Teacher Growth in Mathematical Quality of Instruction for Emergent Bilinguals Through Collaborative Professional Development

• In Event: Serving Multilingual Students in the STEM Content Areas

Abstract

Many teachers reduce the language and cognitive demand of mathematical tasks to support Emergent Bilinguals (EBs), inadvertently withholding the opportunity to engage with rich mathematical tasks. This study employed collaborative professional development to work with an ELL-only Algebra 1 teacher to co-develop, co-teach, and co-analyze lessons designed to engage EBs in meaningful mathematical discourse. The research team used the Mathematical Quality of Instruction and Quality of Linguistically Diverse Teaching (QLDT) to measure improvement from pre-intervention to post-intervention lessons. Results indicate an improvement in teaching quality in almost every category, with some of the most notable changes occurring in the QLDT, suggesting that the teacher became more aware of EBs’ needs and supported EBs to overcome their language barrier.

Authors

• Ji Yeong I, Iowa State University
  Presenting Author

• Coskun Erden, Iowa State University
  Presenting Author

• Jasmine Sourwine, Iowa State University
  Presenting Author