Teaching in Teams for Increased Student Academic Engagement at a Rural High School on a Four-Day Instructional Week: A Design Development Study

The identified problem of professional practice that this research addresses was that due to a lack of systems related to the nurturing of cross-curricular PLC processes coupled with a curriculum that was not entrenched in the real world and deeper learning concepts, isolated subjects in a four-day instructional week created an environment where student disengagement developed due to a lack of connection to the learning. The campus where this study took place is a rural high school that had transitioned to a four-day instructional week, where students attended campus Monday through Thursday from 7:30am – 4:15pm, and faculty and staff would report on one Friday a month for planning, professional development and team meetings. Data from discipline, attendance, failure rates and assessments displayed a trend where students appeared to be sitting in class bored and disconnected from the learning. As the structure of the school setting changed, instructional practices had not adapted to the new schedule. The purpose of this design-based research study was to determine the impact that cross-curricular team teaching through nurturing of PLC processes, and producing content that was rich in deeper learning, and real-world activities could have on teachers’ perception of student engagement on campus.