Luciana C. de Oliveira

Scaffolding versus Routine Support for Latina/o Youth in an Urban School: Tensions in Building toward Disciplinary Literacy.

Scaffolding is widely referenced in educational literature and practice, in literacy education in particular, but often in reductive ways. Scaffolding is key for diverse youth in high-need settings, but few studies examine complexities and tensions of scaffolding in practice. This study asked how, if at all, teachers at a California high school with a mission to prepare urban, low-income, mostly Latina/o youth for academics and college admission enacted scaffolding to help students, many of them English learners, achieve academic goals. Drawing upon school and classroom data collected over a year and a half, including videorecorded observations, interviews, and student work samples, the study used observation instruments and qualitative analyses to answer questions using two teacher cases. Considering scaffolding for whom, teachers supported students they hoped to see achieve but whom they felt needed many supports, given histories of low test scores and some academic failure. In scaffolding for what purpose(s), much attention was devoted to scaffolding basic and intermediate levels of literacy activity, with less evidence of scaffolding disciplinary literacy and higher-order thinking. For scaffolding how, planned scaffolds of sequenced activities dominated, with promising examples of interactional scaffolds. One teacher case illustrates routine support, while the second illustrates scaffolding aligned with core elements of contingency, fading, and transfer of responsibility and with use of sociocultural dimensions of learning. The study highlights promise and tensions in scaffolding learning for Latino/a students in one urban public high school, with implications for teaching youth of color in low-income settings, teaching English learners, and preparing teachers for this work.

Addressing the Needs of English Language Learners in an English Education Methods Course

During the 2005 Conference on English Education (CEE) Summit, English educators identified the importance of responding to linguistically and culturally diverse learners in the English classroom. The integration of English language learner (ELL) issues throughout and within the methods course is one way to successfully prepare secondary English preservice teachers to meet the needs of their future students. In this chapter, the two authors describe how the collaboration of an English as a second language teacher educator and a secondary English teacher educator led to the “rethinking and revising” of a secondary English methods course. The authors consider how teacher educators in different departments can collaborate to meet the needs of English preservice teachers and offer strategies developed individually and collaboratively to infuse ELL issues and instruction throughout the secondary English methods course.

Language teaching in multilingual contexts

Multilingualism and multiculturalism are present in many parts of the world today. We cannot deny that we live in societies that are constantly drawing on and using multiple languages. As language teachers and scholars of language education, we know that the presence of multilingualism challenges a traditional view of language education – one language learned before another as first and additional (second or foreign) languages. Language teaching in multilingual contexts, the theme of this special issue, may take a diversity of forms and apply to a variety of ideas. This introduction highlights some of these forms and ideas. When we read the phrase “language teaching,” we may think of the questions, Which language? What is language? How is this particular language being taught? Who are the students being taught? Who is the teacher? What are the relationships between teacher and students? What is the language focus? What skills are being taught? Where is the language taught, in the classroom or in other contexts? If the particular language is English, the language focus of most of the articles in this special issue, we may ask, what variety of English is taught? At the same time, when we read the phrase “in multilingual contexts,” we may ask, What are these multilingual contexts? What languages make these contexts multilingual? What languages are represented in these contexts and why? What does it mean to say that a context is multilingual? What historical and political aspects of this context are we talking about? Why have we chosen the word multilingual instead of bilingual? What are the consequences of this word choice? These are all questions that the articles in this special issue consider.

Preparing Linguistically Responsive Teachers in Multilingual Contexts

Growing numbers of people around the world are learning English as a second (or third or fourth) or foreign language (Jenkins 2006; Seidlhofer 2004). Many of these learners are enrolled in schools where English is the language of instruction. To be successful, students learning English and other languages in multilingual contexts need teachers who can provide specific instructional assistance and who bring particular orientations to their teaching. One way to conceptualize such preparation is by developing linguistically responsive teacher education (Lucas, Villegas & Freedson-Gonzalez 2008; Lucas & Villegas 2010, 2011). This framework, developed for mainstream content area teachers in pre-college/university schools in the United States, can be extended for application in multilingual contexts and for preparing teachers of adult language learners. This chapter describes, extends, and illustrates the framework of orientations, knowledge, and skills of linguistically responsive teachers identified by Lucas and Villegas (2011), and discusses how the framework can be incorporated into teacher education programs in multilingual contexts.

Critical SFL Praxis Among Teacher Candidates: Using Systemic Functional Linguistics in K-12 Teacher Education

Drawing on examples of how two teacher educators have developed a critical SFL approach to teacher education, this chapter discusses specific principles of critical SFL to guide analysis of texts in the content areas and planning instruction that integrates these principles. It shows how we have prepared elementary and secondary teachers to use CSFL to plan instruction for culturally and linguistically diverse students, especially English language learners. The chapter concludes by providing some reflections on this process and a few guidelines for teacher educators to integrate this approach into teacher education programs.

Second Language Writing in Elementary Classrooms: An Overview of Issues

Mainstream, general education teachers are now seeing high numbers of English language learners (ELLs) among their students. All teachers, not just specialist English as Second Language (ESL) or bilingual professionals, need to be able to work with ELLs (Lucas & Grinberg, 2008). The need to prepare teachers to work with this population of students is pressing across the U.S.A. These rapid changes put pressure on teacher education programs to prepare teachers to work with ELLs (Athanases & de Oliveira, 2011).

Translated science textbooks in dual language programs: A comparative English-Spanish functional linguistic analysis

ABSTRACT A comparative lexicogrammatical and logicosemantic systemic functional analysis of two third-grade science curricular units on the topic of “matter” written in Spanish is presented. One of these curricular units, translated from an English textbook, or “mirror text,” is used in dual language programs (Spanish-English) in the United States; the other is used in regular elementary science for monolingual Spanish students in some Latin American countries, including Colombia and Venezuela. After a discussion on how standards-aligned textbooks contribute to the deskilling and further disenfranchising of teachers that corresponds to a neoliberal agenda for education, the cross-linguistic analysis reveals that while the mirror text reflected a knower-code structure preoccupied with the here and now and with building interpersonal affiliations, the authentic Spanish text was concerned with building knowledge codes related to global themes seeking to build disciplinary science knowledge. That is, by foregrounding English structure and curricular pacing, the use of translated or mirror texts in dual language programs (in this case translated Spanish versions of English regular textbooks) unintentionally but effectively served as a lexicogrammatical, semantic, and curricular straightjacket not only preventing students and teachers from making potential key meaningful connections between languages but calling into question the possibility of a real language separation.

A Language-Based Approach to Content Instruction (LACI) in Science for English Language Learners

To learn about science, English language learners (ELLs) need to be able to understand the language of science, as language is an integral part of learning science content. Science teachers need to be prepared for meeting ELLs’ content and language needs. Because of the growing number of ELLs in mainstream classes, all teachers – not just bilingual or English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) specialists – need to be prepared for meeting ELLs’ content and language needs. The context of this chapter is a teacher preparation model that started in California and was applied in Indiana, New York, and Florida with both in-service and pre-service teacher. Over the course of the past 10 years, elementary and secondary teachers learned about a language-based approach to content instruction (LACI) to address the content and language needs of ELLs in their classes. This chapter argues that LACI enables teachers to simultaneously focus on language and content in the content area of science. Using examples from classroom discourse in a fourth-grade classroom in Indiana, the chapter presents principles – the 6 Cs of support – for implementing LACI in science instruction.