Anàlisi i seguiment de l'execució del PIR en el període 1998-2001

The fifth and final theme related to influences on teachers’ trade book selection for their classroom instruction was financial. Monetary influences on trade book selection were present in each of the three teacher interviews. The more money given or invested provided teachers with greater trade book selection and availability. Each teacher described at least some reliance on administration or the school district as the source of money for trade books. Mrs. Potter frequently discussed the influence of money on the amount and quality of trade books in her school. As described in the support section above, Mrs. Potter was able to make trade book suggestions to her reading specialist, which the school will purchase if there is room in the budget. Mrs. Potter described money as a factor that holds book selection back specifically in availability of new trade books. When she discussed the slow replacement of outdated trade books in the school book room, it was due to the expense: “Availability I think is a big one, which goes back to money. I think there’s a lot of good books out there and a lot of times we just don’t have it in the budget to purchase 20 copies.”

Mrs. Banks described instances of monetary support for buying trade books from the administration. The administration gave additional money in order to support the teachers’ trade book availability for a new unit in the required reading curriculum. There was clear support and follow through by the administrators for the curriculum and the teachers in their implementation of the curriculum. Mrs. Banks described:

The other person who teaches reading with me she and I just got $1000 worth of historical fiction books because the new Lucy Calkins unit is brand new and the title of

80 the book is historical fiction book clubs and we had no books to run historical fiction book clubs. So we just placed the order last week and we’re super excited to get those books.

Mrs. Banks was the only teacher who also described seeking out money for trade books on her own. She wrote grants in order to obtain the funds to purchase new sets of trade books for at least a couple units: “We wrote a grant a couple years ago and got like a hundred-ish books about influential Wisconsinites and they’re all from the same series so that each student can have a book when they do their presentation for that.” Mrs. Banks explained that when she was given money for trade books by the school or through a grant she had to prove how they will be used and that they are being used:

We have to prove that they’re going to be used and by a certain number of students. So like when we wrote the grant for the Native American books we had to prove that they would be sturdy enough to used multiple years and we had to explain how they would be used by all students each year and we kind of had to justify like the cost of buying a hundred books…so we have to justify that they’re gonna be used and how they’re going to be used and then a lot of times the reading specialists or the principals…will come in and check on us.

Finally, Mrs. Banks was the only teacher to disclose that she will buy trade books for her classroom and students with her own money: “I actually don’t even mind when I spend my own money on books for my classroom if they’re books that I know that the kids will like.”

Mrs. Hudson felt an abundance of financial support from the district because the town funded the creation of the new curriculum and the purchase of new trade books for every unit’s book bin. She explained:

We had to make sure that we had sets of books because if you’re going to be able to meet together with children to discuss the books so that they can learn from each other, you need to have more than one copy. So this was a huge investment on the part of [the town (name removed for privacy)].

Mrs. Hudson described that the district bought trade books for the new curriculum in bulk through sites such as Scholastic Warehouse and Amazon or whatever was cheapest:

Scholastic’s Warehouse has been an excellent resource for books. When they do a warehouse sale you can get books at a fraction of the cost. Then the other books are selected through online publishers where it might be Amazon, it might be-it depends on whatever site is providing the least expensive price. So we basically just do a search and whoever gave us the best price would be where we would purchase the books.

All three teachers relied on receiving funds in order to obtain the majority of the trade books that they selected for their classroom instruction. The schools’ abilities to spend money on trade books affected the teachers’ abilities to select books based on availability. Money clearly played a prominent role in all three teachers’ trade book selection for classroom instruction, but the manifestation was different in all three cases.

Overall, the five themes: (a) criteria teachers use to select trade books, (b) administration and curriculum demands, (c) reading class structure, (d) support in trade book selection, and (e) funding provided insight into the research question about the factors that influence teachers’ trade book selection for their classroom instruction. Even though the themes were consistent across all three teachers, the specific criteria, processes, structure and so forth were different for each school and teacher. Through each theme it is apparent that teachers’ trade book selection is multifaceted and influenced by many factors.

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