PROFESSIONAL COLLABORATION IN AN URBAN
SCHOOL TO PROMOTE READING COMPREHENSION
INSTRUCTION
Tammy Oberg De La Garza
Abstract:
This research examines the professional-development experience of one urban, Latino school community that
partnered with an external professional development provider to improve literacy instruction. To explore the
impact of the professional collaboration on teacher understanding and instruction, this research analyzes one
teacher’s development of understanding and practice over the span of the four-year project. This paper
explores how professional development collaboration can be tailored to meet teachers’ needs, advance
understanding, and impact practice.
Ideas about the nature of learning and cognition overwhelmingly accept that knowledge is under
constant construction (Bruner, 1986) and results from a process of social interactions and mediations with
groups of people (Vygotsky, 1986). In the refinement of established ideas, individuals cycle in phases of
interactions and settings. Figure 1 represents the cyclical, four phases of the Vygotsky Space model (Harré,
1984; Vygotsky, 1986): (a) public exposure to socially conventionalized ideas, (b) socially held ideas are
appropriated into private understanding and practice, (c) private practice of the original idea is transformed by
an individual to meet innovative needs, and (d) the innovative new idea is presented socially and publicized,
whereby the new idea becomes conventionalized by the public, and the cycle begins again.
Public
Conventionalize
Individual
Vygotsky
Social
Space
Publication
Appropriation
Private
Transformation
Tammy Oberg De La Garza, Ph.D., is an
Assistant Professor of Language & Literacy at
Roosevelt University College of Education.
Her experience and research in diverse,
urban populations of Chicago is aimed at
improving literacy instruction and
opportunities for all students, teachers, and
schools.
Figure 1. Vygotsky Space model representation
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