Note: The research is still being conducted. But some interesting patterns seem to be emerging.

• We noticed that the quality of student work improved remarkably in the individual subject matters (music, art, and language arts)

• We noticed that students generally understood the role of transfer in their learning.

• We noticed students tended to be very poor at making both concrete and abstract connections across the disciplines initially. We suspect that because student knowledge in the arts was very limited, students in effect had no real knowledge or concepts to connect.

• The “teacher as researcher” aspect of the project has raised the TTAAP teachers’ awareness to some of their own conceptions, biases, and sensitivities about teaching.

• We observed that we generally tend to be very action-oriented about our teaching. In practice, we want to get to the point, and get moving.

• We value and draw on the theories related to instruction and learning, but often we tend not immerse too deeply in theory up front; we tend to look for the big idea first, and then figure how it applies to the classroom. We often find ourselves learning more theory as we go.

• When thinking about instructional theory, we tend to focus first on implications and application to practice. How the theory is this going to look in practice seemed to be foremost in our minds a lot of the time

• We tend to be “learn as we go” types of teachers, probably because of the structure and constraints and craziness working in a K-6 public school. We do suspect we’re becoming more systematic in our approach to teaching because of this project.

• We notice that teaching experience may have provided us with a lot of intuitive knowledge about good theory and good practice. We find ourselves challenging and exploring those intuitions since we’ve been doing this research.

Find out about the TTAAP teachers.

© Rochester Memorial Elementary School. Old Rochester Regional School Department. Rochester, MA 1999.
 

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