Interrupting the Professional Schism That Allows Less Successful Educational Practices With ELLs to Persist

Abstract

Different worldviews, different histories of induction into teaching, presumed differences in responsibilities, and different emphases in pre-service and in-service preparation have all long contributed to enduring schisms that keep general education (or mainstream) teachers and English language support faculty from coordinating and finding common cause in their efforts. This division has been at the cost of impeding many English language learners' (ELLs) academic success. So, given that ELLs consecutively or concurrently negotiate these too-often separate schooling subworlds, it is imperative to overcome historical divisions and to conceptualize all teachers as needing (a) to be willing to see ELLs as part of their charge, and (b) to build the skills and capabilities to serve such students well. Although No Child Left Behind (NCLB, 2002) has directed more attention to the academic performance of English language learners (ELLs) and former ELLs than ever before, it has not necessarily improved that performance. One important explanation for this is the difference in sense of professional task-who should teach ELLs, how ELLs should be taught, what ELLs need to know-that persists between English as a second language (ESL)/bilingual teachers and so-called mainstream teachers in many American school systems (Miramontes,

Learning From Students, Teachers, and Schools: Field-Based Teacher Education for Emergent Bilingual Learners

“…But in today’s schools, teachers across disciplines and contexts need to make content accessible, promote language development, and maintain EBs on the same academic trajectory as English-dominant students (Heritage, Walqui, & Linquanti, 2015). Teacher preparation programs, then, must aim to interrupt this division by preparing all teachers to support students’ learning and language development within and across disciplines and settings (deJong & Harper, 2010; Hamann & Reeves, 2013). Researchers have investigated efforts to prepare a broader corps of teachers for EBs, typically focusing on particular subsets of candidates, such as elementary (e.g., Coady, Harper, & de Jong, 2011) or science teachers (e.g., Bravo, Mosqueda, Solís, & Stoddart, 2014).…”

Learning to Teach English Language Learners: A Study of Elementary School Teachers’ Sense‐Making in anELLEndorsement Program

“…How will teachers continue to refine their practice to support ELLs after they conclude this program? As more teachers such as Hanna and Lena earn their endorsement to work with ELLs, we wonder if TESOL expertise will continue to be relegated as separate from mainstream practice (Hamann & Reeves, ), become “diluted, dissolved, and lost in transit” (Harper & de Jong, , p. 148), or be taken as central to the success of all students and school communities. These questions are beyond the scope of this study, but research into informal teacher learning about educating multilingual students could inform TE/PD design in the future.…”

ESL Teachers’ Acting Agentively Through Job Crafting

“…There, due to the district's interpretation of ESL expertise as comprising only a set of strategies for teaching ELs, each ESL teacher was given the impossible task of 'facilitating'-providing ESL-support across grade-levels-as many as 40 grade-level teachers at two elementary school sites. This kind of marginalization of ESL has been attributed, in addition, to various other factors, including the widespread perception of ESL as not constituting an academic discipline (e.g., Harper, de Jong, and Platt, 2008;Leung, 2016) and of insufficient understanding of ESL teachers' roles and responsibilities on the part of grade-level teachers (Hamann & Reeves, 2013). In practice, this marginalization manifests itself in different ways, from their not being afforded the same status or authority as other teachers with respect to curriculum (e.g., Arkoudis, 2006;Creese, 2005), to being socially and physically marginalized in the assignment of classrooms (Liggett, 2010), to feeling ignored and invisible in the school (Trickett et al, 2012).…”