Caring for Children and Supporting Student Learning: An Exploration of the Reasons Teachers Choose to Build on the Out-of-School Experiences of English Language Learners

• In Event: 66.049 - Sustaining Teacher Voices as a Means of Resilience and Rejuvenation

Abstract

This paper presents findings from an interview study that examined the reasons why teachers of English Language Learners (ELLs) choose to draw on those students’ out-of-school experiences and identified how teachers learn about and build on those experiences. Data from fifteen teacher interviews revealed that study participants chose to make connections with ELL students’ out-of-school lives for reasons that were closely related to their underlying beliefs about the roles teachers are supposed to play. Specifically, they saw it as a means of showing students that they cared about them and of making academic content engaging and comprehensible for ELLs.

Author

• Tanya Morin, University of Wisconsin - Madison