Exploring Teachers' ESL Strategy Implementation in an Era of Complex Discourse and Pedagogical Language Knowledge

• In Event: Challenging the Notions of Academic Language in English and Spanish in an Era of Disciplinary Literacies/Practices

Abstract

Recent policy initiatives in STEM disciplines emphasize the need for English learners (ELs) to develop disciplinary discourses and practices (e.g., develop arguments based on evidence, construct explanations; NRC, 2012; NASEM, 2018). This study explored how teachers operationalized and enacted practices to create contexts for meaningful extended discourse. We examined how strategies ranged from simplified form-based instruction to extended interactional engagement.
It is challenging for teachers to support ELs in developing disciplinary discourses in a context dominated by form-based strategies and assessments (Saunders, Goldenberg, & Marcelletti, 2013). Assessments used to classify ELs as having advanced English proficiencies rely on language-form indicators (NRC, 2012; TEA, 2018). In Texas, where this study was conducted and the second highest number of ELs in the US reside, oral English proficiency assessments include descriptors such as using “complex sentences and grammar structures nearly comparable to native English-speaking peers” (TEA, 2018, p.1).
We investigated how teachers addressed the demands for increasing the complexity of ELs’ oral disciplinary discourse by asking them to apply the SIOP strategy of eliciting complete sentences (Vogt & Echevarria, 2018). Our goal was two-fold: 1) To evaluate how this EL strategy was implemented by teachers; and, 2) to assess the pedagogical language knowledge (PLK; Galguera, 2011) demonstrated by our participant teachers as defined by the knowledge about language that teachers of ELs in the content areas should have.
Our participants were 50 mainstream teachers who taught 10-minute science lessons in a virtual reality simulation environment (VRS). VRS is an innovative technology that allows for controlling different teaching factors (e.g., classroom management) and simulating students at the low-intermediate levels of English proficiency. Our analyses explored patterns of teachers’ enactment of the complete-sentences strategy. Data consisted of a total of 50 10-minute video recordings of teachers’ VRS teaching. The coding process followed a two-cycle coding approach (Miles, Huberman, & Saldana, 2019) that included identifying meaningful data chunks and condensing data by clustering similar codes into larger categories.
Preliminary findings indicate that teachers exhibited two different patterns of enacting the complete-sentence strategy: Teachers either ignored eliciting EL’s complete-sentence responses, or they acknowledged it by providing explicit instructions to respond using complete sentences. Most of the teachers who acknowledged the strategy made mechanic requests for ELs to use complete sentences in ways that interrupted the flow of the conceptual discussion or elicited sentence stems in decontextualized ways. By contrast, a smaller group of teachers used the strategy more meaningfully by activating ELs’ prior knowledge or modeling science discourse strategies that better reflected PLK.
Our findings highlight the gap between the recommended end goal of competence in disciplinary discourse and the means by which teachers facilitate such discourse. Orchestrating classrooms in which student talk is purposefully and meaningfully tied to content, rather than mechanically executed, requires closer attention. Implications for the design and development of teacher education programs that operationalize PLK and the tension between these discourse-based strategies will be discussed.

Authors

• Sumei Wu, Southern Methodist University

• Ann Marie Wernick, Southern Methodist University

• Diego Xavier Roman, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Paige Ware, Southern Methodist University