Holly Hansen-Thomas

Taking the Reins: Preservice Teachers Practicing Leadership.

Preservice teachers can take steps to become teacher leaders even before they land their first job.

I do not feel I am properly trained to help them! Rural teachers’ perceptions of challenges and needs with English-language learners

This paper explores the perceived professional development needs of inservice teachers of English-language learners (ELLs) from 10 rural and small districts in the USA. The survey instrument that captured responses from 159 elementary and secondary teachers in Texas was primarily quantitative and was based on the state English as a second language (ESL) certification examination. It also included open-ended demographic information on teachers’ backgrounds, and elicited information on challenges in working with ELLs. Demographics of the respondents reflect a typical teaching force in the rural USA: primarily white, English-speaking females with a bachelor’s degree. For many of the teachers, communication with students and their parents was cited as a major challenge. One of the most salient findings occurred in correlations between teachers having taken one or more college courses in ESL and their perceived knowledge of the competencies involved in the ESL examination. This important insight suggests that professional development, in the form of college-level (graduate) courses in ESL, is highly beneficial for mainstream, rural teachers.

Deictics and the construction of mathematics and science knowledge in the secondary school classroom

Abstract Taking a Teacher Language Awareness (TLA) perspective, this paper examines how the concept of deixis is employed in oral discourse in two secondary science and mathematics classes in the southwestern part of the US. Drawing on audio and videotaped data from two classrooms, we examine how verbal deixis, or words and phrases that cannot be fully understood without additional context, serves as a potential resource for the organisation of learning processes. We further consider how deixis may act as an impediment to the organisation of learning processes. We outline implications for preparation of teachers of English Language Learners in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics areas, with a specific focus on middle and high school science and mathematics.

Heritage Language Development of Pre-service Bilingual Teachers: How a Practice-Situated Intervention Promoted Multiliteracy

The increasing number of Latino English learners (EL) in US schools has been accompanied by a growing need for bilingual educators with the necessary linguistic skills to create optimal learning environments for their students. This chapter introduces a project in the state of Texas designed to foster bilingual education teacher candidates’ existing language literacies in Spanish. The program incorporated the tenets of Learning by Design, with the objective of establishing a linguistic intervention that would engage heritage teacher candidates in a transformational process that would allow them to develop new literacies and meanings in Spanish. The vehicle was a set of multimodal learning experiences based on the candidates’ available designs (literacies in Spanish and English, pedagogical knowledge, and life experiences) transferred to their teaching practice.

Developing Oral Science Explanations: Secondary School ELs’ Experimentation with Intertextual Linkages

We present a case study of a 10th grade teacher with extensive Teacher Language Awareness (TLA) training as she guides students through a unit on density. The setting for the study is a Newcomer High School whose student body is made up of a range of English learners (ELs) from different countries, whose levels of English language proficiency range from low-beginner to intermediate. The aim of the case study is to examine the way in which the teacher and students develop scientific language and make intertextual linkages across activities as they engage in a process of appropriation of scientific knowledge and discourse. We further examine the relationship between the teacher’s strategies and the EL students’ subsequent abilities to provide explanations, a type of discourse practice that relies heavily on the ability to employ scientific discourse. Our findings suggest that a focus on teachers’ awareness of language in conjunction with their understanding of academic content are key to supporting the academic development of ELs in content area classrooms.