Constructing Explanations in Science: Informal Formative Assessment Practices Among Science Teachers of Emergent Bilinguals

• In Event: 68.055 - Using Informal Assessment to Support English Learners' Language and Literacy Development

Abstract

Perspectives, Significance, and Purposes

Informal Formative Assessment (IFA) is defined as unplanned teacher-student interactions that emerge during daily classroom activities and are used with formative assessment purposes (Ruiz-Primo & Furtak, 2007). Through IFA, teachers and students share learning goals, gather, interpret, and act on information about learning to achieve particular academic objectives (Ruiz-Primo et al., 2010). IFA allows teachers to obtain information about their students and engage in instructional actions to support their academic progress (Bailey & Heritage, 2008). Yet scant research exists on the characteristics of IFA practices which could support emergent bilinguals’ (EBs) in their English language and science content development (Ruiz‐Primo, Solano‐Flores, & Li, 2014). To address this gap in the literature, in this study we explore the IFA practices of two elementary and two middle school science teachers as they engage with their EBs in constructing science explanations.

Methods and Data Sources

Constructing explanations offers an ideal context to explore the IFA practices of science teachers of EBs because it is one of the language-intensive science practices of the Next Generation Science Standards (Lee, Quinn, & Valdés, 2013). In this study, we examine the instances in which our four participant teachers engaged in constructing explanations with their EBs during five one-hour lessons/teacher (i.e., approximately 20 hours of video). Our coding system focused on IFA practices (i.e., clarifying goals, eliciting or noticing information from students, interpreting information, and acting on information) that addressed how teachers constructed science explanations with their EBs. Our participant teachers had at least ten years of teaching experience, two of them were bilingual and two monolingual, and had different levels of training regarding educational practices for EBs. We triangulated our video data using 12 teacher interviews and 12 student interviews.

Findings

Key findings indicate that teachers and EBs engaged very frequently in IFA when constructing explanations. However, teachers with formal preparation on the education of EBs modeled how to construct explanations more frequently (e.g., how to write an explanation). On the other hand, constructing explanations seemed to be addressed unsystematically, but not as a content goal or as a long-term language practice. Therefore, teachers did not address all the language modes (i.e., listening, speaking, reading, writing) and mostly worked on oral explanations, focusing on language form (e.g., vocabulary, correct syntax) rather than function (i.e., communicating with a science learning purpose). Finally, classroom participation patterns influenced teachers’ opportunities to gather information about all their EB students. These patterns depended on (1) how teachers included EBs when constructing explanations, and (2) how comfortable EBs felt participating in classroom activities. In summary, our findings show that IFA is a complex process that entails adequate sampling and the development of a plan for language and science instructional responses to optimize the information gathered around the challenges and opportunities EBs face in the science classroom. Finally, IFA practices depend on classroom participation practices and on how EBs have been socialized into them.

Authors

• Karla del Rosal, Southern Methodist University

• Diego Roman, Southern Methodist University