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A still-widespread perspective on "academic language" is that the most important dimension of language used for academic purposes is the extent to which its linguistic features contrast with "everyday language" used outside of school. But focusing on the unique linguistic features of written academic texts ignores the important role that other, more "everyday" forms of language plays in doing academic work and overlooks the intellectual work that students--especially those from linguistically marginalized backgrounds--are capable of doing using their existing linguistic resources. In this article, we (a language and literacy specialist collaborating with a history education expert) suggest that an alternative is to shift the focus away from what makes academic texts different from everyday language toward the nature of the "language of ideas" used to engage in disciplinary work, including (a) how the content, ideas, and practices at the heart of a discipline can be expressed in a variety of ways, (b) the participant structures and communicative tasks students are called upon to navigate to do academic work, and (c) the linguistic resources students bring to the table to engage in disciplinary learning opportunities--no matter how far from "academic" that language may initially sound.

Objective: To inform efforts to boost college completion and professional preparation for the linguistically diverse New Mainstream, we explored language and literacy demands, and how faculty conceive of those demands, in one allied health program at one community college in California. We also explore the implications for the preparation of community college students in academic and professional preparation programs more generally. Method: We examined program documents and outlines of courses in the allied health program and interviewed eight faculty members teaching these courses. We analyzed data using deductive and inductive codes and drafted a program overview of assignments, associated language and literacy demands, and identifiable genres and metagenres. We also conducted member checks with key faculty members to clarify and deepen our understanding. Results: Despite our efforts to focus on disciplinary dimensions of language and literacy in the allied health program, we found that course outlines and instructors tended instead to emphasize general reading and writing competencies, critical thinking, and problem-solving. Discussing students' language and literacy challenges, instructors underscored challenges common to English-dominant and language-minority students, including problems with students' study skills, critical thinking, problem-solving, or time committed to their studies. Contributions: We argue that, although focusing on general academic and life skills is important for the diversity of students served by community colleges, a deeper focus on disciplinary and professional language and literacy practices is warranted by both instructors and institutions to prepare and support the New Mainstream in completing college and succeeding in the workforce.

In this essay, the authors explore the dilemmas facing researchers, educators, and policymakers in how to refer to multilingual students who are deemed in need of language support in school. There is a growing concern with the label English learner, the term currently used in U.S. federal legislation, as focusing exclusively on students' English language acquisition and ignoring their multilingual resources. Alternative terms such as emergent bilingual and multilingual learner that underscore students' multilingual assets have become widespread alternatives. The authors argue that the critiques of the term English learner must be taken seriously. They also argue that, given that being classified as English learners in schools has material consequences for students' academic and occupational trajectories, this label cannot simply be wished away. In fact, debating over labels alone carries the danger of mislocating the primary site of struggle for equity and justice in the labels themselves, rather than in the systems that position and frame linguistically minoritized students in a deficit light in the first place. As researchers who have worked with this population for years, the authors, too, are grappling with how to refer to them. Each of them shares the dilemmas they have encountered, and they conclude by offering a multidimensional tool that might assist scholars, educators, and policymakers in reflecting on what is gained and lost by using different terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assessing the preparation of preservice candidates for quality teaching, both for mainstream students and for ELs, requires reliable and valid assessments that pay close attention to context, process, and reflection, factors that traditional evaluations of teaching either ignore or undervalue. In this article, the authors focus on one high-stakes preservice teacher performance assessment designed to meet these guidelines. The Performance Assessment for California Teachers (PACT), currently used in 32 teacher preparation programs throughout California, is a comprehensive assessment of knowledge and skills in which candidates analyze and reflect on their own instruction and their students' learning during a "Teaching Event" in their student teaching placements. The authors document how eight elementary teacher candidates from teacher preparation programs throughout California discussed issues related to language and learning for ELs in their extensive written materials about their teaching and their students' learning submitted as part of their PACT Teaching Events. While candidates for elementary credentials can choose to complete a mathematics or a language arts/literacy Teaching Event, the authors focused on those candidates who chose mathematics. The authors focus on mathematics because it is often misunderstood to be a language-free endeavor and because it represents an area in which schools have failed many ELs and other students from non-dominant linguistic backgrounds. The authors argue that the PACT, beyond its function as a high stakes examination used for state licensing decisions, has the potential to provide important information that can serve as formative assessment and feedback for teacher candidates themselves, individual teacher educators, and teacher education programs as a whole. (Contains 1 table and 7 notes.)

This proof of concept study investigated a secondary science teacher preparation intervention in six university programs across Arizona, California, and Texas. Researchers and science method instructors (SMIs) collaboratively restructured respective science method courses to hold fidelity to an interrelated set of instructional practices that attend to science learning as envisioned in a Framework for K-12 Science Education, while also creating contextualized spaces for language and literacy development targeted to English learners (ELs), but also supportive of "mainstream" students. We observed the teaching of SMIs and preservice teachers (PSTs) with observation rubrics to gauge the fidelity to which they implemented practices. Across programs, SMIs provided opportunities for PSTs to experience the instructional practices as intended, although there was less opportunity for pedagogical development around them. The strongest evidence of PST fidelity to the intervention was found for two practices: "Increasing student interaction" and "Facilitating student talk." Considerable variation was found across the programs for other practices including some evidence of negative effects. We discuss results in terms of promises for preparing novice secondary science teachers, as well as future directions to overcome challenges that researchers, SMIs, and novice teachers are likely to face when preparing novice science teachers.

New demands of the Common Core State Standards imply instructional transformations for all classrooms in the United States, but teachers of students designated as English language learners (ELLs) are among those most likely to feel the impact in their daily professional lives. Language is an integral part of classroom learning in all subject areas, and this article addresses the new and special demands made by the English language arts Common Core Standards that are particularly relevant for the education of ELLs in mainstream and sheltered language arts and English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) classrooms. The authors propose three key reconceptualizations for teachers of ELLs in English language arts, outlining what is necessary to realize opportunities provided in the standards for these students' linguistic development and academic achievement. They illustrate these reconceptualizations with examples from an instructional unit that has been designed for linguistically diverse middle school Common Core classrooms and exemplifies subject-specific instructional practices that meet the needs of ELLs.

This article argues for the importance of integrating a focus on language, literacy, and academic development for United States-educated language minority (US-LM) students, sometimes called "Generation 1.5." It describes four initiatives at community colleges in California that aim to do so. US-LM students have completed some K-12 schooling in the United States, but their English is considered by community college faculty, staff, or assessment measures to be inadequate for college-level instruction. Although enacting effective language and literacy support for Generation 1.5 has centered on debates about whether these students belong in English as a Second Language (ESL) or remedial English courses, how they can best be identified and tested, or whether they should be taught in separate classes, we argue that more fundamental shifts are needed. Instead of conceiving of students' language and literacy development solely in terms of progress through ESL or remedial English sequences, educators designing support for US-LM students must also consider larger contexts of students' academic progress, promoting students' development of language and literacy for success in academic and professional settings as well as progress toward completing credits required for associate degrees, certificates, and transfer to four-year institutions.

Throughout the United States, teacher educators are developing new strategies to improve the preparation of mainstream teachers for linguistic diversity. In this article, we explore teacher candidates' responses to the Performance Assessment for California Teachers (PACT), a preservice assessment required for credentialing that requires candidates to consider the English language demands of content-area instruction, to enact supports for English learners and others who may struggle with those demands, and to develop ways to promote the academic language development of these students. We report on a study examining written responses on the PACT from 8 elementary teacher candidates who chose mathematics as the focus for their teaching event. We found that the PACT induced teacher candidates to consider language issues and the needs of language learners in a content area often thought to be language-free, yet one in which language in fact plays a crucial role. Such responses provide important information that can be used not only for credentialing decisions but also by teacher educators, teacher-education programs, and teacher candidates themselves in supporting the academic-language development of ELs in content areas such as mathematics.

In the United States, new common state standards in English language arts and disciplinary literacy require K-12 students to "read and comprehend complex literary and informational texts independently and proficiently." Issues of text complexity have spurred debates in the mainstream literacy, educational practice, and policy communities. Issues raised for English learners (ELs)--and their teachers--are even more vexing. This article considers first language (L1) and second language (L2) reading theory and research to articulate challenges facing ELs as they engage with complex text and to evaluate instructional responses. Reviewing historical and contemporary perspectives on text complexity and reading comprehension, the authors argue that (a) the complexity involved in comprehending difficult text transcends textual features to include dimensions of the reader, task, and pedagogical support; and (b) the path to success for ELs will not be paved solely by attempting to match readers with "appropriate" texts or by modifying existing texts to meet perceived student reading levels. If what is "complex" about reading certain kinds of texts is the relationship among the text, its reader, the task the reader is being asked to perform, and the context in its multiple dimensions, then pedagogical responses for ELs must keep all of these in mind.

Sooner or later, as schools move to implement the new Common Core and other forthcoming standards, almost every teacher in the United States will face the challenge of how to support students from homes where English is not the dominant language in meeting subject-matter academic expectations that require increasingly demanding uses of language and literacy in English. In this article, the author reviews research that provides potential insights on how "mainstream" teachers might be prepared for responding to this challenge, both in preservice teacher preparation programs and throughout their careers. The author argues that efforts to prepare teachers for working with English learners (ELs) to engage with increasing language and literacy expectations across the curriculum requires development of "pedagogical language knowledge" (Galguera, 2011)--not to "teach English" in the way that most mainstream teachers may initially conceive of (and resist) the notion, but rather to purposefully enact opportunities for the development of language and literacy in and through teaching the core curricular content, understandings, and activities that teachers are responsible for (and, hopefully, excited about) teaching in the first place. The author reviews recent literature that presents various approaches to what this knowledge might entail and how teacher preparation and development initiatives might go about fostering it. The author concludes by proposing that, in an age of increasing linguistic demands associated with new academic expectations, building teachers' understanding of language as "action" (van Lier & Walqui, 2012) could serve as the foundation for preparing them to engage--and support--ELs in both challenging and meaningful academic tasks. (Contains 1 table and 6 notes.)

Science performance assessments (SPAs) are designed to elicit a wider range of scientific knowledge and abilities than ordinarily measured by more traditional paper-and-pencil tests. To engage in SPAs and thus demonstrate abilities such as scientific inquiry, students must interact with various participants and communicate in a variety of ways. Using an analytical framework that draws on functional and interactional views of language, we analyzed video footage of one SPA, "The World Down Under," enacted in three fifth-grade classrooms. The video analysis revealed a wide variety of language demands that students encountered during the SPA, including a range of participant structures (whole class, small group, and individual), communicative modes (interpreting language, presenting language, and engaging interpersonally), and 18 different texts. Moreover, the language demands differed by classroom. A closer look at two video episodes illustrated how this more expansive communicative context afforded two English Learners (ELs) with opportunities to navigate the language demands of the assessment. However, the same language demands could present challenges for ELs with lower levels of English proficiency. The findings contribute to science education by bringing attention to the nature and role of language in SPAs, which has only begun to be described in the literature.

Community colleges are critical points of access for language-minority students and others historically underrepresented in U.S. higher education. Yet there is evidence that community colleges are far from reaching their potential as a stepping-stone to 4-year colleges and universities for underrepresented minorities, especially in states with the most ethnically diverse populations. Within this context, the needs of one particular group of students have not been adequately explored: students from immigrant language-minority backgrounds who have done some of their schooling in U.S. secondary schools yet whose language is still considered by community college faculty, staff, or assessment measures to be inadequate for mainstream academic work. In this article, we propose a framework that emphasizes building on these U.S.-educated language-minority students' strengths and experiences in order to support their academic and linguistic development, and we review the literature on innovative institutional practices and policies that have attempted to do so. (Contains 1 table and 6 footnotes.)

This article report on the development and use of an analytical framework intended to map the language demands encountered by English learners as they engage in science performance assessments. Grounded in functional and interactional views of language and language use, the authors--two science education researchers and a language scholar--developed the framework via an inductive, iterative, and systematic review of written assessment materials associated with three fifth grade science performance tasks. The resulting Science Assessment Language Demands (SALD) framework is organized around three dimensions: participant structures, communicative modes, and written texts and genres that students are called upon to read and produce. The authors used textual analysis to conduct an expert review of the written documents associated with the three assessment tasks. The results indicate that the framework can be used to document a wide range of functional and interactional language demands involved in science performance assessments. The demands revealed by the SALD framework highlight both potential challenges facing English learners during science performance assessments as well as opportunities afforded by such assessments for demonstrating their knowledge and skills and further developing language proficiency. A major implication of the study is the potential use of the framework to evaluate the language demands and opportunities of science assessments used in classrooms with English learners. (Contains 7 tables, 2 figures and 4 notes.)

We report on the development and use of an analytical framework designed to articulate the language demands English learners (ELs) encounter on performance assessments such as those used in inquiry-based science classrooms. The Science Assessment Language Demands (SALD) Framework, grounded in functional and interactional views of language and language use, focuses on participant structures utilized in performance assessments, associated modes of communication called for and written texts and genres that students are required to read and produce. We employed the SALD Framework to document the range of language demands present in the performance assessments that accompany three fifth-grade science units. The assessments collectively call upon students to engage in four participant structures (whole class, small group, pair and individual), three communicative modes (interpersonal, interpretive and presentational) and a broad array of genres. These demands may present barriers with regard to ELs' ability to demonstrate their scientific knowledge and skills. On the other hand, the language involved in performance assessments may also present opportunities, both for expanding the options ELs have for demonstrating their understanding and by promoting the development of a wider repertoire of language skills than might be fostered in classrooms preparing students for more traditional assessments. (Contains 5 tables, 4 figures and 6 notes.)

In order to contribute to efforts of teacher educators, policymakers, and researchers to better prepare mainstream secondary teachers for current and former English language learners (ELLs), this chapter explores recent literature addressing: (1) what teachers need to know about language in general and "academic language" in particular to meet the needs of current and former ELLs; and (2) how teachers might best be prepared with the relevant knowledge and skills. Less consensus exists regarding the nature of academic language, what teachers need to know about language to teach effectively in linguistically diverse classrooms, and how teachers should be prepared with the necessary knowledge and skills in the context of the multiple demands they face in preservice programs and once they begin teacher. In this chapter, the author reviews a range of perspectives on each of these topics, discusses opportunities and challenges inherent in different approaches to addressing them, and articulates areas for future inquiry. (Contains 3 notes.)

This article explores challenges and opportunities for language minority students and their monolingual English-speaking classmates during oral presentations in mainstream 7th grade social studies classrooms. The classrooms were designed to provide access to rigorous content and opportunities to develop English for use in academic settings. Student groups simultaneously used presentational language and managed interpersonal interaction with several distinct audiences, manifested through participant structures that required them to sustain extended discourse and respond to interjections from the teacher. Delivering presentations as a group provided students with supports and additional challenges. Viewing oral presentations as "speech events" provides a productive lens for (a) highlighting academic language challenges that go beyond vocabulary and grammar, (b) recognizing the opportunities for language development inherent in those challenges, and (c) envisioning supports to assist with the challenges without eliminating the opportunities. (Contains 2 figures and 3 tables.)

For years, well-intentioned educators have arranged school open houses to encourage language minority families to participate in their children's education. These educators know that decades of research tout the benefits of schools partnering with parents. Yet the results of such events are often discouraging. Many teachers and administrators do not wholly understand the cultural differences that complicate their efforts to work with families. Similarly, school staff often underestimate the economic, educational, cultural, and linguistic challenges that discourage families from participating in their children's education in the ways that many teachers expect and value. This article discusses how schools can design ways to promote mutual learning and understanding among teachers and language-minority families. It also describes some strategies to promote cross-cultural collaboration.

This article explores language assessments and policies that Latino students and others from immigrant backgrounds face as they graduate from high school and attempt to enter community colleges. Focusing on California, the authors examine the assumptions that underlie these assessments and policies. They argue that the policies signal different conceptions (and misconceptions) about the nature of bilingualism and the needs of U.S.-educated language minority students pursuing academic goals. (Contains 7 notes.) [Additional funding for this article was provided by the University of California's All-Campus Consortium on Research for Diversity (UC ACCORD).]

In this article, I describe mainstream middle school classrooms designed to re-think the conditions under which language minority students who have lived in the United States for a number of years can develop English language skills while also gaining access to a rigorous curriculum. I describe a variety of transactions that students used to engage in group social studies tasks, and I show how students used language differently for discussing ideas within their groups and for preparing to present these ideas to their teacher and classmates. I argue that in order to document the wide range of language demands and language learning opportunities inherent in doing academic work, as well as to understand what students from language minority backgrounds are able to do to meet these demands, the notion of "academic English" must be expanded beyond the "academic" vs. "conversational" language distinction. (Contains 2 figures.)

The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which the Stanford Teacher Education Program (STEP) effectively prepares new teachers to meet the needs of language minority students in California. Specifically, the authors studied the extent to which the program prepares students to meet the criteria of the Crosscultural Language and Academic Development (CLAD) credential, which currently authorizes teachers to teach English Language Learners (ELLs). The knowledge and skill areas of CLAD are organized into three domains: (1) language structure and first and second language development; (2) methods of bilingual, English language development and content instruction; and (3) culture and cultural diversity. Recently, the STEP program made the decision to integrate the CLAD principles throughout its curriculum, instead of creating a separate CLAD track. As a result, STEP students earn CLAD certification upon completion of the program. Integrating the CLAD requirements into the general teacher education program offers both powerful opportunities and profound challenges, especially in a one-year program. This project focused on some of the results of that integration through a review of the syllabi of key courses, interviews with eight STEP students, and case studies of student teachers' portfolios. (Contains 4 notes.)

Describes a collaborative middle school project that creates an effective and equitable environment in which English language learners can develop the necessary skills to meet increasingly demanding academic expectations. (Author/VWL)

This essay explores how focusing on language and literacy as "ways of doing" in different academic disciplines and professional fields may spark reconsideration of how best to prepare and support students' language and literacy development, especially among the linguistically diverse New Mainstream in community colleges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]