Conceptualizing and Enacting Core Practices for Teachers of English Learners in Secondary Content-Area Classrooms

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

Abstract

Objectives
As the move toward practice-based teacher education and core practices gains traction (e.g. Forzani, 2014; Grossman, 2018; McDonald, Kazemi, & Kavanagh, 2013), questions remain regarding implications for teachers of students currently or recently designated as English Learners. Although some mainstream sets of “core practices” for teachers offered as national models generally address “cultural diversity” or relate broadly to the role of language in learning (see Grossman 2018), to our knowledge none of them address practices explicitly designed for English Learners. To fill this gap, scholars and teacher educators have begun to nominate and explore core practices for teaching English Learners in a number of contexts (e.g. Dubetz, 2018; Peercy, 2014; Peercy & Troyan, 2017; Von Esch & Kavanaugh, 2018).

Perspective
We argue that identifying key teaching practices for English Learners must begin with a clear conceptualization of teaching and learning for this population. Drawing on Vygotskian sociocultural theory, we have articulated several tenets to inform the construction and enactment of quality learning opportunities for English Learners and their mainstream classmates, including the ideas that development emerges in social interaction and that English Learners simultaneously develop conceptual, analytic, and language practices in scaffolded learning (Authors, forthcoming). We view teachers’ development as emanating through engagement in problems of practice that simultaneously develop their knowledge, understanding, and practice (Authors, 2008, 2011, 2013; Galguera, 2011).

Methods and Data Sources
This paper reviews literature that takes a “practice-based” or “core practices” approach to the preparation of teachers of English Learners in content-area classrooms, focusing in particular on the secondary level due to increasing content and language demands. We articulate the conceptions of teaching and learning underlying the core practices discussed in each article, the implied role of teachers’ necessary understandings, and the teacher education pedagogies advocated. We then offer exemplars of teacher preparation pedagogies that we have enacted in pre-service and in-service settings based on the tenets described above.

Results
With some important exceptions, we have found that the emerging literature on core practices for teachers of English learners either does not clearly articulate the theories of language, language development, or content-area learning underlying the approaches described, or appears to be based on traditional, cognitive notions of language teaching and learning. As an alternative, we share the challenges and opportunities we have experienced in our own work attempting to help teachers shift from traditional views of “language teaching” to considering language use and development as inherently woven into the social fabric of the subject-area classroom.

Significance
In addition to amplifying the scholarship on core practices for teaching English learners, the paper suggests practical implications for fostering the transformation of teachers’ work with this population through pre-service teacher preparation; ongoing professional development; and enhanced spaces for teacher planning, inquiry, and reflection.

Authors

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

• Aida Walqui, WestEd