Thesis advisor: Dennis Shirley / The ability to express meaning in prose is a foundational skill in our society. Given the importance of being a competent writer, concern with the quality of writing instruction is a recurring theme among American educators (Cutler & Graham, 2008; Gilbert & Graham, 2010; National Commission on Writing, 2003, 2004, 2006). Research shows that teachers are unprepared to teach writing (Gilbert & Graham, 2010) and devote limited amounts of time to it (Cutler & Graham, 2008; Gilbert & Graham, 2010). In addition, national assessment data indicates that most students are not proficient writers (Salahu-Din, Persky & Miller, 2008). An embedded case study design (Yin, 2009), using mixed methodology (Greene & Caracelli, 2003a, 2003b; Hesse-Biber, 2010), was employed to determine whether a school-university partnership enacted systemic functional linguistics theory guided writing intervention changed fourth and fifth grade teachers' writing instruction over the course of three years in an urban elementary school. The study further investigated changes to 41 fourth and 27 fifth graders' writing performance during the third year of the invention. Examination of the relationship between students' performance in writing and the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) test in English language arts was conducted. The study also explored how teachers articulated their experiences with the partnership. Findings showed the content of teachers' instruction changed involving the use of metalanguage and the teaching of genre, language, and tenor. Similarly, instructional strategies evolved regarding negotiating field and deconstruction of text. Findings also indicated a significant improvement in writing performance for all students, and bilingual students had more growth over time than monolingual peers. Also, a moderate positive relationship existed between writing performance and MCAS performance, which suggests understanding of genre may support reading comprehension. Overall, teachers positively experienced the partnership and found value in the professional development. Implications of these study findings will benefit teacher education, administrators and policymakers, and allow for improved school-university partnerships. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

The purpose of this qualitative transcendental phenomenological study is to describe a particular phenomenon: the lived experiences of high school teachers who were responsible for creating and teaching a senior-year English Transition Course. Moustakas’ methods, framework and data analysis guidelines, coupled with interviews using Seidman’s three-interview process, is the best procedure for achieving the research aim. Thus, the study is based upon the results of interviews of 10 high school teachers from schools within a specific geographic region who collaborated with four English faculty members from a comprehensive four-year institution within the same region, over a period of three years. It is important to capture this phenomenon, as it occurred within a time of broad educational reform and uncertainty and will allow others to understand how teachers respond to interventions designed to reduce the need for remediation in reading and writing. This research examines the following questions: (a) What is the essence of high school teachers’ experiences planning a senior-year English Transition course designed to achieve college readiness in reading and writing? Specifically, how do teachers experience planning as a result of collaborative sessions with University English faculty? Additionally, how do teachers experience planning (e.g., course goals, units of study, individual lessons) as result of their individual efforts? (b) What is the essence of the experience of teaching a senior-year English Transition course designed to achieve college readiness in reading and writing? The fundamental textural-structural synthesis revealed four common themes as well as a variety of sub-themes across all participants. Scientific terms were used as metaphors. The juxtaposition of this scientific metaphorical depiction, ostensibly at odds in a study of literacy instruction, intends to reveal the complexity of teacher experiences and the totality of external circumstances as well as internal conditions they encountered. The insights from this study may inform curriculum specialists, policy-makers, school administrators, and English teachers.

The notion of "partnership" dominates contemporary school improvement and educational reform agendas. Most discourse about partnerships between schools and universities historically relates to the apparent divide between practice and theory, between practitioner and academy. This study departs from these traditional perspectives to move beyond the divide between teachers and academics. Designing strategies for re-visioning this historical divide within the education community, between teachers and academics, engages the profession at all levels. Instead of simply re-visioning this divide, however, we can envision a professional place where the divide does not exist. Addressing this divide requires teachers and academics, when they do come together for the purpose of collaborative work of any kind, to actively seek to understand each other's work. This study examines one school and university partnership that was modelled on the principles of a Professional Development School. It investigates the meeting talk between groups of teachers and academics as they plan and report on a collaborative project aimed at improving Mathematics teaching practices in the school. Whereas most research investigating school and university partnerships addresses the outcomes of such partnerships, or attempts to describe and advocate for ideal partnerships, this study considers the actual interactional work of the participants as they engage in the everyday and ongoing activities of partnership. It shows how partnerships are constructed through talk and activity. Instead of considering the partnership as a predetermined and pre-existing phenomenon, this study adopts the view that the work of partnership is an ongoing accomplishment through the activity of the participants. In this way, this study shows the local social order of a partnership as it was built, maintained and transformed through the interactional work of the participants. Both the institutional setting and the participants' enactment of partnership work contribute to the establishment of the social and moral order of the partnership. The principal question addressed in the study asks how participants accomplish the partnership work through their social interactions with one another. It considers the interactional resources that the partners (teachers, interns and academics) use to construct their talk and interactions with one another in the project; and how the partners construct themselves and the other members as members of the partnership, as academics/researchers and as teachers. This study drew on ethnomethodological resources to develop understandings about how the participants accomplish the partnership work through their talk-in-interaction. The specific focus is the talk of partnership that occurred in meetings between members of the school and of the university. These meetings were audio-recorded, transcribed, and finely analysed using the techniques and procedures of conversation analysis and membership category analysis. These methodological resources revealed the social and moral orders at work. Analysis of the meeting talk shows the specific activities and relationships developed by the principal of the school in the accomplishment of the partnership; the ways in which the various participants develop and use their claims to expertise (or lack of it) in doing partnership work; and how participants use the institutional resource of meeting talk to accomplish the partnership work. The study is of significance to educators, teachers and academics. It provides new and rich understandings about how school and university partnerships are accomplished through the participants' meetings. It shows the resources that the participants use to construct and accomplish their different kinds of expertise, to enact the leadership activities required, and to co-construct the various features of partnership. The study offers analytic tools for uncovering the interactional resource of the participants. The ethnomethodological resources, particularly conversation analysis and membership category analysis, can be used to analyse in close detail the social interactions of participants in the institutional talk of meetings. In showing how the social and moral orders of partnerships are revealed and by offering understandings of the pragmatics of school and university partnership, the social structure of school and university partnerships is explicated. The study offers one example of what a school and university partnership can be like. Epistemologically, it explores and exposes the kinds of knowledge produced from this kind of accounting for school and university partnerships. It shows how the work of partnership can be accomplished by participants, rather than attempt to claim how it should be done.