Developing Teachers' Pedagogical Language Knowledge for English Language Learners and the Common Core Standards

• In Event: 75.044 - Teaching Academic Content to English Language Learners in the Context of New Common Standards

Abstract

Because all teaching and learning occur through language, teachers’ understandings about language have always been important (Bransford & Darling-Hammond, 2005; Valdés, Bunch, Snow, & Lee, 2005). What is new is the heightened role of language in the practices called for by the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), making teachers’ knowledge about language even more critical, especially for teaching English Language Learners (ELLs). Teachers, as they do with other conceptions about teaching and learning, “enter the profession with largely unarticulated, yet deeply ingrained, notions about what language is, how it is learned, and how it should be taught” (Johnson & Golombek, 2011). Practices called for by the new standards require shifts in how many teachers—and teacher educators—have traditionally viewed language and language learners (van Lier & Walqui, 2012; Walqui & Heritage, 2012).

Supporting teachers’ development of knowledge about language and ELLs for the new standards must move beyond efforts to provide teachers with “textbook” knowledge about linguistics or second language acquisition in specialized language courses or professional development workshops separated from the rest of their teacher preparation curriculum and teacher development experiences. Needed is the development of “practical” knowledge necessary for enacting and extending foundational understandings (Richardson, 2002), through “networks of understandings” that teachers can access to create learning opportunities for ELLs (Faltis, Arias, and Ramiréz-Marín, 2010). The notion of pedagogical language knowledge encompasses teachers’ understandings about language, language use, and language learning that is “directly related to disciplinary teaching and learning and situated in the particular (and multiple) contexts in which teaching and learning take place” (Bunch, 2013; see also Galguera, 2011).

This paper explores teachers’ pedagogical language knowledge for English learners during the implementation of a pilot instructional unit designed to exemplify shifts in perspectives on language and pedagogy for ELLs in light of the CCSS English Language Arts Standards (Kibler, Walqui, & Bunch, 2014; Walqui, Koelsch, & Schmida, 2012). The unit employed an array of activities designed to scaffold interactions among students as they engaged with complex texts, exemplifying reconceptualizations of how language and instruction are often approached for ELLs: e.g. from language acquisition as individual process toward a social process of apprenticeship; from providing momentary “help” for ELLs toward scaffolding students’ development and autonomy; from using single, simplified texts toward engaging with several interrelated complex texts.

Nine experienced 7th grade English language arts teachers in three different states participated in the pilot. Prior to teaching the unit, teachers received two days of professional development introducing them to shifts the unit was designed to exemplify and providing opportunities to participate as learners in model lessons. Surveys, semi-structured interviews, and focus groups with teachers before, during, and after the unit documented their perspectives on English language development, effective pedagogy for ELLs, and engagement with the shifts embodied in the unit. Preliminary analyses suggest that it was through the teaching of the unit itself that teachers deepened and extended their understanding of the pedagogical language knowledge called for to prepare ELLs for the new standards.

Author

• George C. Bunch, University of California - Santa Cruz