Equipping all teachers to teach disciplinary language

Toward a developmental continuum in teacher education

Bibliographic Data

ID10818909
AuthorsLaura Schall‐Leckrone (TESOL and Bilingual Education Graduate School of Education Lesley University Cambridge MA USA, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume56
Issue2
Pages840-851
Publication date2022-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueTESOL Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0039-8322 • E-ISSN: 1545-7249
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1002/tesq.3141
OpenAlexW4221044793
LanguageEN
References cited13

Equipping all teachers to teach multilingual learners disciplinary language— content‐specific ways of knowing through language— is an unresolved teacher education challenge. This challenge is particularly acute for teacher educators who serve general education teachers, because these teachers typically lack the specialized language preparation or multilingual skills of TESOL or bilingual educators. Accordingly, this brief article presents an emerging framework that conceptualizes how teachers can learn to teach disciplinary language, drawing from scholarship on teacher learning, pedagogical language knowledge, and language of history. Then, it illustrates how one history teacher learned to teach disciplinary language over a 9‐year period from preservice preparation and novice years to a later role as a mentor teacher. This illustrative example supports prior research suggesting three teacher learning prerequisites are essential to improve instruction for MLs: consistent focus on disciplinary literacy, inquiry into practice, and school‐university collaboration. The article concludes by proposing a developmental continuum in equipping teachers to teach disciplinary language through preservice, novice, and mastery phases with differentiated supports and opportunities. This article seeks to contribute a descriptive framework that teacher educators and researchers can pilot, study, and adapt to advance efforts to equip all teachers to teach multilingual learners disciplinary language

Discipline · Literacy · Mathematics education · Pedagogy · Political science · Scholarship · Sociology · Teacher education · Educator Training and Historical Pedagogy · Multilingual Education and Policy · Psychology · Second Language Learning and Teaching

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