Teacher Preparation for Linguistically Diverse Classrooms

A Resource for Teacher Educators

Tamara Lucas

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781136911392
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Literacy
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Teacher educators today need knowledge and practical ideas about how to prepare all pre-service and in-service teachers (not just bilingual or ESL specialists) to teach the growing number of students in K-12 classrooms in the United States who speak native languages other than English. This book is at the forefront in focusing exclusively on the preparation of mainstream classroom teachers for this population of students. Part one provides the conceptual and contextual framework for the book, including a comprehensive discussion of relevant demographic trends and an analysis of national and state policies. Part two presents examples of initiatives in different institutional and geographic settings, highlighting three essential elements of teacher preparation: curriculum content, program design, and program coherence.

Meeting a pressing need among teacher educators left to figure out, largely by trial and error, how best to prepare non-specialist classroom teachers to work with ELLs, this book both contributes to the research base and provides practical information to help readers envision possibilities they can apply in their own settings.

Part I
Conceptual and Contextual Foundations

Chapter 1
Language, Schooling, and the Preparation of Teachers for Linguistic Diversity

Tamara Lucas

In classrooms across the United States, students like Elena, a 10-year-old whose family recently moved to North Carolina from Mexico, spend hours hearing language that is meaningless to them. Elena enjoyed going to school in Mexico and often did well in her classes, but now she sits at the back of the classroom and rarely interacts with anyone, including the teacher. While she tries her best to concentrate on the flow of speech around her to decipher some of what is being said, she is constantly fearful that the teacher might call on her, or another student might ask her a question she can’t understand. She often wishes she were invisible so she could avoid looking stupid. Two other students in her class explain some things to her in Spanish, but she usually finds their explanations confusing. Elena, like many students not yet proficient enough to learn academic content in a mainstream class conducted in English, often feels anxious, frustrated, and embarrassed. As much as she tries to pay attention in class, she simply cannot understand enough of what is said to stay engaged.

Elena’s teacher—like many others with English language learners in their classes—is also anxious and frustrated about how to teach Elena. She has developed considerable knowledge and skills through her teacher preparation program and her teaching experience, but she has had little opportunity to build her understanding and instructional repertoire for educating English language learners (ELLs). She has talked to the ESL teacher a few times, but since he is in the school only a few hours, three days a week, he has not been very helpful. The teacher recognizes she is ignoring Elena at times, but she is not sure how to meaningfully engage her in learning.

It has been clear for some time that classroom teachers who are not specialists in the education of ELLs¹ should be prepared to teach them. The demographic trends have been evident for decades (see Valdés & Castellón, this volume), and a number of educational scholars and policy-makers have argued over the years for the necessity of preparing classroom teachers to educate ELLs (e.g., AACTE, 2002; Abramson, Pritchard, & García, 1993; Brisk, 2008; Penfield, 1987; Rhine, 1995; Villegas & Lucas, 2002; Zeichner, 2005). Yet there is still little guidance and no generally accepted approach for preparing teachers to teach students who speak languages other than English at home (Lucas & Grinberg, 2008; Zeichner, 2005). Only three of the 50 states (Arizona, Florida, and New York) require all teachers to have some preparation for working with ELLs. Without such policies in the other 47 states, there is “no uniformity” in the approach taken to ensure that teachers are prepared to teach ELLs, and efforts to do so are “at best spotty” (Education Week, 2009, p. 28). This piecemeal approach to preparing teachers to teach ELLs is unacceptable given the increasing likelihood that all teachers in the U.S.—not just those on the coasts and in the Southwest—will have ELLs in their classes (see Frey, 2001; Regional Educational Laboratory—Appalachia, 2008).

In this chapter, I begin to lay a foundation for a more thoughtful, coherent approach to such preparation—a foundation that is reinforced and extended by the other chapters in the book. I examine the central role of language in school to show why all teachers need special preparation for teaching ELLs. I then discuss three fundamental elements of such preparation—curriculum content, program design, and program coherence.

Language, Schooling, and the Education of ELLs

Arguments for preparing all teachers to teach ELLs are commonly made on the basis of demographics: the growing number of ELLs makes it imperative that teachers have the expertise to educate them well. While the logic of this argument may seem transparent, it begs the question: Why do teachers require special preparation for teaching ELLs? Why do they need something more than the preparation provided by strong teacher education programs grounded in principles of culturally responsive teaching? The answers come from an examination of the role of language in schooling.

To appropriately modify instruction for ELLs, classroom teachers need to understand the connections between language and schooling and the particular implications of those connections for ELLs. Because most teachers in the U.S. are monolingual English speakers who have never had to use a language other than English in school, they have typically not developed the understandings and insights that come from looking at language rather than looking through language (de Jong & Harper, 2005). They are not likely to develop the knowledge and perspectives they need to teach ELLs without the conscious effort of teacher educators to incorporate these bodies of knowledge into the curriculum.

For humans, language, thinking, and learning go hand in hand. Without language, we are limited in our ability to think and learn. The influential psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1978) saw language as emerging prior to thought in the process of child development. He argued that language develops because children need to communicate with people in their environment and it only later becomes “internal speech,” which organizes thought. Thus, in a sense, language, in the form of speech, becomes thought. The linguist M.A.K. Halliday, who also placed social interaction at the center of learning language (1977), argued that “language is not a domain of human knowledge …; language is the essential condition of knowing, the process by which experience becomes knowledge” (1993, p. 94, emphasis in original). Language is the medium through which humans make meaning. In other words, knowing involves the use of language.

This deep interconnectedness of language, learning, and knowing is especially pronounced in the school context. “Schooling is primarily a linguistic process, and language serves as an often unconscious means of evaluating and differentiating students” (Schleppegrell, 2004, p. 2). Almost all the activities of importance in school involve some language use (Trumbull & Farr, 2005). To succeed in schools, students must be able to read academic texts in different subject areas, produce written documents in language appropriate for school (e.g., tests, stories, essays), and interact with their teachers and peers. They must use language to understand and solve problems, and to examine and explain complex ideas. Language is the medium through which students gain access to the curriculum and through which they display—and are assessed for—what they have learned. Therefore, language cannot be separated from what is taught and learned in school.

Not only do students need to have command of the vocabulary, morphology, and syntax of the language of the school, they also need to know how to use particular linguistic elements in particular contexts to accomplish particular goals—goals related to academic tasks such as describing an event or phenomenon, making an argument, and comparing and contrasting, as well as interactional goals such as responding when called on and explaining why they are late to class. People make choices about how they use language to accomplish their goals, but their choices have different results across languages and social contexts (Schleppegrell, 2004). Thus, to succeed in U.S. schools, ELLs must learn not only the structures of English but also how to choose the most appropriate and effective way to use language to accomplish their goals (see Brisk & Zisselsberger, and Gebhard, Willett, Jimenez, & Piedra, this volume). Clearly, this makes their task complex and challenging.

While the connection between language and schooling has implications for all students, it has special significance for ELLs. To be sure, ELLs share many experiences and challenges with other groups of students. They are often marginalized and underestimated like students from other socially subordinated groups, and they too have to learn culturally appropriate ways of “doing” school. Students who speak subordinated varieties of English (e.g., African American English and Appalachian English), like ELLs, face linguistic challenges not faced by peers who come to school speaking “standard” English. But the one aspect of ELLs’ experience that sets them apart is the fact that they have grown up immersed in a language other than English. They have not learned English as a home language before entering school, and may not have heard it spoken in their environment. They are learning English as a language while learning the content of the curriculum, so the process of learning English profoundly influences and is influenced by all their other school learning. Depending on their proficiency in English, they may not be able to benefit from instruction in English. Because ELLs are still developing proficiency in English, and because success in school depends on successful use of English, it is not appropriate for teachers to teach ELLs as they would teach students already proficient in English. Teachers must have special knowledge and skills to teach ELLs well (de Jong & Harper, 2008).

Essential Elements in the Preparation of Teachers to Teach ELLs

While the literature on preparing classroom teachers who are not ESL or bilingual specialists to teach ELLs is still in its infancy, growing attention to such preparation is reflected in a number of recent publications examining ways to adapt mainstream teacher education to better prepare all teachers for linguistic diversity (e.g., Brisk, 2008; Lucas & Grinberg, 2008; Valdés, Bunch, Snow, & Lee, 2005). In this section, I examine three essential elements of teacher preparation programs that require attention by teacher educators taking on this important challenge: curriculum content, program structures, and program coherence.

Curriculum Content

The first concern in designing or adapting a teacher education curriculum is the content of the curriculum—that is, what teachers need to know and be able to do to teach ELLs well. While the literature focused explicitly on preparing mainstream teachers to teach ELLs is relatively small, a growing body of literature has given attention to this question over the past 15 years (e.g., August & Hakuta, 1997; de Jong & Harper, 2005, 2008; García, 1993, 1996, 1999; Lucas, Villegas, & Freedson-Gonzalez, 2008; Schleppegrell, 2004; Valdés et al., 2005; Walqui, 2007; Wong-Fillmore & Snow, 2005). Unfortunately, this literature has not made its way into many teacher education programs. One reason may be that some of it is focused on the preparation of specialists (i.e., ESL, bilingual, or sheltered content teachers) rather than mainstream teachers, so generalist teacher educators are simply not aware of it or do not think it is relevant for non-specialist teachers. It is also possible that educators inexperienced in linguistic analysis are put off by the use of linguistic approaches and terminology in many of these publications. Another possibility is that teacher educators persist in assuming that good instruction for ELLs is “just good teaching” (de Jong & Harper, 2005; Harper & de Jong, 2004), so they do not see a reason to modify the curriculum for educating ELLs.

Whatever the reason, the omission of content related to teaching ELLs in many teacher education programs leaves teachers unprepared to teach students who come to their classes not yet fully proficient in English. While classroom teachers need to develop knowledge, skills, and dispositions for teaching all students, including the qualities of culturally responsive teachers (e.g., Gay, 2000; Ladson-Billings, 1990, 1994; Villegas & Lucas, 2002), they must also have opportunities to develop the special expertise required to teach ELLs well.

Despite placing greater or lesser emphasis on different aspects of this expertise, scholars and educators do, in fact, agree to a considerable degree about what it entails (see the work cited in the first paragraph of this section; see also, in this volume, Brisk & Zisselsberger; de Jong & Harper; Gebhard et al.; Lucas & Villegas). A key focus of much of the literature is the need for teachers to have some understanding of the structure of English and of the process of second language learning, and the ability to apply these understandings in their teaching. When teachers understand the forms and mechanics of English, they are better prepared to give useful feedback on ELLs’ linguistic output. They can make informed and precise suggestions for improvement instead of relying on a vague notion that a student’s speech or writing “doesn’t sound right.” When teachers understand second language learning, they can anticipate some of their students’ learning processes and recognize “errors” that are common in second language lea...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Part I Conceptual and Contextual Foundations
• Part II Developing Teacher Expertise for Educating English Language Learners
• About the Authors
• Index