Giving Students What I Needed: Enhancing Multilingual Learner Experiences in the Co-Taught Classroom

• In Event: Equity-Focused Scholarship as Emancipatory and Liberatory Advocacy for Women of Color in Academia

Abstract

Objectives
This systematic literature review examined co-teaching models, challenges, and success that teachers encounter when supporting multilingual learners (MLs). The primary research question was: How are MLLs supported (or not supported) in co-taught classrooms?

Perspectives/Theoretical framework
Co-teaching was analyzed via the distributed knowledge theory based on Vygotskian ideas about intelligence being distributed across people, environments, tools, and symbolic representations (Pea, 1993) was adopted. It posits that the social construction of knowledge “through collaborative efforts ….shared objectives...dialogues and challenges brought about by differences in persons' perspectives” (p. 48) was a way to address inequitable educational systems.

In addition, I drew on my identity and experiences as a first generation American Latinx woman with the privilege of citizenship who grew up in NYC schools working with students classified as MLs. Feeling misunderstood, misrepresented, and overlooked in a sea of whiteness was commonplace. My identity, culture, and language were not welcomed in the classroom and I internalized oppression. These experiences compel and inspire my research and motivation to give students what I myself needed to thrive in school.

Methods & Data sources
Through an iterative process of analyzing the literature in addition to reflecting in analytic memos and journals I drew on both the existing research and confirmations/disconfirmatopms based on my own experiences as a co-teacher. For the systematic literature review, specific search parameters were used to determine which articles to include in my analytic database. The parameters for inclusion were: peer reviewed, 2017-2021, education journals, high school focus, US based. Key search terms included English learners, ESL, co-teaching. Through review of abstracts this yielded a sample of 44 articles that were sorted and reduced to 12 for review and analysis in this study. The 12 peer-reviewed articles were categorized, sorted, and organized into analytic tables resulting in common themes across the research on co-teaching models, challenges, successes for MLs.

Results
Findings show that 7 models of co-teaching fall into 3 categories: whole group, two groups, or multiple groups (Friend et al., 2010). In addition, there were 6 barriers and 5 benefits to co-teaching that came out from the research (Davidson, 2006; Dove & Honigsfeld, 2010). My research affirmed what I knew about the nature of co-teaching and I gained a greater understanding of how to address challenges. I reached a new level of consciousness and understanding of disenfranchised and marginalized students and how to better support them in the classroom. Most importantly, it was evident that overcoming barriers to co-teaching were worth reaping the rewards of student success. Traditional teaching practices often involve pulling MLs out of the mainstream classroom to service them. This exclusionary practice hinders literacy development among MLs, limiting their content knowledge exposure and disempowering them.

Scholarly significance
Although co-teaching is typically considered an inclusionary practice in special education, it makes sense that the same models can be successfully applied to supporting MLs as a form of full inclusion. Findings and implications from this study show that co-teaching can and should be an option for supporting MLs.

Author

• Emmeline Ortiz, Hunter College, CUNY