Authentic instruction: A comparative case study of three urban high schools.

Abstract

All five of these teachers were part of the National Science Foundation (NSF) sponsored (grant #0086415) Authentic Teaching Alliance (ATA) which involved public school teachers, graduate and advanced undergraduate fellows, and university faculty at the University of Oklahoma. The secondary school math and science teachers who were part of ATA and the fellows worked together to create and implement authentic tasks in their classrooms on a regular basis.

Research demonstrates that authentic instruction is an effective form of teaching and raising student achievement. The purpose of this study was to examine five high school math or science teachers who had a high interest in learning and/or using authentic teaching in their classroom settings. In addition, the researcher sought to discover what practices helped them become more successful users of authentic instruction and what barriers hindered their use of authentic instruction.

It was the intent of this researcher that the study's findings be used: (a) for other teachers in similar settings; (b) to see what worked in different classroom environments and with different teachers; (c) to examine the impact of the university-school partnership (ATA) in its first two years.

Findings included that a quality teacher in every classroom was more essential than the school setting. However, some elements of school setting were also seen as positively influencing an authentic climate, such as smaller schools, smaller class sizes, and planning periods at the same time for departments to allow for more collaborative planning. In addition, professional development, a professional learning community, and lesson study were suggestions that, if put in place effectively, could have enhanced and built on authentic instruction in a school.

Ultimately, the goal was to see how authentic instruction, if at all, benefited student learning in different environments, if it worked the same in contrasting environments, and how teachers were overcoming barriers and effectively implementing authentic instruction.

The three settings in this study were a traditional high school, an alternative school for parenting teens, and a public charter high school. Each school was located in a large urban school district and contained a large population of lower socioeconomic level students. The schools were chosen for this study based on their participation in ATA and contrast of size and organizational structure. Each classroom was qualitatively studied, through observations of instruction, interviews with teachers, fellows, and administrators, and examination of journals written by fellows.