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 Development funded by the U.S. Office of Special Education Programs |
NEWS BRIEF
Moving Research into Classroom Practice
The Juniper Gardens Children's Project (JGCP) Model is a collaborative
approach in which researchers and practitioners together conduct research
and provide professional development designed to translate research
to practice. Teachers' involvement in the entire research process is
considered essential to producing practices that they will find important
and want to use. The model is currently undergoing implementation and
evaluation in a 4-year longitudinal study funded by the U.S. Office
of Special Education Programs. Findings after two years suggest that
teachers like the model and put research-validated practices into use
in their classrooms; and that these practices, in turn, result in more
academic responding and less inappropriate behavior on the part of their
students.
Overall, it was found that the JGCP model establishes and sustains
ongoing interactions between researchers and teachers in real classrooms
in real schools. Within the context of the model, problems relevant
to classroom teachers are jointly targeted, solutions identified, evaluated,
and selected for implementation, and validated solutions are scaled
up for use by others in the school.
The study was implemented in three elementary schools in Kansas City,
KS. A multiyear, multimeasure, single-subject research design with multiple
baseline and treatment only design features was used. Three cohorts
(kindergarten, first grade and second grade) are being followed longitudinally
for three years.
In the JGCP Model, student outcomes are seen as a reflection of teachers'
practices. Long and short-term students outcomes were measured by tests
of literacy, curriculum-based measures of reading, monitoring of basic
spelling and math skills, and classroom observations, the State of Kansas
Reading Test (3rd grade) and the time to onset of special education
services. Teaching practices were measured by teachers' use of research-validated
practices, including measures of teacher-researcher interactions, quantitative
measures of implementation fidelity, observational measures of change
in teacher and student behavior, and teacher satisfaction.
Implementation of the JGCP Model was measured by indicators of the
partnership, collaboration, consultation, and professional development
components that make up the model. In addition, the study looked at
the instructional problems addressed, whether teaching plans included
research-validated practice, the studies completed and in progress,
and publications and presentations by teachers and researchers.
For more information on this research, see Exceptional Children,
v. 65, N. 3, Spring, 1999.
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