"It Just Won't Stick": Enacting Core Practices in ESOL Teacher Education

• In Event: Educating Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Learners: New Approaches to Practice in Teacher Education

Abstract

Purpose
Recent teacher education scholarship suggests that effective preparation of novice teachers (NTs) requires more meaningful opportunities to engage in practice than has historically been the case in most U.S. teacher preparation programs (Ball & Forzani, 2009). We argue that in order to prepare NTs to work with ELs in just and democratic ways, the opportunity for NTs to examine and enact key EL learning practices should be the centerpiece of teacher education. We investigate our early efforts to integrate the concept of core practices (CPs) for teaching ELs into two teacher education methods courses for ESOL specialists, as well as NTs’ enactment of CPs in their field placements.
Theoretical Framework
This study is aligned with practice-based approaches to teacher education, which view the enactment of teaching practices as central to teacher preparation (e.g. Grossman, Hammerness, & McDonald, 2009). Building upon the importance of teachers’ experiences and voices in understanding their learning and practice (e.g., Clandinin, 1986; Olson & Craig, 2001), we also use a sociocultural theoretical frame (e.g., Johnson, 2009; Vygotsky, 1978) to investigate how NT learning around CPs unfolded within our MATESOL teacher education program.
Methods and Data Sources
Study participants included 11 NTs who were enrolled in an MATESOL program at a large research university in the mid-Atlantic US. We used the constant comparative method (Corbin & Strauss, 2014) to identify themes from field notes, audio, and video data of 32 classroom lessons, 22 post-lesson debriefs, and four focus group interviews, as well as key assignments and assessments from university coursework. We examined the data for NTs’ identification of centrally important practices for teaching ELs, their enactment of these practices, and their experiences with using CPs as a framework for enacting practice.
Results
Although the NTs in this study often could articulate important practices for teaching ELs, they struggled with identifying the specific CPs that they learned in two courses within the program (taught by the first author). Diana’s comment, that the CP label “just won’t stick,” was representative of many NTs’ comments when asked to identify the program’s CPs and recall their use of CPs in lessons observed by members of the research team. Nadine, another participant, noted that it was much easier to talk about CPs than to effectively enact them: “I think it’s easy to learn, what is scaffolding, what is differentiation, but do you really know how to use those things effectively in the classroom?” Yet, when participants were able to identify CPs, they articulated that they were foundational to approaching instruction with ELs in meaningful ways, noting that they could build upon them to extend and further improve their approach to teaching.
Significance of the Study
Findings suggest that for CPs to be of value to NTs, they must be concrete and explicit, as well as part of a comprehensive program-wide approach, for NTs to apply them as a tool for understanding and improving their practice. This study will be of interest to teacher educators seeking to improve NT practice with ELs.

Authors

• Megan Madigan Peercy, University of Maryland - College Park

• Megan DeStefano, University of Maryland - College Park

• Tabitha Kidwell, University of Maryland - College Park

• Johanna M. Tigert, University of Maryland - College Park

• Daisy Fredricks, University of Maryland - College Park

• Rebekah Ramirez, University of Maryland - College Park