The English language learner (ELL) enrollment in public schools continues an upward trend. During the 2014–15 academic year, ELLs grew to 4.6 million students, constituting more than 9% of U.S. public school students (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2016). By the year 2025, ELLs are predicted to make up 25% of the student population (National Education Association, 2005), with the largest number of these students found in California, Florida, Illinois, New Mexico, New York, Puerto Rico, and Texas. Several other states have also seen substantial ELL growth, including Arkansas, Alabama, Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Nebraska, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont, and Virginia, all of whom have experienced more than 200% growth in the numbers of ELLs in schools (NCES, 2015). Given the increasing numbers of ELLs in our schools, the need for all teachers to understand their linguistic and academic needs is essential to optimize ELLs’ opportunities to learn.
In particular, history and social studies occupy an important academic space in the curriculum that can be challenging for ELLs and their teachers. Both the National Curriculum Standards for Social Studies (2010) and the more recent College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards (2013) reflect the purpose of the social studies curriculum: preparing young people to “make informed and reasoned decisions for the public good as citizens of a culturally diverse, democratic society in an interdependent world” (2010, p. 9). This civic imperative complements the content (i.e., civics, economics, geography, history, behavioral sciences) of social studies, providing a roadmap into mainstream American culture, including the U.S. historical and sociopolitical context (Dabach & Fones, 2016). Learning history and social studies includes two particular challenges for ELLs: the abstract vocabulary associated with content-specific concepts and the cultural context of much of the history and social studies curriculum. Chamot and O’Malley (1994) noted that the vocabulary associated with social studies is replete with abstract concepts. Discipline-specific terms such as bill, democracy, state, legislate (civics), interest, market, opportunity cost, goods and services (economics), region, place, development, land use, environment, map (geography) and continuity, primary source, institutions, periodization, and causation (history) can be challenging. For example, in economics, a market is a place to sell goods, as well as a literal and virtual space in which stocks are traded. In addition, when something is marketed, it is attractively advertised. In civics, a bill is a draft of a proposed law. However, it is also a note detailing an amount of money owed for goods or services. In addition, many of these terms are culturally contextualized to mean something specific in the USA through particular culturally embedded examples (Barton & Levstik, 2004) that are more familiar to native-born and native English speakers. Democracy contains some shared characteristics across contexts (e.g., rule by the people), but democracy and its institutions are defined, understood, and enacted in a particular way in the USA that is different from Mexico, Japan, and other democratic states.
Given the civic purpose of social studies education, combined with the embedded language and cultural knowledge demands, it is imperative that social studies teachers are better prepared to meet the needs of their ELLs. This includes attending to both the literacy needs of ELLs by providing the time and space to work with the content through various materials and experiences (Taylor-Jaffe, 2016), as well as building on and honoring the rich knowledge and skills that ELLs bring to the social studies classroom (Callahan & Obenchain, 2013; Salinas, Fránquiz, & Guberman, 2006). As the chapter authors in this book illustrate, recognizing the importance of educating pre-service and in-service social studies teachers to teach ELLs is only the first step. These authors detail research-supported and concrete approaches that will be useful for current and future teachers, as well as their future students. Next, we present an overview of chapters and their content. Near the end of each chapter, each author includes implications for teacher education that address how the fields of social studies and TESOL teacher education, separately, as well as their intersection are affected. In addition, each chapter concludes with a section that provides ideas for how a teacher educator may use the particular chapter with pre-service teachers or in-service teachers within a course or professional development workshop. This section may include discussion questions or an activity that we think will be helpful for both instructors and readers.
Ashley Taylor Jaffee analyzes three cases of high school U.S. history teachers who are working to develop historical thinking skills for their newcomer ELLs. Using a theoretical framework for culturally and linguistically relevant historical thinking, Chap. 2 shows how three teachers engaged with newcomer ELLs’ cultural, linguistic, civic, and historical knowledge and skills while teaching U.S. history in their social studies pedagogy.
In Chap. 3, Paul Yoder and Stephanie van Hover use a case study of a middle school U.S. history teacher to examine the teacher’s decision-making and meaning-making processes in teaching ELLs in his classes. The chapter highlights that the teacher focused on the skills section of the state standards as a means of bridging the official curriculum and the perceived cultural and linguistic needs of his ELLs.
Chapter 4, by Christine Baron, Christina Dobbs, and Patricia Martinez-Álvarez, describes how historical building analysis offers opportunities for ELLs to engage in deep disciplinary practices in ways that simultaneously draw upon and build bicultural and historical knowledge. This chapter presents a framework for engaging in historical building analysis, how to implement it in a classroom, and the specific literacy, linguistic, and cultural practices and skills developed.
In Chap. 5, Gayle Thieman, Matt McParker, Elizabeth Leider, and Kent Billingham discuss what teacher educators need to know about preparing social studies pre-service teachers to work effectively with ELLs in secondary social studies classes. The authors share research-based instructional strategies they use with pre-service teachers and provide examples from edTPA portfolios and ESOL lessons of two successful pre-service teachers who taught social studies to ELLs.
Chapter 6, by Andrea Honigsfeld, Carrie McDermott, and Kelley Cordeiro, presents a case for preparing pre-service and in-service social studies as well as ESOL teachers to integrate language and content instruction to offer ELLs an entry point into developing conceptual understanding of core content. The chapter is built on a theoretical framework the authors generated for Conceptual Understanding (CU – C3LACI), by fusing the Inquiry Arc of College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework (NCSS, 2013) and Language-Based Approaches to Content Instruction (LACI) (de Oliveira, 2016). They draw on two case studies from an ongoing study of high school social studies co-teaching teams consisting of one ESOL teacher and one social studies teacher to show a rich selection of practices the co-teaching teams incorporated in their classes for concept development and attainment.
In Chap. 7, Hayriye Kayi-Aydar, Jason L. Endacott, and Christian Z. Goering describe how Socratic Circles, a dialogic tool that is shown to increase learning talk, can engage ELLs in historical discussion by using inquiry methods of learning in the social studies. They use evidence-based examples and strategies for using historical inquiry and Socratic Circles in the social studies classroom to teach important yet difficult concepts (e.g., democracy, liberty) and connect them to content-based curricula. They conclude by connecting dialogue to the C3 Framework (NCSS, 2013) to foster ELLs’ civic participation, involvement, and agency and discuss implications and applications for teacher education.
Chapter 8, by Cory Wright-Maley and Jennifer D. Green, describes a social studies simulation teacher educators can use in their methods courses or to facilitate professional development with pre-service and in-service teachers. Their simulation demonstrates that effective English language learning can take place within content-specific classrooms without “dumbing down” the curriculum. They conclude the chapter by offering suggestions on how to further develop teacher understanding and practice with effective language development strategies such that they can improve their own teaching of social studies in ways that respond to a growing body of students in North America.
Finally, in Chap. 9, Laura Schall-Leckrone and Debra Barron present a case study of the key role apprenticeship played in teacher learning when a teacher educator, teacher, and student teacher used genre pedagogy with ninth grade world history students. They demonstrate how history teachers can be apprenticed into teaching disciplinary literacy skills within a classroom setting through mentoring. They conclude that student teachers, teachers, and teacher educators should work...