The development of teacher expertise to work with English Language Learners in an era of new standards

Transcription

1 The development of teacher expertise to work with English Language Learners in an era of new standards Confederation of Oregon School Administrators ELL Conference March 15, 2013 Aída Walqui, Ph.D. Director, Teacher Professional Development Program, WestEd Think About 1993 How is your life different today than what it was at the time? How similar or different is instruction in most schools today than it was in 1993? Times have changed dramatically but education has remained almost unchanged at its core. To keep our ability as a nation to participate productively in the new world order, we need to do things dramatically different: Contemporary life requires citizens with multiple literacies, readers and producers of multimodal texts, autonomous learners, responsible decision makers with a firm sense of ethics and community responsibility. This means the learning opportunities we need to offer our students have to model and apprentice them into future successful participation in valued life practices. 1

2 Today employers demand fewer people with basic skill sets and more people with complex thinking and communication skills A Cautionary Tale: Chattanooga VW Plant And if we think employers will develop needed knowledge and skills, that will not be the case Twenty First Century Skills College and Career Readiness Deeper Learning Higher Order Skills Next Generation Learning New Basic Skills 2

3 21 st Century Skills (Wagner, 2008) Critical thinking and problem solving Collaboration and leadership Agility and adaptability Initiative and entrepreneurialism Effective oral and written communication Accessing and analyzing information, and Curiosity and imagination (Wagner, 2008) Missing: Interculturalism and bilingualism Ethical behavior National Research Council Pellegrino & Hilton, st century skills- 3 domains and clusters of competencies within each domain The cognitive domain: cognitive processes and strategies; knowledge; creativity The intrapersonal domain: intellectual openness; work ethic and conscientiousness; positive core selfevaluation The interpersonal domain: teamwork and collaboration; leadership A model of 21 st century skills: KSAVE (Knowledge, Skills, Attitudes, Values and Ethics) Binley, Erstad, Herman, Raizen, Ripley & Rumble (forthcoming) Ways of thinking 1. Creativity and innovation 2. Critical thinking, problem solving, decision making 3. Learning to learn, metacognition Ways of working 4. Communication 5. Collaboration (team work) Tools for working 6. Information literacy (research on sources, evidence, biases, etc) 7. ICT literacy Living in the world 8. Citizenship local and global 9. Life and career 10. Personal and social responsibility including cultural awareness and competence 3

4 The New Standards Reflect These Required Educational Needs Common Core Standards in ELA and Math Next Generation Science Standards Revised and New English Language Proficiency Development Standards (Framework for English Language Proficiency Development Standards) New Demands, New Work Students can, without significant scaffolding, comprehend and evaluate complex texts across a range of types and disciplines, and they can construct effective arguments and convey intricate or multifaceted information. Likewise, students are able independently to discern a speaker s key points, request clarification, and ask relevant questions. They build on others ideas, articulate their own ideas, and confirm they have been understood. Common Core state standards for English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social Studies, science, and Technical Subjects, p. 7 Educational leaders and teachers of ELLs need to understand: How to teach the content area(s) they are responsible for teaching What language and literacy demands are associated with these content areas How students from different language and literacy backgrounds can use their developing linguistic resources to engage with these demands 4

5 What learning opportunities and scaffolding can assist students to engage in content learning beyond their current level of ability How to create the conditions necessary for students to expand their linguistic repertoires How to recognize students engagement with content learning as students develop these repertoires How to create and/or implement curricula, lessons, and instructional activities that support and challenge ELLs in meeting the expectations of the standards How to formatively assess ELLs as they engage with all of the above... How to complement the results of standardized tests to demonstrate student learning Furthermore, teachers will need to develop language awareness Language is as important to human beings as water is to fish. Yet, it often seems that we go through life as unaware of language as we suppose the average fish is of the water it swims in Language awareness can be defined as an understanding of the human faculty of language and its role in thinking, learning, and social life. It includes awareness of power and control through language and the intricate relationships between language and culture. van Lier,

6 Theoretical and Pedagogical Shifts in the Design and Enactment of Learning FROM A CONCEPTUALIZATION OF Language acquisition as an individual process Language as structures or functions L2 acquision as a linear and progressive process aimed at accuracy, fluency, and complexity Individual ideas or texts as the center of instruction TO UNDERSTANDING language acquisition as apprenticeship in social contexts Language as action, subsuming structure and function (Ellis & Larsen Freeman, 2010; van Lier & Walqui,2012) non linear and complex developmental process aimed at comprehension and communication attention to ideas and texts in their interconnectedness Shifts (continued) Use of simplified texts Use of activities that pre-teach the content or simply help students get through texts Identifying discrete structural features of language Traditional grammar as a starting point Objectives stated as dichotomies use of complex texts activities that scaffold students development and autonomy exploration of how language is purposeful and patterned to do its particular rhetorical work multimodal grammar Practice of communicating, doing, being in the language A Note on Scaffolding: Work in the Construction Zone ZPD: The construction zone selfregulation process interpersonal intrapersonal process scaffold Leo van Lier, 1991 Based on L.S. Vygotsky 6

7 In this Sense, Scaffolding Is: Temporary support Support that matures potential and is generative, as such, its goal is autonomy A dynamic process that amplifies student accessibility and student agency The just right kind of support students need Contingent Walqui & van Lier, 2010 The exemplar my colleagues and I prepared for the Understanding Language Initiative (ell.stanford.edu) Illustrates how ELA CCSSs can be used to deepen an accelerate the instruction of ELLs in middle schools. Is based on the notion that ELLs develop conceptual and academic understandings as well as the linguistic resources to express them simultaneously, through participation in rigorous activity that is well scaffolded (Walqui & van Lier, 2010) Invites students to participate in processes of apprenticeship that lead them from being novices to developing increasing levels of expertise while they build their agency and autonomy. LESSON 2 Persuasion in Historical Context: The Gettysburg Address Building background knowledge for reading; Analyzing the development of central ideas at the macro and micro levels LESSON 1 Advertising in the Contemporary World: An Introduction to Persuasive Texts Analyzing message, tone, mood, and modality in multimodal texts UNIT Persuasion Across Time and Space: Analyzing and Producing Complex Texts LESSON 3 Ethos, Logos, & Pathos in Civil Rights Movement Speeches Critical analysis of the use of Aristotle s appeals in persuasive speeches LESSON 5 Putting it Together: Analyzing and Producing Persuasive Text LESSON 4 Persuasion as Text: Organizational, Grammatical, and Lexical Moves in Barbara Jordan s All Together Now Comparing and contrasting macro and micro level textual choices in speeches Independent analysis of a speech and writing of a persuasive essay 7

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9 Through this exemplar teachers Gain an awareness of how practices in their disciplines involve language to explicitly discuss how language works and the characteristics of texts and disciplinary discourse Integrate all language modes (oral, written, visual, and graphic) in teaching Learn how to scaffold instruction to develop student autonomy and assist their progression from more spoken to more written -like uses of language References CCSSO (2012). Framework for English Language Proficiency. Development Standards Corresponding to the Common Core State Standards and the Next Generation Science Standards. Washington, DC: author Van Lier, L. Introducing language awareness. London, UK: Penguin Books. van Lier, L., & Walqui, A. (2012, January). How teachers and educators can most usefully and deliberately consider language. Paper presented at the Understanding Language Conference, Stanford, CA. (ell.stanford.edu) Wagner, Tony (2008). Rigor Redefined. Educational Leadership, October Walqui, A., & Heritage, M. (2012, January). Instruction for diverse groups of English language learners. Paper presented at the Understanding Language Conference, Stanford, CA. (ell.stanford.edu) Walqui, A. & van Lier, L. (2010). Scaffolding the academic success of adolescent English Learners. A pedagogy of promise. San Francisco: WestEd. 9