Two Teachers in the Class: Increasing the Opportunities to Differentiate Literacy instruction

Increasing the teacher?student (TS) ratio in schools is one of the most discussed aspects of education policy. It seems evident that an increased TS-ratio will give teachers more time for individual students, which should increase student learning. However, several studies suggest that merely increasing the T-S ratio has limited effects on students' learning. Increasing the TS-ratio creates an opportunity space that allows teachers to change their instructional approaches. Specifically, this enables greater variety and differentiation of instruction as well as the provision of more individualized support, which can increase student engagement and learning. However, the fact that an increased TS ratio provides teachers with such an opportunity space does not necessarily mean that teachers will take advantage of this and actually change their teaching behaviors. Teachers? current practices may be ?sticky? and remain unchanged despite the new resources added, especially if teachers are not well informed about alternative teaching approaches. Based on this we suggest that an increase in the TS ratio could be more effective if it is combined with professional development for teachers (TPD), coaching them to change their classroom practice. Two Teachers investigates we investigate complementarities between an increased TS ratio and TPD in a large-scale field experiment conducted in Norway during the first and second years of primary schooling. This experiment represented a major collaboration with the Norwegian Ministry of Education. A total of 150 schools participated in the trial. Treatment was varied in two tiers. In the first tier, 100 schools were randomly allocated to participate in an online TPD program in literacy instruction, referred to as ?Language Track?. 50 of 100 these schools also received guidelines on how to use the increased teaching resources in instruction. The remaining 50 schools did not participate in the TPD, which yielded a ?business as usual? situation. In the second tier, we assigned one of the two participating classrooms within each school to have an additional teacher present in the classroom during all literacy classes, i.e. for 8 × 45 minutes each week, during first and second grade. The other classroom received no additional resources. The design allows us to investigate individual and ? importantly ? complementary effects of increased TS-ratio and TPD. Students were assessed five times. All students were individually assessed at the start of first grade, and at the end of first, second and third grade. We also collected results on national tests in Grade 5. Teachers have answered surveys on teaching practices, classroom climate, and co-teaching. In addition, we have observed and interviewed teachers in two teacher classrooms. Treatment fidelity was assessed in different ways. The first results from the project will be published in 2021. More information about the Two Teachers project can be found here: http://lesesenteret.uis.no/two_teachers/

The project group has increased their competence in administrating large and complex research projects with many participants and large data collections. The project has resulted in a close cross-disciplinary collaboration between researchers at the Norwegian Reading centre and UIS Business School, and the establishment of Synapse Lab: a cross-disciplinary laboratory for research on learning and motivation. The project results are expected to impact educational policy recommendations and the way schools organize and facilitate teacher collaboration.

To increase teachers' opportunities to meet the learning needs of the individual student, The Educational Act lays down that municipalities should ensure a particular high teacher-student (T-S) ratio in Norwegian and Mathematics in years 1-4. Several international studies suggest that merely increasing the T-S ratio has limited, if any, effect on student learning. Hence, Norway may be missing a key opportunity to exploit the potential of increased T-S ratio as we currently don't support teachers in how to use the resources. In this project, we investigate if increased knowledge about literacy instruction and implementation of carefully developed instructional approaches can boost the effect of increased T-S ratio. We do this in a large randomized controlled trail (RCT) in 150 schools and 300 classes. Moreover, we supplement the RCT with studies of teaching practices. The project has three sub-projects. In sub-project 1: Literacy Instruction Effect Study, we investigate effects of a systematic approach to school-based development of literacy instruction and and implementation of carefully developed instructional approaches. In sub-project 2: T-S Ratio Effect Study we investigate effects of increased T-S ratio across school-based developmental and instructional approaches. In sub-project 3: Teaching practices we investigate resulting teaching practices and teachers' experiences of how increased TS-ratio has affected their teaching practices.