Why It Matters How Students Interact When They Engage in Disciplinary Learning

• In Event: Equitable Science Instruction for Emergent Multilingual Students: Exploring Relationships Between Professional Learning and Teacher Practice

Abstract

This paper describes how student interaction in content-area classrooms was conceptualized in the resources that served as a foundation for the professional learning in which the teachers in the study participated. The paper makes the case that it is important to distinguish between different types of student interaction for theoretical and empirical reasons.
The professional learning in which the teachers in the study participated was based on resources created by WIDA, a national consortium of states that supports the education of emergent multilinguals through language standards, assessments, and professional development. These resources were part of the WIDA Framework for Equitable Instruction (thereafter, the Framework), which will be publicly released in 2021. One of the distinguishing features of the Framework is that it is organized based on four language practices. These language practices describe what students are expected to do with language as they engage in discipline-specific tasks across the disciplines. The language practices in the Framework are: Express, Co-construct, Interpret, and Present. The two practices of Express and Co-construct foreground interactional uses of language in content-area classrooms: the former refers to interactions in which students describe and clarify emergent understandings, and the latter refers to interactions in which students probe and analyze ideas in ways that help create new understandings. (Interpret describes student engagement with multimodal disciplinary texts, and Present describes how students communicate ideas with different audiences.)
The distinction between Express and Co-construct is important for reasons related to theory as well as practice. Theoretically, there is a difference between students sharing ideas with one another (Express) and engaging in the kind of collaborative learning that transforms the understanding of the group (Co-construct) (Donato, 2004). Engeström (2001) refers to this process of transformation as expansive learning. Discourse analysis of video recordings from the classrooms of fourth-grade teachers who participated in the study indicates that the types of interaction that Co-construct foregrounds do not tend to happen organically. The students in the data were more likely to give instructions (e.g., “connect it to this one”) and make general statements (e.g., “if you put it there, it’s not working”) rather than engage in shared reasoning. The empirical evidence corroborates prior research that suggests that what students are learning is just as important as how they are learning it (e.g., Molle & Lee, 2017). The nature of student interaction mediates emergent multilingual students’ opportunities for both disciplinary learning and language development. The distinction between Express and Co-construct can remind educators that (a) equitable instruction entails opportunities for all students to share and transform their ideas, and (b) students need explicit instruction to engage in both language practices and especially Co-construct. The findings suggest that a next step in the professional learning for the participating teachers could entail a focus on the types of scaffolding that may facilitate students’ engagement in the language practice of Co-construct. Examples of such scaffolding include setting expectations for student participation along with expectations for content learning, and teacher and/or peer modeling of what co-construction entails.

Author

• Daniella Molle, University of Wisconsin