, Susan
    This qualitative research project explored two main themes: the Indian residential school (IRS) settlement agreement for survivors of federally funded and church-run institutions, and the participants’ perspectives (N = 16) on the apology to the survivors and subsequent generations that have been affected. I focus on the First Nation population of southern Alberta, specifically the Blackfoot Confederacy (Siksikaitsitapi). I use a Siksikaitsitapi lens and methodology on their experiences at an IRS, the IRS settlement, the Canadian government’s apology to former students, and the status of reconciliation as a whole. Criteria for participant inclusion were being an IRS survivor and a member of the Blackfoot Confederacy. Semistructured interviews revealed that receiving the IRS compensation led to survivors reliving their trauma and that money did not buy happiness or foster healing. Themes related to the IRS apology included its lack of positive reception and lack of sincerity; some stated they did not watch it, whereas others shared it was emotional for them to view. Other common factors that affected participants while in an IRS were loneliness, pain, abuse, and being unable to speak Blackfoot or engage in Blackfoot cultural practices. Learning from our shared past, Canadians must lean towards trusting and respectful acts of reconciliation, and respectful relationships, which form strong partnerships for all. A Siksikaitsitapi framework is provided as a starting point for relearning, rebuilding, renewing, and restorying after 500 years of decolonization. Using the framework, all stakeholders can begin to understand and heal issues relating to overall health and well-being from within an Indigenous lens and methodology. This approach respectfully honours the 7 generations before us and the 7 generations that will come after us.
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    Instruction in the Foundations of Writing: A Case Study of Grade One Gifted Children
    (2019-06-07) Ramzy, Miriam; Roessingh, Hetty; Lenters, Kimberly A.; Eaton, Sarah Elaine
    Writing with paper and pencil continues to be the most common method students use in school to communicate their knowledge. It is a skill that is foundational to generating text for a wide variety of purposes from kindergarten through grade twelve. In this doctoral research, I collaborated with one teacher and her classroom of grade one gifted students for a full school-year. This case study applied a mixed methods approach to data collection and analysis to explore the overarching question, how did an explicit and systematic approach to instruction, following the Handwriting Without Tears and Words Their Way programs, influence grade one gifted children’s composition abilities? The findings revealed that handwriting and spelling seemed to improve, as did compositional length. However, instruction in handwriting and spelling did not seem to improve the quality of students’ written compositions more than what would be typically expected in grade one. The findings revealed a need to understand how handwriting and spelling constrain children’s written compositions, including their abilities to unlock higher-level vocabulary, and how to choose developmentally appropriate assessment tools that reflect students’ current abilities. Implications for handwriting and spelling assessments and instructional approaches are included.
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    Investigating the Ontario FSL High School Curriculum: An Exploratory Case Study of Non-Native French-Speaking Teachers’ Cultural Practices
    (2020-07-03) Guida, Rochelle; Roy, Sylvie; Hanson, Aubrey Jean; Lenters, Kimberly A.; Kassan, Anusha; Bangou, Francis
    Following a qualitative social constructivist research paradigm, this exploratory case examined how Ontario non-native French-speaking teachers approached French cultures with beginner level French as a second language (FSL) students of the high school Grade 9 Core French (CF) program. Ontario FSL educators often teach CF and students typically pursue CF in lieu of other FSL programs (Canadian Parents for French, 2017; Masson, 2018). Grade 9 is the final FSL course required for high school graduation (Masson, 2018; OME, 2014). CF students lack confidence speaking and interacting in French (Rehner, 2014) despite many years of language exposure (Masson, 2018) and often abandon FSL studies after Grade 9 (LANG, 2014). This inquiry investigated the cultural practices of ten Ontario CF Grade 9 non-native French-speaking educators from autumn 2018 to January 2019. The teachers participated in an online questionnaire, two semi-structured interviews, an online focus group, and shared cultural resources. Based on a theoretical framework that I developed, thematic analysis revealed that the teachers who recently travelled to French-speaking communities, and who maintained their French linguistic and cultural proficiencies, reflected more of the social constructivist orientation to pedagogy (Cummins, 2001, 2009; Cummins et al., 2007). Participants also modelled some elements of the neurolinguistic approach (Netten & Germain, 2012) to help students retain and reuse cultural content with growing confidence in oral communication. The teachers introduced French cultures using cuisine, music, travel, and ICT resources through CEFR-inspired practices (Council of Europe, 2001) in day-to-day practices. The participants were ambitious cultural learners and pedagogues, which supported the positive characteristics of Ontario non-native French-speaking teachers. Participants also experienced various challenges, such as ICT access issues, lack of teacher-training, and lack of student interaction with native French speakers. Therefore, the findings raised important funding and teacher-training considerations for cultural learning and interaction in Grade 9 CF.
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    Literacy Through The Arts: A Phenomenological Inquiry into What it is Like to Experience Literacy within a Theatrical Space
    (2019-07-05) Campbell, Harrison Michael; Towers, Jo; Alonso-Yañez, Gabriela; Burwell, Catherine; Lenters, Kimberly A.
    Literacy, according to Lindquist and Seitz (2009), “is one of those words, like love, that people use commonly and confidently, as if its meaning were transparent and stable” (p. 8). Literacy in classrooms, however, is inherently complex and the experiences that surround it, especially from the student’s perspective, are often lost. This thesis examines how literacy came to be defined within a specialized arts immersion junior high school in Western Canada and how the unique approach to curriculum was better able to encourage student agency, authorship, and identity within literacy's definition. This research is inspired by the work of the New London Group, which spoke to expanding the scope of literacy pedagogy through a proposed framework of multiliteracies embracing multimodality and contextual responsiveness to the learning environment. (New London Group, 1994). In response to this it was seen that students needed to have spaces in which they can play the role of code breakers, text users and text analysts. Artistic inquiry is a means to create such a space which in addition to teaching applied roles, also allow students to strengthen their social and cultural wellbeing (Wells & Sandretto, 2017). Over the course of a semester eight students created a theatrical space in which they communicated their experiences of literacy with data being collected through interviewing, journaling, monologue writing, and performance. Through the use of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis students, who were recruited using homogeneous sampling, had their data coded in a way that created a double hermeneutic around literacy as the researcher and students engaged in dialogue and performance as a means of making meaning. This phenomenological process allowed for the development of a flexible open-ended inquiry. The study's findings showed that students within this unique learning environment connected their literacy experiences directly into the fine and performing arts. Students experienced literacy both in a traditional sense and a performative sense, citing that their work within school productions was a way of building upon their literacy skills. For these students, literacy was not a single experience but an interconnected web of experiences that enriched their learning and increased their engagement.
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    Understanding the Leadership Role in Literacy Programming of Elementary School Principals
    (2018-09-04) Pelling, Melody Lyn; Lenters, Kimberly A.; Roessingh, Hetty; Broad, Kathryn; Spencer, Brenda L.; Burns, Amy M.
    Elementary school principals play a key role in leading the pedagogy in their schools. Among their many responsibilities is to ensure that all students have access to quality teaching and learning experiences. Arguably, one of the most important skills that an elementary student will learn in school is to become a confident, fluent reader, who can use their literacy skills to navigate in a complex and progressive society. Teaching children to read is multi-faceted and requires educators to have significant background knowledge and skill. Given this context, it is necessary to ask what role principals play in providing leadership and guidance specific to literacy, in their schools. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between elementary school leadership and literacy programming in elementary schools. This inquiry was done through a qualitative research approach that employed case study methodology. An anonymous survey, individual semi-structured interviews with five elementary school principals, and a document review were used to explore principals’ perceptions of their role in literacy leadership. The findings of this inquiry revealed principals do have an important role in literacy leadership in elementary schools, and that their work as a literacy leader is often facilitated through a distributed leadership model. This inquiry also revealed that, although principals feel they must understand the literacy process themselves to lead the work, they do not necessarily enter the role of principal with this requisite knowledge. Further to this, principals feel that a large part of their role as literacy leader is building the capacity of teachers’ literacy pedagogy, so that in turn, teachers can respond to students’ literacy needs through the lens of the school’s literacy leadership.