Learning to Integrate Language and Content Instruction Through English Learner/Math Studio Days

• In Event: 30.070 - Knowledge to Action: Articulating and Enacting a Practice-Based Pedagogy for Teaching English Learners

Abstract

Purpose
Teacher educators continue to wrestle with how to prepare mainstream classroom teachers to provide rigorous content and academic language instruction for English Learner (EL) students (Lucas, 2011; Lucas, Villegas, & Freedson-Gonzalez, 2008). This paper examines how pre-service teachers learned to integrate academic language and math instruction through a structural and pedagogical model called the EL/Math Studio Day.
Perspectives
When methods for teaching EL students are addressed in teacher education, they are frequently presented as “content-neutral” EL strategies, such as the SIOP framework (Echevarria, Vogt, & Short, 2013) or Project GLAD®. These classes are typically taught separately from content area methods classes. Teachers prepared with generalized EL strategies often find it difficult to integrate such strategies into their content teaching in productive and meaningful ways (Lucas, 2011). In their framework for program-wide coherence in preparing teachers of EL students, Athanases & de Oliveira (2011) emphasize the importance of infusing attention to EL student learning and instruction across content areas. These scholars draw attention to the teachers’ need for “extended experiences of practice teaching with [EL students]” (p. 211). The focus is on supporting teachers to learn to enact practice as opposed to simply learning about practice. As the site where knowledge about language development, content, and instructional methods become inexorably intertwined, instructional practice can be a rich context for pre-service teacher learning (Grossman, Hammerness, & McDonald, 2009).
Methods and Data Sources
Data for this paper comes from a qualitative study focused on preparing mainstream classroom teachers to integrate EL and math instruction in a pre-service teacher education program. In this study, pre-service teachers met to inquire into, develop, and try out ambitious math practices through multiple day-long EL/math studio days. These studio days followed a modified lesson study model (Lewis, Perry, & Murata, 2006). Data include videos of studio day work, classroom teaching and debriefing sessions, and written artifacts such as instructional tools, lesson plans, and exit tickets. Data analysis involved successive rounds of iterative coding and inductive strategies of analysis from grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967).
Results
Findings from the study illustrate how pre-service teachers were supported within practice and learned through practice to teach both mathematics and academic language development. The studio days provided a mediated learning context in which pre-service teachers collectively worked through and learned from problems of practice that naturally arose in teaching math to EL students. Teachers developed a deeper, more nuanced understanding of mathematical academic language and how to address it in math instruction. This paper highlights the importance of teacher educator-mediated, practice-based contexts for learning to teach language and content, and argues for pedagogical models in teacher education that support integrated thinking and skills around language and content instruction, such as the EL/Math Studio Day.
Scholarly Significance
This paper addresses a gap in the research on preparing mainstream classroom teachers to teach EL students, focused on integrating EL and content area instruction, as a central part of a more well-rounded and comprehensive approach in teacher education (Athanases & de Oliveira, 2011).

Author

• Kerry Soo Von Esch, Seattle University