Students identified as English language learners (ELLs) are a rapidly growing population in the United States, accounting for 9.6% or 4.9 million students in public K-12 schools (National Center for Educational Statistics [NCES], 2019). The largest number of students classified as ELLs are found in California (20.2%), Texas (17.2%), Nevada (15.9%), New Mexico (13.4%), and Colorado (11.7%) (NCES, 2019).
With such growth in the ELL population, teachers of all content areas are seeing more of this student population in their classrooms. Preparing all teachers for the learning needs of ELLsânot just ESL teachers or bilingual specialistsâis a pressing concern (Lucas & Grinberg, 2008). Teacher education programs across grade levels and content areas need to adequately prepare teacher candidates with knowledge of specific methods, curriculum, instruction, and assessment for the needs of ELLs (de Oliveira, 2016). Content teachers, for example, are expected to be able to provide disciplinary-based instruction that goes beyond a focus on vocabulary (Moschkovich, 2013; Schleppegrell, 2004). This is particularly evident in the recent development and adoption of the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects (CCSS-ELA/Literacy), the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics, the C3 Framework for Social Studies State Standards, and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). These new standards highlight the role that teachers have in developing ELLsâ discipline-specific abilities.
In mathematics, the Common Core State Standards (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010) movement has increased the linguistic demands associated with learning mathematics, focusing on such high-level skills as engaging in meaningful discussions, expressing ideas beyond computation skills, reading and writing complex word problems, and using language to express mathematical understanding. This increased focus on higher-order language and literacy tasks intensifies the needs of ELLs in the mathematics classroom.
As the chapters in this book attest, while mathematics teacher educators recognize the importance of educating pre-service and in-service teachers to teach ELLs, guidelines for how to do so remain scarce in the literature. What does mathematics pre-service teacher preparation look like when it meaningfully incorporates preparation to teach ELLs? How do mathematics curricula change when teacher educators address ELL learning? How can mathematics in-service teachers learn to work more effectively with ELLs in their current classrooms?
Terminology and Acronyms
Putting together an edited volume like this requires authors to consider the terminology used to identify the target student population with whom they set out to work. We recognize that there is little agreement in the scholarly literature as to what name best describes this student population. Each designation has different connotations and issues, with different terms being favored by scholars. These include emergent bilingual, bi/multilingual students, additional language speaker, ELL, English learner (EL), Limited English Proficient (LEP), non-native speaker (NNS), L2 speaker, etc.
We left it open for authors to choose whatever terminology was most appropriate for their chapters, without imposing a particular term or acronym. We use âEnglish Language Learnersâ (ELL) in the book title to achieve cohesiveness among other books in this Palgrave Macmillan mini-series (see de Oliveira & Obenchain, 2018; de Oliveira & Shoffner, 2016; de Oliveira & Wilcox, 2017).
Organization of the Book
Chapter 2, by Ji Yeong I and Jiaqi Yu, opens the book with a case study that investigated how middle school mathematics pre-service teachers (PSTs) help Emergent Bilinguals (EBs) understand cognitively demanding problems while they received a set of EB-focused interventions. This chapter, entitled âPreparing Mathematics Preservice Teachers for Teaching Emergent Bilinguals Through Concurrent Interventionâ, examines how three PSTs, who had no prior experience of teaching mathematics to EBs, worked with EBs in a one-on-one setting while receiving individual interventions. As time evolved, the PSTs began to integrate content from studentsâ cultures and applied various alternative methods related to the given mathematical situations. This chapter suggests that preparing PSTs requires an infusion of practical experiences and examples in order to teach EBs with effective culturally responsive teaching strategies.
In Chapter 3, Lawrence M. Lesser reports on his efforts to redesign a universityâs statistics literacy course to give its biggest clientele (pre-service elementary and middle school teachers) content and pedagogy to improve their learning and make their future teaching more effective in a geographic region with a significant proportion of ELL students. The research-informed redesign made the course more accessible and useful and yielded insights about the distinctive ways in which ELL-responsive pedagogy plays out in the statistics classroom, a context that had received little specific attention (compared to the mathematics classroom) despite its rapidly growing importance in curricular and societal trends.
Chapter 4, by Maria I. Ruiz and Melissa A. Gallagher, describes a professional development (PD) program for teachers of mathematics who teach ELLs. Participants received instruction in second language acquisition as well as cultural and linguistic factors that may influence ELLsâ learning, practices to support ELLsâ learning of mathematics, growth mindset in the mathematics classroom, and mathematical knowledge for teaching rational numbers. The program included two summer institutes in subsequent summers, coaching visits, workshops during the school year, and a mathematics summer camp for ELLs. The authors suggest PD designers keep six principles in mind when supporting teachers of mathematicsâ development of productive beliefs, knowledge, and practices needed to effectively teach ELLs.
In Chapter 5, Alandeom W. Oliveira, Carla Meskill, and Sepideh Yasrebi describe how the practices of an algebra teacher evolved during her participation in a professional development program as she collaboratively developed, implemented, and reflectively assessed a series of three algebra lessons with a specialist in second language acquisition. Teachersâ observations, collaborations, and reflections were coded, categorized, and presented in the chapter. They show how the professional development program impacted teacherâs practices related to (re)structuring classroom activity, small-group work, and increased attention to language. The authors make a case for the use of complementary expertise as a form of professional development. They conclude that effectively teaching algebra to ELLs requires understanding what it means to âspeak algebraâ, and recognition that even the most abstract algebraic concept can be taken up as talk and thereby learned.
Chapter 6, by Sarah A. Roberts, describes a professional development experience organized around a framework of questioning and four principles of effective mathematics instruction for multilingual students. Three seventh grade mathematics teachers participated in semester-long professional development with this framework grounding their work. This chapter provides four illustrations of practice, one for each principle, from the professional development, as the teachers considered how to prepare to implement these principles ...