Understanding Core Practices for Multilingual Learners Through the Eyes of Teachers and Students: A Case Study

• In Event: 21.054 - "Beyond the Methods Fetish" at 25: Preparing Teachers of Emergent Bilinguals

Abstract

Objectives
Language education scholars have recommended a specialized knowledge base for preparing teachers to educate multilingual learners (MLs) that encompasses effective pedagogical practices (e.g., de Jong, Harper & Coady, 2013). Over the past decade, while there have been a number of initiatives to define a common pedagogy for practice-based teacher education (Grossman, 2018), these initiatives do not take into account this specialized knowledge base. We argue that it is important to identify practices proven to be effective in educating MLs, as well as explore ways teachers and learners engage with, and make sense of, these practices in diverse classroom contexts. To support this argument, we present examples of three practices derived from research in language education and explore how a teacher and her MLs construct understandings of these teaching practices as they are enacted in the classroom. Conclusions from this paper will provide information on how to effectively prepare teachers to enact these practices.

Perspective
Grounded in work on identifying a pedagogy for teacher education (Grossman, Hammerness, and McDonald, 2009) a theoretical framework for guiding the identification of core teaching practices for MLs is presented. The core practices explored in this study are: (1) frontloading and reinforcing academic & task-related language when teaching in English; (2) using MLs’ resources to scaffold learning in a new language, and (3) using linguistically responsive assessments to evaluate and further MLs’ learning.

Methods and Data Sources
The case study teacher was a graduate of a preservice program whose mission was to prepare elementary teachers to be effective teachers of multilingual learners. Data are from her fourth year of teaching and include: (a) three structured lesson observations each followed by an interview; (b) bimonthly classroom observations where field notes captured MLs’ participation patterns; and (c) two sets of student interviews with each ML designed to reveal how MLs saw themselves as learners, their perceptions of learning English as a new language, and reflections on the practices used by the teacher.
Teacher observations and interviews were coded using descriptive and thematic codes (Saldaña, 2013). Then, discourse analysis (Gee, 2011) and in-vivo coding (Saldaña, 2013) were used to analyze the ways in which the teacher and her students were using language to participate in classroom interactions.

Results and Significance
Findings include evidence of a relationship between particular core teaching practices in her enacted practice. For example, she emphasizes one practice (using MLs’ linguistic resources) more than another (frontloading academic language) to provide access for her MLs at lower levels of English proficiency to academic content in English. Her enacted practice reveals important insight into her language stance. More specifically, the teacher’s strong Spanish-English identity is evident in practices that are effective for her Spanish-speaking MLs, but do not account for those students who speak other languages. Finally, there are spaces of alignment and disconnect between the teachers’ rationale for using particular core practices and the students’ understandings of why these core practices are used.

Authors

• Jennifer Marie Collett, Lehman College - CUNY

• Nancy E. Dubetz, Lehman College - CUNY