Enacting Pedagogical Shifts That Foster Disciplinary Discourse and Deeper Learning for English Learners

• In Event: Discourse-Centered Pedagogy With English Learners: Deepening Reasoning, Strengthening Language, and Enacting Critical Disciplinary Practices

Abstract

New college and career ready standards significantly increase the conceptual understandings and analytical practices that students must undertake for deeper learning. Examining these standards reveals that students need to engage in extensive, discipline-based uses of language in order to carry out such content learning and analytical practices. For example, the Next Generation Science Standards require students to ask questions, construct explanations, argue from evidence, and obtain, evaluate, and communicate information (NGSS, 2012). The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for mathematics ask students to explain, conjecture, and justify in making sense of problems and solving them, and to construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others (CCSS, 2010). The English Language Arts CCSS (2010) require engaging with complex texts, writing to inform, argue, and analyze, working collaboratively, and clarifying one’s own ideas and building on those of others. These more collaborative, interactive language uses also permeate the cognitive, interpersonal, and intrapersonal skill domains considered central for life and work in the 21st century (National Research Council [NRC], 2012). While these language uses challenge all students, they do so particularly for English learners (ELs) since these students are acquiring English as a new language while also learning subject matter content and practices using English. Moreover, corresponding English language proficiency frameworks and standards designed for ELs (e.g., CCSSO, 2012, 2014; California Department of Education, 2012) now also reflect these more sophisticated language uses. This paper argues that the new standards require teachers to shift their pedagogical practices in order to foster the disciplinary discourse and deeper learning expected for this capable yet underserved student population.
Specifically, the paper examines the theoretical underpinnings and practical implications of several of these pedagogical shifts. For example, using sociocultural and sociolinguistic theory, we examine how teachers can plan for and foster ELs’ participation in carefully structured interactions with peers around making meaning with different disciplinary ideas. Given the nature of the new standards, such interactions can and should be carefully designed to scaffold ELs’ conceptual, analytical, and linguistic development simultaneously (Heritage et al., 2015). We next discuss the purpose and uses of scaffolding as temporary and contingent support specifically designed to engage EL students in meaningful and worthwhile activity. Such scaffolded activity affords them legitimacy as members of the classroom community while developing and increasing both their language use and autonomy as learners (Walqui & van Lier, 2010; Heritage et al., 2013; Lave & Wenger, 1991). We also discuss how teachers, in carefully designing lesson plans and units of study, can support EL students to link ideas into interrelated understandings, and engage productively in deeper conceptual learning and increasingly sophisticated language use (NRC, 2012). Finally, we explore formative assessment as an inherently dialogic pedagogical process requiring purposeful interaction as students make meaning, articulate thinking, and problem-solve with peers and with the teacher (Heritage et al., 2013; Linquanti, 2014; Ruiz-Primo, Solano-Flores, & Li, 2014). It can therefore assist both teachers and ELs to advance both language and content learning

Authors

• Margaret Heritage, WestEd

• Robert T. Linquanti, WestEd