own. Once her understanding of QAR had been firmly established and nurtured in professional-development
experiences, her uptake and enactment of QAR swelled.
Phase IV – Deep Understanding. At the conclusion of the three-part workshop series, Tricia expressed
interest in using QAR differently. She hypothesized that she could weave other comprehension strategies into the
QAR framework, just as she had with Extended Response. Tricia wanted to test run her experimental lesson with me
in a coaching session so that I could observe the methodology and offer feedback and suggestions. As was her
practice, she planned to use my feedback combined with her own reflections to refine and improve her innovation.
In the feedback session that followed her lesson, Tricia felt affirmed in her strong belief that kids could use
their solid foundation of QAR question and answering abilities as a bridge into newer comprehension strategies and
tasks. She planned on starting this new way of using QAR the following year, right from the start, and punctuated the
end of our conversation with this promise, “you just watch!” (Field Notes, 2/23/06). Tricia was the first of her
colleagues to engage in Transformation Enactment of QAR at Plato School.
Engaging in collaborative professional-development activities equipped Tricia with a deeper understanding to
further explore QAR instructional possibilities. She recognized that connecting Extended Response and QAR impacted
her understanding of both initiatives. Tricia would use her deep understanding of the process of QAR to as the
launching pad for introducing and understanding new comprehension target skills.
Conclusion
This study used QAR as a vehicle for improving our understanding about the nature of professional
development and collaboration. Since the study was conducted in one school, then in one classroom setting, the
conclusions are restricted in their generalizability to other contexts. Nevertheless, they are compelling and propose
essential insights for those responsible for designing and engaging in professional development for school
improvement.
Identifying the varying levels teacher enactment of QAR was vital in designing tailored professionaldevelopment activities and literacy-coaching sessions to promote teachers’ growth in understanding and use of QAR.
By meeting teachers at their instructional level, professional developers can scaffold teacher learning into new areas
of research-based literacy instruction. Such an approach increases the likelihood that teachers will learn something
from every professional-development experience that they can use to expand and refine their practice, resulting in
their students benefiting from decades of reading research.
Findings from the Plato professional-development study indicate extending time for literacy coaching and
collaboration is critical in supporting teacher classroom practice change. In the project, Tricia had not even
attempted to use QAR with her students until the end of the first year based on a previous negative experience with
a here-today, gone-tomorrow approach to professional development. Extended literacy coaching was the vehicle by
which Tricia and her colleagues had time and opportunity to receive feedback and reflect on their understanding and
uptake development.
Evidence of the influence that our coaching sessions had on Tricia’s engagement was revealed in an interview
that was presented earlier in this paper: “in every conversation we had, I started seeing it and better understanding
it. It’s a whole different approach” (Interview Transcript 3/20/07). This underscores the value of the supportive
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