Jenelle Reeves

Secondary Teacher Attitudes Toward Including English-Language Learners in Mainstream Classrooms

ABSTRACT Researchers have given limited attention to teacher attitudes toward inclusion of English-language learners (ELLs) in mainstream classrooms. The author explored 4 categories within secondary teacher attitudes toward ELL inclusion: (a) ELL inclusion, (b) coursework modification for ELLS, (c) professional development for working with ELLs, and (d) perceptions of language and language learning. Findings from a survey of 279 subject-area high school teachers indicate a neutral to slightly positive attitude toward ELL inclusion, a somewhat positive attitude toward coursework modification, a neutral attitude toward professional development for working with ELLs, and educator misconceptions regarding how second languages are learned.

Like Everybody Else: Equalizing Educational Opportunity for English Language Learners.

Equal educational opportunity for all students has long been a goal of public education in the United States. Realizing equality of educational opportunity for English language learners (ELLs), however, has proven to be a difficult task. This article examines 1 high school communitys perception of educational opportunity and its approach to equalizing it. The findings reveal a community-wide endorsement of a policy of equal treatment for equalizing educational opportunity. This policy of difference blindness, however, was found to produce inequities for ELLs in at least 2 ways: restricted access to course content and inaccurate assessment and grading. Although teacher participants recognized inequities, they considered them temporary and tolerable. As educational opportunity was accessible only through English, equal treatment, which was perceived to speed English acquisition, was viewed to be the most effective approach for equalizing opportunity. Equality of educational opportunity at the school site, therefore, required ELLs to be normalized through linguistic assimilation, and an ideology of difference blindness through difference erasure was evident. Implications include the need for educational institutions to rethink approaches to equalizing opportunity and a call for reenvisioning educational opportunity as a participatory concept.

Teacher Learning by Script

Scripted instruction (SI) programs, which direct teachers to teach, even to talk, from a standardized written script, are roundly criticized for inhibiting teacher creativity and teacher learning. In fact, such programs utilize scripting for exactly that reason: to reduce teacher interference with (and presumed weakening of) the prescribed curriculum and its delivery. Yet, two teachers in this 18-month study reported learning much about language and language teaching from scripted instruction programs. Through a sociocultural lens, this article explores how an instructional program so widely decried as de-professionalizing instead became a catalyst for these teachers’ professional growth. Exploring the teachers’ reasoning about adopting the program and their day-to-day experiences teaching by script yielded new insight into how the language teachers used the script as a meditational tool for their own teacher learning. These teachers’ cases underscore the need for formal teacher education to articulate with how teachers learn and to advance teacher development toward adaptive teaching expertise.

“The Soccer Field, It Has Dirt”: A Critical Analysis of Teacher Learners in Contact With Emergent Multilingual Students

ABSTRACT In today’s globalized world, superdiversity and global migration have led to an increased focus on emergent multilingual students and how schools can best serve them. The authors explore how teacher learners in an undergraduate course on emergent multilinguals in a mid-sized university in the Midwest critically reflect on their learning in a practicum experience. Utilizing tools and perspectives from critical discourse studies (CDS), the researchers/teacher educators examine ideologies that surface in teacher learner reflections on their practicum experiences to find out how they renegotiate (or withhold) their beliefs while connecting to critical readings, coursework, and their experiences working with emergent multilingual students. Findings reveal ethnocentrism, gaps in understanding of language practices, continued misconceptions about language learning, and ideologies that view languages other than English as a privilege. However, findings also show some areas of growth resulting from their participation in the teacher education program. The authors then provide suggestions for further improvement of teacher education courses focused on emergent multilinguals.