Comparisons between Literature majors and Pedagogy majors: Are there relationships between major type and activities performed during 2021 in 4th grade ELAR classrooms?

People might wonder what was going on during the 2021 academic year in 4th grade U.S. English language arts/reading (ELAR) classrooms, as this was a time when students were learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Generally speaking, the time was considered one of disruption in education, when students and teachers alike faced challenges to both the art and science of teaching and learning (Gray, Powell-Smith, and Good, 2023). 

Fortunately, the Progress in International Readling Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2021 survey captured data from participating teachers, and the world is able to get somewhat of a snapshot of what teachers were doing on the side of teaching in the field. This report uses the 2021 weighted survey data to draw some basic comparisons and conclusions between early career teachers that were mostly literature majors in their teaching preparation, and early career teachers that were mostly pedagogy majors in their teaching preparation. By early career it is meant a teacher who has taught no more than 5 years at the time of data collection. The PIRLS study limits the discourse of what we can talk about because it captures only certain information in its survey, so we consumers of the study observe a survey of teacher behaviors and walk away with a limited understanding of what teachers were and were not doing during the 2021 academic year. For more information, readers are advised to consult the PIRLS study directly.

 Hypotheses that inform this report are: 

Table 1.

The rationale for comparing literature majors against pedagogy majors is that it is assumed that both might be equally prepared to deal with teaching ELAR at the 4th grade level, with some given deficits that get worked out through field work and preparatory classes. Despite this, the comparison teases out whether one major outserves students in some way based on subject matter expertise, especially during a challenging teaching time, namely during the COVID pandemic.

The methods involved in generating this report required the survey and dplyr packages in R. New variables were made based on teacher self reports on preparatory major. Teachers who reported that literature was an area of emphasis in teacher preparation were coded into the category of Mostly Lit, while teachers who reported that pedagogy was an area of emphasis in teacher preparation were coded into the category of Mostly Pedagogy. The rest were coded as Related majors; when it came time to further code downstream, these majors became excluded from the analysis.

Nota bene: As this is a report of findings, the results do not cluster around a theoretical framework.

As a point of context, the original survey numbers are meant as estimates towards the population of U.S. teachers, and we can first appreciate that survey numbers capture limited numbers of participating teachers to start. (viz. the PIRLS 2016 survey, N = 599; PIRLS 2021, N = 91). Therefore, we can see that if we attempt to add up the numbers in the tables (viz. table 2.), we will not see a viable total of the entire population of U.S. teachers of ELAR. Second, the research questions are hyper focused on two specific majors: mostly literature focused majors and mostly pedagogy focused majors. This tosses aside a sub population of teachers of 4th grade ELAR that were prepared through majoring in another subject. Finally, we eliminate teachers with more than five years of teaching experience as a framework of the study.

Nevertheless, according to Table 2, the conclusion can be drawn that there is not a statistical relationship between major type and having students take a quiz after reading. The Mostly Lit majors are roughly divided equally on this category, as is the Mostly Pedagogy majors.

Table 2.

The second hypothesis explores whether there is a relationship between major type and providing opportunities for students to make predictions in their readings. According to Table 3, it is estimated that most teachers did not provide the opportunities for students to make predictions in their reading activities, regardless of major. According to the chi-square analysis, there is not a relationship between major type and providing students the opportunity to make predictions during reading activity.

Table 3.

In hypothesis 3, I ask whether there is a relationship between major type and providing students the opportunity to challenge opinions. According to Table 4, it is estimated that most teachers opted not to give these opportunities to students. However, the results of the chi-square analysis show that there is not a relationship between major type and providing the opportunity to challenge opinions.

Table 4.

Hypothesis 4 asks whether there is a relationship between major type and encouraging discussions. From Table 5 estimates indicate that the vast majority of teachers steered away from encouraging discussions, with the Mostly Pedagogy major category showing n = 0 for the TRUE category.  According to the chi-square analysis, there is not a statistically significant relationship between major type and encouraging discussions.

Table 5.

Hypothesis 5 queries whether there is a relationship between major type and developing student understandings. According to Table 6 it is estimated that the majority of U.S. 4th grade ELAR teachers did not provide opportunities to develop student understandings. According to the chi-square analysis, there is not a statistically significant relationship between major type and providing opportunities to develop understandings in the 4th grade ELAR classroom.

Table 6.

Hypothesis 6 recognizes the complexity of teaching texts in the ELAR classroom and asks whether there is a relationship between major type and having students take multiple perspectives during reading activities. In relationship to other hypotheses, Table 7 shows a healthy number of U.S. early career teachers working through this activity with their students. However, we can estimate that the majority of teachers did not perform this activity with their students, according to the parameters of this hypothesis. Still, the chi-square test results do not show a relationship between major type and providing opportunities for students to take multiple perspectives in reading activities. 

Table 7.

Hypothesis 7 questions whether there is a relationship between major type and providing students with opportunities to make comparisons with explanations. Here, the null hypothesis is rejected, as the chi-squared result is statistically significant, according to Table 8. From the table we can see that Mostly Pedagogy majors are estimated to have a higher incidence of providing opportunities for students to make comparisons with explanations as reading activities, relative to their Mostly Literature major counterparts. 

Table 8.

Finally, hypothesis 8 asks whether there is a relationship between teaching major and teaching generalization as a reading strategy. Table 9 indicates that it is estimated that the majority of teachers, regardless of major, did not provide generalization as a form of reading strategy to students. It is estimated that few, if any, Mostly Pedagogy majors provided this strategy to their students. Chi-square analysis results indicated that there is not a statistically significant relationship between major type and providing generalization as a form of reading strategy to students. 

Table 9.

Some of the main takeaways include that teaching through COVID-19 for many school districts in the U.S. meant teaching in online settings (Reynolds, Aromi, McGowan, and Paris, 2022). This meant altering traditional teaching setups such as the traditional 'kidney table'; This mainstay of pull out and small group sessions allows for discussions, where intimate reading activities can happen, such as challenging your neighbor's opinion, and carefully developing nuanced understandings of texts. Working online may have squashed discussions as elementary school faculty may have been inexperienced in navigating online (Casimir, Blake, Klosky, and Gazmaranian, 2023), or because students may not have had computers at home (Pryor, Wilson, Chapman, Bates, 2020). This may explain why so few teachers, generally, chose to provide certain opportunities for students during the 2021 academic year. 

What may be at issue is what Field (2024) has called the tertium quid, or the influencing variable/s that dangle/s in the air, affecting the unassuming study design. The online setting brings with it a host of variables discussed above that both Mostly Lit majors and Mostly Pedagogy majors had to overcome that are not outrightly considered in the study design. 

More research needs to be conducted between PIRLS 2021 findings and PIRLS 2016 findings. However, there are limitations in how the 2021 data were gathered in relation to past data types, which makes comparisons next to impossible. This is an understandable limitation to PIRLS 2021 as data was gathered over against the COVID-19 pandemic conditions. The education community is grateful to have the 2021 data to understand some of what was happening during this monumental time in our world's history. 

References

Casimir, O. A., Blake, S. C., Klosky, J. V., & Gazmararian, J. A. (2023). Adaptations to the Learning Environment for Elementary School Children in Georgia during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Journal of Child & Family Studies, 32(6), 1585–1598. https://doi-org./10.1007/s10826-022-02531-7

Field, A. (2024). Discovering Statistics with SPSS. Sage Publications, Ltd. 

Gray, J. S., Powell-Smith, K. A., & Good III, R. H. (2023). The Impact of COVID-19 on Student Reading Development. Elementary School Journal, 123(4), 583–598. https://doi-org/10.1086/723301

Pryor, J., Wilson, R. H., Chapman, M., & Bates, F. (2020). Elementary Educators’ Experiences Teaching during COVID-19 School Closures: Understanding Resources in Impromptu Distance Education. Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, 23(4), 1–12.

Reynolds, R., Aromi, J., McGowan, C., & Paris, B. (2022). Digital divide, critical‐, and crisis‐informatics perspectives on K‐12 emergency remote teaching during the pandemic. Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, 73(12), 1665–1680. https://doi-org/10.1002/asi.24654