UAA education research aims to give kids a good start

UAA students research effectiveness of state assessment, bilingual books

Are teachers accurately understanding skills and behaviors that indicate a child is ready for kindergarten? And, how are Alaska Native parents using books in their native languages to boost their children's early literacy skills?

These questions are the focus of two projects being tackled by Sophie Leshan and Nina Lee, two UAA College of Education students who recently received Office of Undergraduate Research and Scholarship awards.

• Leshan is working with Professor Kathryn Ohle and Professor Hattie Harvey to examine teachers' perceptions and use of a state-mandated assessment that determines whether a child is ready for kindergarten.

The work builds upon the professors' study of the Alaska Developmental Profile (ADP), a mandated assessment tool the state has used for nearly 20 years to measure baseline skills and behaviors a child shows when entering kindergarten. The only state requirement for a child to enter kindergarten is that he or she be 5 years old.

• Lee is also working with Ohle (and another student, Cambria Houtte), studying how bilingual children's books from the Unite for Literacy website can foster literacy and language development, as well as developing resource materials for parents.

Ohle won the 2015 Selkregg Award for creating online children's books recorded in Chevak by native speakers of the Cup'ik language, and used that award's proceeds on translations and to help print bilingual books in the Iñupiaq language (most of the money for the books came from the Eskimo Heritage Program with Kawerak).

In a unique position

The UAA team's research into the ADP is critical: that assessment is the only required tool Alaska teachers use to assess skills and behaviors of kindergartners, and its results inform big-picture policy decisions. The Alaska State Legislature relies on it. So do a variety of other educational and nonprofit entities in Alaska, including the Early Education Department, Best Beginnings, United Way and Anchorage Realizing Indigenous Student Excellence (ARISE).

Its findings? The test may not be accurately assessing many kids' skills or behaviors because, too often, teachers and administrators were administering it incorrectly or inconsistently.

The ADP organizes the skills and behaviors of preschool and kindergarten students into five so-called "domains": physical development and motor skills; social and emotional development; approaches to play and learning; communication, language and literacy, and cognitive development and general knowledge.

Teachers are asked to evaluate their students on the ADP domains after the first four to six weeks of school, and then report student scores using the state's online system.

The professors-with feedback from the Anchorage School District-created and distributed a 14-question survey to preschool teachers, kindergarten teachers and school district administrators in the ASD. They invited all Alaska school districts to participate; 23 of the 54 districts accepted the invitation. The UAA team conducted 30 interviews to learn more about teachers' perceptions.

They found many teachers said they didn't have any formal training on how and when to use the ADP-despite having access to a PowerPoint with directions on it, posted on the state's website.

Some teachers used the ADP as it was intended-observing their students over a period of weeks before completing the assessment. Too many, however, made one-time, on-the-spot evaluations of students they barely knew.

"They did that because they didn't feel they had time to do more, with all of the other required assessments they have to do," Ohle/Harvey said.

Another critical finding: There were inconsistencies in how teachers used the ADP to help guide their work with students in the classroom-some teachers used information they gathered, others did not.

Teachers conducting the assessment-over time-should first build relationships with children, observe them in their environment, observe their social and emotional skills, observe how they're communicating, Harvey said.

"That's a really good practice for a teacher," she said. "The ADP has the potential to be a very useful tool that's beneficial to both children and families. It can help inform instructional practices both at the individual and classroom-wide levels ... but there's such an inconsistency in how it's used."

Ohle says she, Harvey and Leshan studied the ADP because they are in a unique position.

"We do not work for a school district and we can raise the questions without having the backlash," she said. "For a kindergarten teacher to raise the question, is this valid, should we be doing this, why are we doing this, there are more consequences. We at the university feel we are in a good position, that we can ask the tough questions as part of our service to the public. We raise the question, we did the research, we did it in a really ethical way and we're in the process of sharing that information."

ASD responded, Ohle said, asking if the UAA team would be willing to offer a session about how teachers might use "authentic assessment" approaches to get information they could use when filling out the ADP. The district is also changing how it does its transitional practice and changed some of its testing dates.

"That first time the child comes in and you meet them one on one, this is not when we want you to be doing your formal assessments," Harvey said. "We want you to get to know your kids. The first few weeks of school is a time for building relationships, learning about the child's strengths and challenges and familiarizing the child with their new environment."

Ohle says the project spotlighted an important task for educators.

"We want all of our teachers to be critical consumers," she said. "For Sophie, we see her as being a future educational leader so we want her to be able to say, when the state tells you to do this, there's questions to be asked. You need to understand why you're doing it and how it's going to inform your instruction. And she has gotten that message pretty loud and clear."

'Watermelonaq'

It's well-known that children whose parents read to them from an early age are more likely to thrive when they begin attending school. But what if a parent is Cup'ik, or Athabascan, or Iñupiat? What if they can't find books written in the language the family uses at home?

Ohle's bilingual book project began after she taught a class in Chevak about family-community partnerships. One assignment sent students to a free digital library, where they picked a book, translated it into Cup'ik and created a lesson plan for it. The students recorded their translations, and Unite for Literacy edited and uploaded the recordings.

Ohle raised the money for 50 Cup'ik transitions. Selkregg proceeds paid for more translations of online books, into Iñupiaq and Tlingit languages.

"I've got someone now doing upper Tanana Athabascan," she said.

Complicated questions emerge: Who gets to translate? Who gets to decide whether a word is the right word, or even a real word?

"There certainly are people who are making up words," Ohle said. "You'd have to."

The issue, she says, is how do languages evolve.

There isn't a Cup'ik dictionary or hard-and-fast rules about how to name things Cup'ik or Iñupiat people haven't seen or used before, Ohle said.

"So we use the word 'selfie' here," she said. "Who decided that was a word and who decided we could use that word? It's just happening socially, organically. It's pretty funny in some of these. In Cup'ik especially, they were adding 'aq': 'raccoonaq', 'watermelonaq.'"

Money from the grant also was used to print bilingual children's books, which Lee and Houtte helped create.

Lee and Ohle started working together last year after Lee applied to be Ohle's community-engaged student assistant (CESA).

"Nina has a personal connection to the work since she was an [English language learner] herself," Ohle said.

This fall, Lee will create more bilingual labels for books "and will hopefully accompany me on a visit to deliver the books and see how they are being used by the teacher and students," Ohle said.

Kawerak distributed Iñupiaq books to 16 Head Starts in their local villages and Ohle has been distributing books here.

"I was able to bring a whole set over to the Alaska Native Charter School, I gave a set to [UAA Alaska Native Studies Director] Maria Williams, I gave a set to Loussac library, I gave a set to our library, I went over to the Alaska Native Heritage Center," she said. "It's exciting!"

Written by Tracy Kalytiak, University of Alaska Anchorage.