ELLs

Pre-service teachers need to understand how to support ELLs in their future classrooms, yet evidence suggests that pre-service ELL training may not be as effective as we need it to be. One promising strategy for increasing pre-service teachers’ efficacy and knowledge around teaching ELLs is through a shock-and-show simulation. This strategy incorporates a Swedish-language immersion experience that simulates what it may like to be an ELL and the strategies that can help support these students. There were two phases: a lesson with limited scaffolding (shock) and an extensively scaffolded lesson (show). Our participants included 87 pre-service teachers who filled out pre- and post-surveys, including closed- and open-ended questions. t-Tests were used to determine whether differences in the scores from the two surveys were significant. We analyzed qualitative data using an interpretive approach to the development of codes, categories, and themes, which we triangulated with descriptive s...

School-level administrators are often concerned about tertiary supports for English language learners (ELLs), such as translating signs and school documents or offering Spanish classes for their teachers. Although modeling and learning the heritage language(s) of the ESL population can be helpful, its focus on language differences can limit our considerations of broader systemic challenges that impact the success of ELLs in our schools. This article shares the dialogues that school administrators are having about ELL students and discusses the use of social justice and equity focused professional learning communities as a way to transform this discourse to address the broader systemic inequities facing our ELL students. The authors share their insight from their work with administrators as they transform from talking about surface level issues they encounter in their work with ELL students, to deeper discourse about relations of power in schools.

Critical incident reflection journal writing provides a rich source for identifying high impact components of Project Alianza, a graduate course for mainstream secondary teachers funded by a US Department of Education Title III Professional Development grant. In this narrative pilot study featuring one strand of existing data, the co-authors, who are also co-instructors and co-researchers, begin the first rounds of analysis to identify emerging key conditions and contributing factors featured within specialized graduate courses for encouraging dispositional change and professional efficacy toward English language learners (ELLs) in practicing K-12 mainstream educators. Using Mezirow’s adult transformational learning theory (1991), Kegan’s stage theory of development (1994), and Kegan and Lahey’s notion of resistance to change (2001) as a conceptual lens, the researchers conduct narrative textual analysis to consider implications for professional developers and continuing education i...

The paper discusses the feasibility of constructing a SQL Server FILESTREAM based English Language Learning System (ELLS). The paper focuses on the Implementation phase of the system. It explains the prospect of storing and managing unstructured data (e.g. Images, video, Word, Excel, PDF, MP3, etc) for educational purposes utilizing FILESTREAM technique provided by SQL Server 2012, and explains how to maintain efficient storage and access to BLOB data. However, Storing unstructured data posed many challenges, such as how to maintain transactional consistency between the structured and unstructured data, how to manage backup, restore, and storage performance. The paper seeks to utilize the combination of SQL Server 2012 features and the NTFS (New Technology File System) to improve the efficiency and performance of the ELLS system for children. The system also seeks to maintain the transactional consistency between the unstructured data and corresponding structured data. Furthermore, the system allows the user to customize some operations such as creating, updating and deleting photos, videos or audios in the database. The system supports some maintenance operations such as backup, restore, and consistency checking.

The paper discusses the feasibility of constructing a SQL Server FILESTREAM based English Language Learning System (ELLS). The paper focuses on the Implementation phase of the system. It explains the prospect of storing and managing unstructured data (e.g. Images, video, Word, Excel, PDF, MP3, etc) for educational purposes utilizing FILESTREAM technique provided by SQL Server 2012, and explains how to maintain efficient storage and access to BLOB data. However, Storing unstructured data posed many challenges, such as how to maintain transactional consistency between the structured and unstructured data, how to manage backup, restore, and storage performance. The paper seeks to utilize the combination of SQL Server 2012 features and the NTFS (New Technology File System) to improve the efficiency and performance of the ELLS system for children. The system also seeks to maintain the transactional consistency between the unstructured data and corresponding structured data. Furthermore, ...

Pre-service teachers need to understand how to support ELLs in their future classrooms, yet evidence suggests that pre-service ELL training may not be as effective as we need it to be. One promising strategy for increasing pre-service teachers’ efficacy and knowledge around teaching ELLs is through a shock-and-show simulation. This strategy incorporates a Swedish-language immersion experience that simulates what it may like to be an ELL and the strategies that can help support these students. There were two phases: a lesson with limited scaffolding (shock) and an extensively scaffolded lesson (show). Our participants included 87 pre-service teachers who filled out pre- and post-surveys, including closed- and open-ended questions. t-Tests were used to determine whether differences in the scores from the two surveys were significant. We analyzed qualitative data using an interpretive approach to the development of codes, categories, and themes, which we triangulated with descriptive statistics to describe the frequency of the emergent codes. Our findings suggest that shock-and-show experiences may benefit pre-service teachers’ knowledge and efficacy around ELL instruction. We theorize that the emotional component of the experience connected to the cognitive aspects may help foster greater learning among pre-service teachers concerning the difficulties and needs of ELLs.

This chapter presents the findings from studies which address the following research questions: How do classroom teachers of ELLs view SEI policies and practices? How much information and guidance have they received, and how is SEI being implemented in their schools? How effective is SEI instruction in meeting the linguistic and academic needs of ELL students? Methods used to answer these questions include a state-wide survey of 3rd grade ELL teachers, and case studies conducted in two 3rd grade SEI classrooms.