Supportive classroom contexts for Latin@ students' language development: The complex role of autonomy-supportive teaching

• In Event: 1-132 - Supportive home and classroom contexts as protective factors for Latino children’s academic outcomes

Integrative Statement

Introduction & Hypotheses: Supporting the ‘academic language’ (AL) development of Latin@ students and other minortized students in U.S. classrooms is an important objective given its role in reading and writing achievement (Authors, 2015a, 2015b, 2018a, 2018b), and, as a matter of equity, because accessing the intellectual work occurring in classroom communities relies on familiarity with AL. Hypothetically, autonomy-supportive teaching (AST) in which educators meet the developmental needs of adolescent learners by 1) providing choices and opportunities to lead, 2) encouraging student initiative, and 3) cultivating student expression and their ideas may support all students to learn the AL needed to participate in school discourse communities (Reeve, 2006; Rogoff et al., 2003; Wells & Arauz, 2006). Here, we explore whether teachers’ use of AST is linked with gains in middle-schoolers’ (and, specifically, Latin@s’) Core Academic Language Skills (CALS), or knowledge of the lexical, syntactic and discourse features of text, as captured through a psychometrically-robust measure.

Methods: The CALS of middle school students (n=1,188) attending middle schools (n=64) in three urban districts were assessed in the fall and spring (Table 1). Teachers were observed on three occasions using the CLASS (Pianta et al., 2008). A two-level HLM model was fit with student’s spring CALS scores predicted by student’s fall scores (calculated as the distance from the classroom mean), peer’s fall CALS scores (classroom average), student (English Learner EL status, free lunch eligibility, special education eligibility, gender) and classroom sociodemographics (% EL students, % of free lunch eligible, % special ed., % female) and teacher’s regard for student perspective (RSP) as captured by a scale drawn from the CLASS (a proxy for AST).

Results. We will present all model results, but focus here on a significant interaction between student’s fall CALS scores, Latin@ designation and teacher’s level of regard for student perspectives (RSP). For non-Latin@s, the relation between relative fall CALS performance and absolute spring CALS performance tends not to be influenced by teacher’s RSP (Figure 1). However, we observe a differential effect of autonomy-supportive teaching for Latin@s. For Latin@ students with teachers who demonstrate high RSP, if a student enters the classroom with lower fall CALS scores relative to his/her classmates, than s/he performs lower on CALS in the spring, relative to similar students with teachers who have low RSP; but, for a Latin@ student entering this classroom with high CALS scores relative to his/her classmates, high RSP is linked with higher performance on CALS in the spring, relative to similar students with teachers demonstrating low RSP. Potential conjectures are that Latin@ students with lower initial CALS skills are less able to capitalize on learning opportunities provided in high AST classrooms because they have fewer language resources with which to do so; or, linked with the social reproductive function of schools, opportunities to lead and demonstrate autonomy may be inequitably distributed such that Latin@ students with less-developed CALS skills are afforded fewer opportunities than Latin@ students with higher CALS scores relative to classmates, even in classrooms with higher RSP levels (Anyon, 1981).

Authors

• Emily Phillips Galloway, Vanderbilt University
  Presenting Author

• Paola Uccelli, Harvard Graduate School of Education
  Non-Presenting Author

• Chris Barr, TIMES-University of Houston
  Non-Presenting Author

• Bryant Jensen, Brigham Young University
  Non-Presenting Author