A Participation-Focused Approach to Engaging Emergent Multilingual Learners in Science

• In Event: Equitable Science Instruction for Emergent Multilingual Students: Exploring Relationships Between Professional Learning and Teacher Practice

Abstract

This paper provides a conceptual framing for the symposium by examining a participation-focused approach to supporting emergent multilingual learners’ (EMLs) engagement in science. This approach organizes instruction to facilitate learners’ evolving participation in and contributions to valued activities, such as the science and engineering practices described in A Framework for K-12 Science Education (National Research Council, 2012). Focusing on participation in sensemaking as an organizing goal of science education with EMLs stands in contrast to pedagogies based on addressing perceived language deficits of EMLs, and approaches that equate engagement in science with the use of particular language structures.
The paper uses Vygotskian and cultural historical activity theoretical (CHAT) perspectives on learning to conceptualize science learning as a collective, cultural activity. First, the concept of mediation is used to analyze the affordances of scientific sensemaking for EMLs’ language development and science learning. Mediation helps to explain the social and cultural nature of learning and doing science by focusing attention on an individual’s interaction over time with the tools, symbols, and interactive activities that make up their sociocultural environment. Using Moll’s (2014) five classes of mediators, the paper discusses the diverse resources that emergent multilingual learners might draw upon and contribute as they participate in science practices, in order to make the point that focusing on language alone is not enough to support EMLs’ participation in scientific sensemaking. The paper argues that science instruction for EMLs should focus on creating authentic, interactive sensemaking opportunities in which students can build connections between language(s) and other meaning-making resources.
The paper then discusses the CHAT notion of object-oriented activity to examine how the social organization of classrooms influences EMLs’ opportunities for participation in scientific sensemaking. Analyzing science classrooms as collective activity systems makes visible the ways that learning activity is shaped by the beliefs, values, and goals of teachers and students, as well as institutional norms, policies, and practices. The paper provides an overview of findings from research about factors that enable and constrain EMLs participation in science practices, such as: explicit and implicit rules about language (e.g. school policies of language separation), issues of power and positionality in the classroom (e.g. attitudes about EMLs' accents or languages), language program models (e.g. sheltered content instruction), and relevance to students’ home and community activities. In addition to these factors, the paper argues that teachers’ and students’ understanding of the object of activity has significant implications for EMLs. In particular, whether language is seen as mediating learning or as the object of learning in a science classroom influences the forms of participation made available to EMLs.
Engaging in science practices in order to make sense of the world is a potentially rich opportunity for EMLs to leverage their full linguistic and multimodal repertoire and engage in purposeful interaction. Prioritizing EMLs’ participation by expanding resources for sensemaking while attending to the social and institutional dynamics of classroom interaction can address challenges in fostering equitable participation in science for EMLs.

Author

• Jennifer Wilfrid, University of Wisconsin - Madison