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In our civic engagement afterschool program in the southeast of the United States, our youth and adult participants used a wide range of modalities including mapping, rapping, drawing, and performance to construct and convey their unique visions of school and community spaces. The purpose of this methodological paper is to explore systemic functional multimodal discourse analysis (SF MDA) as a potential resource to gauge the effectiveness of such humanizing and multimodal spaces in positioning youth as civic leaders. Data collected for this study included curriculum materials, descriptive field notes, and video recordings of the multimodal processes of focal youth across five program modules. Informed by an SF MDA perspective, our multimodal transcriptions illustrate how youth participants engaged in an intersemiotic complementarity of modalities and languages to share their insights and enact civic identities.

Using findings from a 4-year research and development effort, we propose an updated model of sheltered instruction for science classrooms that leverages the opportunities provided by the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) to better support multilingual learners in middle and high school science. Using data from teacher implementation logs and interviews, we examine how secondary grades science teachers' participation in our professional learning framework and subsequent enactments of an initial set of project instructional practices led these teachers to articulate nuanced and strategic adaptations to the initial practices to better meet the needs of the multilingual learners in their classrooms. We found that teachers moved away from implementing sheltered instruction practices based on general principles or formal classifications, such as students' English language proficiency level, instead taking a more nuanced approach to adopting, adapting and rejecting practices based on perceived needs, assets, and personal knowledge about individual multilingual students in the specific disciplinary context of science. Based on this analysis, we conceptualize and refine what we now see as a new and exploratory set of Next Generation Sheltered Instruction practices for integrating science and language to support multilingual learners in secondary science classrooms in the age of the NGSS.

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) call for students to exhibit an in-depth understanding of scientific inquiry practices, including direct observation, creative design thinking, and argumentation based on evidential learning. To support academic equity for multilingual learners, these new expectations require reconceptualization of science teacher education and classroom instruction, whereby emphasis is placed on incorporating the linguistic and cultural repertoires of learners through multimodal and open-ended learning activities. To support this shift in practices, this paper presents a culturally sustaining systemic functional linguistics (CS SFL) framework for science teachers and multilingual classrooms. CS SFL praxis emphasizes three intersecting areas: language development, knowledge development, and cultural sustenance.

We report on the use of bilingual constructed response science assessments in the context of a research and development partnership with secondary school science teachers. Given the power that assessments have in today's education systems, our project provided a series of workshops for teachers where they explored students' emergent reform-oriented science meaning-making in our project-designed assessments. Within the context of these workshops, we used discourse analysis to explore how three different groups grappled with the new reform-oriented relationship between science and language: (1) the research team's emergent understandings of how to create improved resources for teachers to better integrate science and language; (2) students' emergent understandings as expressed in their assessment responses; and (3) teachers' emergent understandings of how to integrate science and language in their instruction as expressed in interviews in the teacher writing workshops. Implications for curriculum designers, assessment developers, and professional learning facilitators are discussed.

Grounded in teacher professional development addressing the intersection of student diversity and content area instruction, this study examined school teachers' pedagogical reasoning complexity as they reflected on their second language learners' science problem solving abilities using both home and school contexts. Teachers responded to interview questions after watching a video of one of their students engaged in a science problem solving task. Over a 5-year period, 206 teacher interviews were conducted with a total of 133 teachers. Results indicated significant differences across the dimensions of pedagogical reasoning complexity as teachers expressed both deficit and resource oriented thinking. (Contains 4 tables.)

The school-aged population in the United States is becoming more culturally and linguistically diverse, while achievement gaps across content areas persist. At the same time, more rigorous academic demands are being placed on all students, including English language learners (ELLs). Teachers of ELLs face the double challenge of promoting English language and literacy development, as well as academic achievement across subject areas. This article addresses effective professional development to support the teaching of science and English language and literacy to ELLs. First, it highlights what the literature says about teachers' knowledge and practices in teaching science to ELLs. Second, it highlights what the literature says about teacher professional development more broadly, and then specifically in terms of science instruction with ELLs. Finally, it discusses emerging educational policies and their potential implications for professional development of science teachers of ELLs.

This study explores the role of competing discourses that shape current practices in U.S. schools and how professional development efforts can support teachers and researchers in finding ways to reinsert more democratic processes into their collaborative work. We examine the case of one research and professional development project with the goal of supporting middle school science and ESOL teachers in fostering more meaningful science learning for all their students but especially their English language learners. Using Gee's notion of big-D discourses and Fairclough's notion of interdiscursivity, we trace how the Discourse of accountability, the Discourse of science teaching, and the Discourse of education research, each constructed by different stakeholders for different purposes, may become interdiscursive and hybridized through interaction over time. Excerpts from interviews and conversations with participants during the various components of our project highlight both the challenges and the possibilities of teachers retaining or regaining agency in their classrooms within and against the structures of the accountability Discourse. At the same time, we explore how our researcher Discourse also became hybridized in order to better work with a system where an undemocratic accountability Discourse continues to be dominant.

Background/Context: While different instructional approaches have been proposed to integrate academic content and English proficiency for English language learning (ELL) students, studies examining the magnitude of the relationship are non-existent. This study examined the relationship between the "form" (i.e., conventions, organization, and style/voice) and "content" (i.e., specific knowledge and understanding of science) of expository science writing among third grade ELL students in the beginning and at the end of each year during the three-year implementation of the intervention. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: The study is part of a larger five-year research and development project aimed at improving science and literacy achievement of ELL students in urban elementary schools in a large school district. Research Design: The intervention was comprised of curriculum units for students and teachers and professional development workshops for teachers throughout the school year. As a school-wide initiative, all third grade teachers and their students from six treatment schools participated. The study involved 683 third graders during the first year, 661 third graders during the second year, and 676 third graders during the third year. Approximately half of the students were Hispanic and the other half were Black, including Haitians and Caribbean Islanders. A writing sample was used as a measure of English proficiency and ability to explain science concepts in writing. At the beginning and end of each school year, teachers administered the writing prompt to their students. Data were analyzed using a hierarchical linear modeling approach. Findings/Results: The results indicated significant relationships between writing form and content at both pretest and posttest, with a stronger relationship at posttest. The effect of English proficiency on the magnitude of the relationship was significant only at posttest, for which the relationship was stronger for non-ELL students. The results suggest that through our intervention over the course of the school year, students with greater English proficiency learned science content and developed English literacy simultaneously, whereas students with lower English proficiency did not show this simultaneous growth to the same degree. Conclusions: Thus, interventions such as ours, which primarily present science curriculum and instruction in English, might be expected to have limited positive effects for ELL students at the beginning and intermediate levels of English proficiency. The results point out potential conflicts in current educational policies, including high-stakes testing and accountability and English-only policies, which affect ELL students.

This descriptive study examined urban elementary school teachers' perceptions of their science content knowledge, science teaching practices, and support for language development of English language learners. Also examined were teachers' perceptions of organizational supports and barriers associated with teaching science to nonmainstream students. The study involved 221 third- through fifth-grade teachers from 15 urban elementary schools in a large school district. The teachers completed a survey in the spring of 2005. The internal consistency reliability estimates, Cronbach alpha, for scales created from the survey items were within an acceptable range. The teachers reported that they were generally knowledgeable about science topics at their grade level and that they taught science to promote students' understanding and inquiry. In contrast, the teachers reported rarely discussing student diversity in their own teaching or with other teachers at their schools. The teachers identified specific organizational supports and barriers in teaching science with diverse student groups at both the school and classroom levels.

While some students have the opportunity to engage in the kinds of structured inquiry and real-world problem solving called for in the science education reform literature, many other students receive only a daily grind of note taking, end-of-chapter questions and sample test items from state assessments. The result is an engagement gap whereby some students come to see science as personally and directly meaningful to their lives and their futures while others come to see science as yet one more subject-area test serving as an obstacle to high school graduation. English language learners (ELL students) have been especially prone to suffer from this engagement gap because of two prevailing assumptions about teaching rigorous content to English learners. First is the assumption that ELL students must develop English language proficiency before they are able to engage in meaningful content-area learning such as science. The second assumption is that the best way to prepare ELL students (and others considered to be "at risk" for test performance) to succeed on high-stakes standardized tests is through drilling and practice with test-like items. Drawing upon examples from two projects with urban middle school students, the author highlights ways that rejecting these assumptions can reduce the engagement gap for ELL students. Both projects used a model of civic engagement to promote science inquiry and academic language development.

We describe a model professional development intervention currently being implemented to support 3rd- through 5th-grade teachers' science instruction in 9 urban elementary schools with high numbers of English language learners. The intervention consists of curriculum materials for students and teachers, as well as teacher workshops throughout the school year. The curriculum materials and workshops are designed to complement and reinforce each other in improving teachers' knowledge, beliefs, and practices in science instruction and English language development for ELL students. In addition to these primary goals, secondary goals of the intervention included supporting mathematical understanding, improving scientific reasoning, capitalizing on students' home language and culture, and preparing students for high-stakes science testing and accountability through hands-on, inquiry-based learning experiences.

This study examined the impact of a professional development intervention aimed at helping elementary teachers incorporate elements of students' home language and culture into science instruction. The intervention consisted of instructional units and materials and teacher workshops. The research involved 43 third- and fourth-grade teachers at six elementary schools in a large urban school district. These teachers participated in the intervention for 2 consecutive years. The study was conducted using both quantitative and qualitative methods based on focus group interviews, a questionnaire, and classroom observations. The results indicate that as teachers began their participation in the intervention, they rarely incorporated students' home language or culture into science instruction. During the 2-year period of the intervention, teachers' beliefs and practices remained relatively stable and did not show significant change. Possible explanations for the limited effectiveness of the intervention are addressed, and implications for professional development efforts are discussed. (Contains 4 tables and 6 notes.)