Investigating the Relationship Between Teachers' Reported Language Conceptions and Classroom Practice in Remote Instruction

• In Event: Teachers' Knowledge of the Role of Language in Content Pedagogy

Abstract

Prior research has focused on teachers' language-related knowledge base for content teaching and how teachers can best support the growing population of multilingual students in the United States. Scholars such as Walqui and Bunch (2019) point out that the academic expectations embedded in common state standards in the US require increasingly demanding uses of language and literacy in English for all learners, but especially students designated as English Learners (ELs). Bunch (2013) clarifies that building teachers’ pedagogical language knowledge--or knowledge of language directly related to teaching and learning in the content areas-- could then “serve as the foundation for preparing [teachers] to engage—and support—ELs in both challenging and meaningful academic tasks” such as those required in the state standards (p. 298). Additional scholarship has focused on examining teacher knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes toward language, arguing that teacher beliefs toward their students’ languages and teachers’ broader conceptions of language and language development have important implications for the successful and effective education of ELs.

Recently, the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent shift to remote instruction created a challenging situation for teachers worldwide. As a result, many teachers had to quickly and creatively adapt their practice to remote instruction. This novel context provided a unique opportunity to investigate the relationship between teachers’ reported language conceptions and their adapted classroom practices in the remote instruction context. Drawing on participants credentialed to teach both single-subject and multiple subject classrooms, this qualitative study examines six teachers' reported language conceptions, their classroom practices for language development in the remote instruction context, and the relationship between their reported language conceptions and classroom practices in this context. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and digital samples of instructional artifacts used in remote instruction. Analysis revealed that the six participants expressed an eclectic range of language conceptions and classroom practices which spanned multiple, sometimes conflicting theories of language. Moreover, in the remote instruction context, participants’ instructional practices often contradicted or diverged from their reported language conceptions. Although participants sometimes made linear connections between their language conceptions and classroom practices, more often these connections were unclear or constrained by outside forces. In some cases, participants seemed to be unaware of this divergence at all. Finally, although these teachers’ often reported adopting divergent classroom practices in this context, their language conceptions, classroom practices, content demands, and personal experiences in and out of the classroom were interrelated in dynamic and nonlinear ways such that, for some participants, certain classroom experiences adopting divergent practices actually influenced them to reevaluate or reify their pedagogical language knowledge and beliefs about effective content and multiple subject instruction for ELs.

Results of this study confirm that developing clarity in the relationship between language conceptions and classroom practice should be included in the knowledge framework for teachers and teacher professional learning to improve teacher pedagogical language knowledge, encourage informed instructional decision-making for language development, and provide effective instruction for ELs to meet both the academic and linguistic demands of the mainstream and content area classrooms.

Author

• Benjamin Mathews James, University of California - Santa Cruz