Teachers working together to foster selfregulated learning through reading by students in an elementary school located in a disadvantaged area

A key question for the educational research community concerns how teachers can adapt theories and practices supported by the scientific literature in ways that meet the particular needs of students in classrooms. The research reported here takes up that question by investigating how a team of teachers in an elementary school in a disadvantaged area built from research and theory to enact, try out, and refine classroom practices supportive of self-regulated LTR in their subject-area classrooms in light of their students’ needs. Our goals were to (1) describe what classroom activities participating teachers planned and implemented to integrate attention to the curriculum with support for self-regulated LTR; (2) evaluate the match between teachers’ practices and recommendations from the literature, as represented in the framework on which they were drawing; and (3) trace how practices enacted by teachers could be related to the perceptions and learning processes of their 123 Grade 5 and 6 students. A key finding was that teachers were successful in embedding activities into classrooms that engaged students in self-regulation, particularly use of cognitive strategies. However, we also found that the practices enacted did not sufficiently push students towards self-conscious, deliberate self-direction of learning. Implications are drawn about how classrooms practices can be constructed to take into account qualities of LTR contexts and supports necessary to foster success in school by young, at-risk learners. Discussion also focuses on benefits and challenges when teachers work together to adapt practices for use in subject area classrooms in ways that are responsive to student needs.