Equity and Quality for English Learners and All Other Students

• In Event: Reconceptualizing and Improving the Education of Adolescent English Learners: An Ecological Approach

Abstract

Objectives: This paper describes the design and early implementation of ELA educative materials written with an ecological/sociocultural perspective for students who are categorized as “Long-Term English Learners.” Our approach to learning presents a high challenge/high support pedagogy in which a rich semiotic budget is offered students to assist them in perceiving and consequently develop by engaging in substantive interactions. The curriculum scaffolds students’ ability to learn how to learn by building their metacognitive skills, allowing them to track their own development and become aware of where to seek help in order to increasingly self-regulate and achieve. We discuss how this is done through a 4-unit replacement curriculum.

Framework: We designed, tested, and refined educative curricula that aims to build teacher professional expertise. In this paper, however, we focus on the development of student academic competence, learning awareness, and agency and the role tools play in this development.

The following curricular features geared to build students’ capacity to learn deeply, self-monitor, and reflect on their own learning are discussed:

• Thematically organized units
• Spiraling organization: Units contain four lessons built around the same theme. For example, one unit focuses on Art for the People. The first lesson explores cave paintings through questions such as What counts as art? What is the purpose of art? How does art manifest itself? The second lesson explores the same ideas through the Mexican muralist movement. Lesson 3 weaves the same themes through a study of neighborhood murals in California. Lesson 4 expands the exploration to street art, graffiti and asphalt art. The questions that drive each exploration are the same, allowing for students’ gradual development of conceptual, analytic, and linguistic expertise.
• Metacognitive and metalinguistic development whereby students track their own growth through the use of an electronic portfolio.
• Understanding goals, students build their ability to self- and other-assess, strengthening and guiding their own learning.

Methods/Modes of inquiry: During this first year of implementation, our inquiry focused on strengthening the useability and effectiveness of the materials guided by classroom observations and focus groups of teachers and students.

Data:
This study will enact Design-Based Research to iteratively create, refine, and test the educative materials for students. Data for the study includes students’ report on: (1) the usability and quality of the materials, and (2) the value of keeping portfolios of their work to review periodically to track and direct their learning.

Results:
Students have indicated that they perceive the materials as honoring their intelligence and contributions. While at first meta processes were difficult to implement, over time and with practice, they became appropriated and the ability to direct and control their own learning developed.

Significance:
These materials make learning explicit using enticing themes and activities to show them that they are actors in their own learning and social lives. The tasks they engage in within each unit provide opportunities for them to bring in their families, their communities, and their personal lives and experiences in order to build and make learning valuable and relevant.

Authors

• Mary Katherine Schmida, WestEd

• Lee Hartman, WestEd