Scaffolding Understanding of Scholarly Educational Research through Teacher/Student Conferencing and Differentiated Instruction

This article reports the results of a qualitative study of the effectiveness of a critical reading instructional intervention based on teacher/student conferencing (TSC) and differentiated instruction (DI) in improving the participants' understanding and evaluation of published educational research. TSC and DI entailed using a subset of teaching strategies including pre-teaching, self-selection of critiqued articles, cooperative learning, embedded instruction, extended instruction, reflection to scaffold students' challenges, providing constructive feedback, enabling students to describe their feelings, assessing own learning, and setting goals and plans for further development. A cohort of 11 (n = 11) novice graduate students took part in a 15-week course during which they critiqued several published journal articles and reflected on their experience. Results of a thematic analysis of the participants' reflection logs revealed that their initial feelings of apprehension and anxiety transformed into growth in their self-efficacy as consumers and designers of educational research. Likewise, the participants benefitted from the instructional intervention under study in becoming more proficient readers and in developing supportive relationships. The study implications, limitations, and suggestions for further research that would explicate what specific teaching strategies categorized under TSC and DI were most effective in achieving the study outcomes are discussed.