Teaching Opportunities Gained and Missed in a Californian Two-Way Immersion Setting

• In Event: Language Immersion Education: Comparing Multilingual Policies and Pedagogies in One-Way and Two-Way Programs

Abstract

Since the passage of Proposition 227 in California, TWI programs have offered a viable option for bilingual education in Californian public schools. Although many studies have documented TWI’s programmatic success (see Howard, Sugarman & Christian, 2003; Lindholm-Leary, 2001; Thomas & Collier, 2012), less is known about the classroom interactions that contribute to or detract from program goals. This paper analyzes teaching opportunities that are gained and lost in a Spanish-English TWI school by asking: 1) How do teachers use the TWI setting advantageously for teaching? And 2) In what ways do teachers constrain their teaching opportunities in this setting?

The study draws from two theories, sociocultural constructivism that situates learning in social interactions (Vygotsky, 1978), and second language acquisition theories that call for the need for comprehensible input (Krashen, 1982, 1985), pushed output (de la Fuente, 2002; Ellis & He, 1999; Swain, 1985, 1995), and negotiation of meanings (Long, 1981, 1983; Pica, Young, & Doughty, 1987) for language development. The data were drawn from a 50/50 Spanish-English TWI charter school located in a suburban district in central California. The analysis focuses on the kindergarten cohort in which 90% of the students were Latino, 10% White and over 85% on a reduced meal plan. The two bilingual teachers taught monolingually, one in English and one in Spanish, to the two classes of students. The language of instruction was separated by classroom and teacher. Data included 26 hours of video recordings of day-long classroom interactions at the beginning, middle, and end of the school year. Instructional episodes, or periods of didactic or cooperative pairing between teacher and student(s) or between peers (Cooper, Ayers‐Lopez & Marquis, 1982), that posed opportunities for content or language development were identified, then transcribed and coded for teaching bids, management, and learning bids between teacher and students, as well as collaboration between students.

The findings revealed three types of teaching opportunities: enabling teachers to work with students with a limited number of primary languages (two as opposed to a dozen as is often found in CA classrooms), using native speakers as language models for second language (L2) learners, and having an explicit focus on language that increased all students’ metalinguistic awareness. In addition, missed opportunities for teaching and learning arose from the strict separation of languages, the lack of peer negotiation for meaning during language development instruction, and the lack of collaborative work in groups of L2 learners.

This study offers a lens into the daily teaching decisions in classrooms that result in learning opportunities being created or constrained. The discussion will highlight local and state policies that impact decisions that teachers make in TWI programs, such as the focus on direct instruction with L2 learners and the limitations of locally-interpreted English Language Development (ELD) standards intended to promote progress on the California ELD Test. Implications such as the need to reassess how language separation should be implemented in TWI classrooms will be discussed.

Author

• Julie Antilla, Seattle Pacific University