Pedagogical Language Knowledge

Analyzing Linguistic Features of Secondary History Texts

Achugar, Schleppegrell, and Oteíza (2007, p. 11) describe two teacher preparation initiatives designed to help mainstream history teachers develop a “metalanguage for talking about how knowledge is constructed in language” in their subject area and how to incorporate that knowledge into their teaching. As part of the California History Project, a teacher development initiative designed to foster content-area knowledge among secondary history teachers, the authors developed “Literacy in History” workshops to support mainstream teachers in working with their increasing numbers of ELs. The workshops were guided by the notions

that students need to develop literacy in important and authentic curriculum contexts, that genre is a way of highlighting patterns in the way language is used to write history, and that focusing on grammar is a means of discussing and critiquing texts. (p. 14)

According to Achugar et al. (2007), a focus on genre helped teachers understand the mismatch between the kinds of texts students are expected to write in history classrooms and those they are assigned to read. Subsequently, in-depth training to deconstruct texts at the sentence level allowed teachers to analyze textbook passages and primary source documents and to incorporate this kind of language analysis with ELs. An external evaluation, according to the authors, showed that ELs and other students of teachers participating in the summer institute had greater gains on a standardized social studies test than did students of nonparticipating teachers. At the same time, teachers reported that learning how to use the language-focused strategies represented a major commitment on their part but that the time and effort necessary diminished as the teachers gained experience. According to the authors, teachers reported that the effort they did expend represented time well-spent because it fostered enhanced critical thinking in their students, more in-depth discussions, and deeper historical understanding.

In a second project, SFL specialists worked with the Institute for Learning initiative at the University of Pittsburgh, as part of its “disciplinary literacy” courses targeted for teachers and administrators with the goal of developing schools’ capacity to foster “thoughtful, cognitively demanding engagement with complex written texts, difficult problems, and challenging inquiries,” especially for struggling students (Achugar et al., 2007, p. 16). The linguists worked collaboratively with historians to develop guiding questions to help educators connect content and language through the analysis of texts. Teachers and administrators from schools around the United States participated in 3-week-long professional development sessions that included activities that allowed them to experience, as learners, the opportunity to examine historical texts from a linguistics perspective. The SFL approach is exemplified by the guiding questions used by the initiative to focus teachers on the linguistic and rhetorical features used to construct historical meaning in particular texts (Achugar et al., 2007, p. 17):

To address each of these questions, teachers were directed to identify how the structure and linguistic features of a text provide information. For example, teachers learned that the particular positions taken by an author in relation to an addressed topic can be understood both by identifying modals (such as will, must, have to, usually) and through evaluative vocabulary expressing attitudes, emotions, judgments, and appreciation. Likewise, they were taught that how an author constructs a relationship with her intended audience can be revealed both by the use of particular types of clauses (declarative, interrogative, imperative) and by pronouns and “terms of address” (Achugar et al., 2007, p. 17). According to the authors, participants in the institute reported that the linguistic tools and text-exploration strategies featured in the institute increased their confidence in working with ELs, helped their students produce better writing, and fostered more in-depth historical thinking.

Promoting “Functional” Feedback in Secondary English Language Arts

In an example of the use of SFL in secondary English language arts, Aguirre-Muñoz et al. (2008) developed four training modules to familiarize in-service middle school English/language arts teachers with SFL and a genre-based approach to writing instruction. Middle school teachers were encouraged to help their students respond to literature by focusing on the linguistic features authors use to signify protagonists and antagonists, key events, how “qualities and characters are ascribed and evaluated,” and how overall cohesion is manifested in the text (p. 300). In addition to reading overviews of SFL theory, teachers were presented with guidance in analyzing examples of texts generated by ELs, the opportunity to role-play “minilessons” designed to teach writing, and joint lesson planning activities. Throughout the sessions, teachers were presented with a set of strategies to incorporate into their discussions of literature and writing instruction and feedback. Aguirre et al. report high satisfaction with the course expressed by teachers and a statistically significant shift in how participants provided feedback, planned for instruction, and incorporated the training into their instruction. Teachers decreased the amount of “traditional” feedback related to writing style and errors and increased their “functional” feedback related to the audiences and purposes students were aiming to address. Furthermore, the authors report, the majority of teachers incorporated the content of the training into their writing instruction.

Using SFL to Enhance Elementary Writing Instruction

At the elementary level, Brisk and Zisselsberger (2011) describe a professional development project that introduced in-service elementary teachers to an SFL approach to the teaching of writing. The authors position the power of SFL in terms of its ability to help teachers focus on how particular syntactic forms are important not because they represent the “correct rules” but rather because they “are essential for certain contexts” (p. 112). Brisk and Zisselsberger argue that SFL-based pedagogy “makes the linguistic, lexical, grammatical, and schematic structure of texts within genres explicit,” providing greater access for all learners to be able to understand and produce them (p. 114). The authors designed, implemented, and researched a university-based professional development initiative participated in by participants (eight mainstream K–5 teachers, one K–2 science teacher, one ESL teacher, and a literacy coach) from three elementary schools. The participants attended professional development sessions before and during the school year. In these sessions, the facilitator (Brisk) presented a foundation of SFL and its application to teaching writing and shared materials that included selected target genres found in elementary school texts, explanations of each genre’s structural organization and language demands, and strategies for teaching each genre.

According to Brisk and Zisselsberger (2011), interviews and other discussions with teachers revealed that teachers found the materials useful for planning classes and the professional development helpful for complementing their current curricula. All participants tried new ways of teaching writing as a result of the professional development, such as focusing their students’ journal writing on a variety of audiences and purposes instead of simply writing for themselves. About two thirds of the teachers “carried out well-planned writing units integrated with their literacy and content area lessons” (p. 117). The majority of participants felt that the most direct impact on their teaching, and by extension on their students’ learning, stemmed from the one-to-one coaching provided by the researchers. Teachers found this coaching helpful for incorporating a focus on textual and linguistic features into their existing writing lessons; for planning, enacting, and writing new lessons with these features in mind; and for analyzing student work. Some teachers reported that their change in instructional practices as a result of the initiative had affected their students. These teachers reported that their students’ writing had improved because students had been “let in on the secret” of how texts are created in the context of U.S. schooling. Teachers also pointed out that students moved beyond recounts and narratives to experiment with genres such as procedures, reports, and expositions. According to the authors, teachers also associated their own ability to provide better coaching, direction, and feedback with students’ ability to write longer, more coherent pieces about a wider variety of topics, and with students’ greater enthusiasm toward writing.

Brisk and Zisselsberger (2011) are also forthright about the challenges they faced in introducing teachers to SFL. In response to participants’ dissatisfaction with not being able to make connections during the workshops between the professional development’s focus on what to teach and their desire to learn how to teach it, the facilitators devoted the last two sessions to instructional practices, along with guiding steps for teachers to follow. Believing that teachers were struggling with the amount of new information they were encountering, the facilitators themselves analyzed the linguistic features both of commercial texts and sample student texts. The authors point out that the new time and focus devoted to practical guidelines for organizing lessons and units was helpful to teachers but took away time needed to help them gain a better understanding of the functional linguistics approach to use in their future instruction.

Reflecting on potential applications to the preparation of teachers to support ELs for the language and literacy demands presented by new standards, the pedagogical language knowledge offered by the SFL initiatives profiled above centers on awareness of the linguistic features of school texts, the particular ways that language is used to realize meaning in those texts (in particular disciplines), and how teachers can focus students’ attention on those features in support of students’ engagement with and production of such texts. As mentioned in each of the profiles discussed above, considerable time and effort are needed to prepare teachers with the technical linguistic knowledge necessary to incorporate an SFL approach in their classrooms, which of course implies that teacher educators themselves must have this knowledge as well. The technical demands of SFL have been the source of criticism of the approach (for a discussion of and response to these and other critiques, see Gebhard, 2010; Gebhard & Harman, 2011). Another critique has been the potential for SFL pedagogy to lead to the “static representation of text types rather than a critical analysis of disciplinary discourse” (Gebhard, 2010, p. 801, citing Luke, 1996). Addressing this last critique, at least one teacher preparation initiative for ELs, discussed next, has integrated SFL with critical language awareness in an effort to focus teachers’ and students’ attention on the roles of power and identity in using language to engage with different audiences for different purposes.

Participant Structures as Professional Learning Tasks

Galguera (2011), studying the results of his own practice as a teacher educator, focuses on the development of pedagogical language knowledge through preservice teachers’ engagement in varying participant structures designed to apprentice teachers’ future students into academic discourse communities. The specific participant structures modeled, such as pair-shares, round-robins, and jigsaws, were chosen to highlight for teachers ways to promote the connection between oral language proficiency and reading comprehension, as part of efforts to prepare all students for “language use for academic purposes” (p. 85). The participant structures served as Professional Learning Tasks (PLTs) designed to ground teacher preparation pedagogy “in the tasks, questions, and problems of practice” (D. L. Ball & Cohen, 1999, p. 27, as quoted in Galguera, 2011, p. 91). In this case, the purpose of the PLTs was to provide teachers with examples of language development scaffolds (Walqui, 2006) and opportunities to discuss larger issues of pedagogy and curriculum to promote language development.

The participant structures were also designed to present teachers with a “functional view of academic language,” one that focuses on students’ ability to use language to do things such as describe complexity and abstractions, use figurative expressions, be appropriately explicit for different audiences, and use evidence for arguments that are “nuanced, qualified, and objective (Zwiers, 2008)” (Galguera, 2011, p. 90, citation in original). Galguera contrasts this approach with those that envision broad distinctions between “academic language” and “social” or “conversational” language (e.g., Cummins, 2008). Drawing on Barnes (1992) and Bunch (2006), Galguera argues that such distinctions are misleading because it is “expected and actually desirable” for students to use vernacular varieties or even their home languages in group work or while preparing for presentational tasks that will require more formal language use in English (Galguera, 2011, p. 89; see also Bunch, 2010).

Galguera (2011) reports on written reflections by and interviews with elementary and secondary teacher candidates in two of his courses regarding the use of two of the targeted participant structures. These included an Extended Anticipation Guide that supported candidates in activities requiring them to read in Spanish, a language that few of the them spoke fluently, and an Oral Language Development Jigsaw requiring students to engage in a series of group configurations to describe “somewhat ambiguous” illustrations to classmates and create a narrative using the illustrations (p. 94; see also Walqui, 2006). Written responses indicated that students were “generally appreciative” of both participant structures, and most students indicated that they would use them in their future placements (p. 95). In interviews, students said that engagement in the participant structures helped them understand and contextualize class readings and discussions more than traditional lectures or class discussions had done. Students particularly highlighted their experiences engaging in the reading task in Spanish, both in terms of the challenges involved in working in a language they had limited proficiency in as well as their feelings of accomplishment regarding what they were able to do with support during the activity. In follow-up interviews reflecting on what lessons about “teaching for language development” remained most salient more than a month after the course, students focused on the role of the target participant structures in scaffolding students’ reading development. According to Galguera, both written reflections and interviews also demonstrated evidence of preservice teachers’ use of the participant structures to make connections to theories and constructs discussed elsewhere in his course or in other courses in the program.

Preparing Elementary Teachers to Integrate Language and Science Instruction

Stoddart and her colleagues (Stoddart, Bravo, Solis, Mosqueda, & Rodriguez, 2011; Stoddart, Solis, Tolbert, & Bravo, 2010; see also Bravo, Solís, & Mosqueda, 2011; Bravo, Solís, Mosqueda, Collett, & Mckinney De Royston, 2011; Solís, Bravo, Mosqueda, Collett, & Mckinney De Royston, 2011) drew on sociocultural theory to develop a preservice teacher education intervention designed to integrate a focus on inquiry-based science instruction with language and literacy for ELs for preservice elementary teachers of science. The NSF-funded Effective Science Teaching for English Learners (ESTELL) is designed to prepare novice elementary school teachers to engage with their students in five central practices that manifest the “reciprocal and synergistic” relationship between science learning and language and literacy development (Stoddart et al., 2010, p. 157): integrating science, language, and literacy development; engaging students in scientific discourse; developing scientific understanding; collaborative inquiry in science learning; and contextualized science instruction. ⁵ The practices are based on sociocultural theory (e.g., A. S. Rogoff & Wertsch, 1984; Tharp & Gallimore, 1988) positing that students learn through social activity in contexts that are “culturally, linguistically, and cognitively meaningful and relevant” (Stoddart et al., 2010, p. 153), as well as empirical research on effective instruction for ELs emanating from this perspective (see, e.g., Stoddart et al., 2002; Stoddart et al., 2011).

The five practices were incorporated into four science methods courses developed collaboratively between the researchers and teacher educators in three state universities preparing elementary teachers in California (Stoddart et al., 2011). Three courses were designed for candidates preparing to deliver instruction in English and one for candidates pursuing a credential authorizing them to deliver instruction in Spanish. Each course revolved around preparation to teach state-standards-based instructional units designed to illustrate the practices, with methods instructors focusing particularly on one or two of the practices during each unit. In addition, cooperating teachers in student teaching practicum sites participated in 2-day professional development workshops that included an introduction to ESTELL pedagogy, review of lesson plans that exemplify ESTELL practices, observation guides and other mentoring resources, and readings on effective mentoring and science instruction for ELs.

Preliminary results of the first year of the intervention showed statistically significant differences between teacher candidates participating in the intervention compared with a control group for several categories on a classroom observation protocol designed to measure teachers’ implementation of the ESTELL principles in their student teaching sites (Stoddart et al., 2011). This positive impact was most pronounced for candidates in the bilingual program, who, compared with the “business as usual” control group (also in a bilingual program), used instructional formats that promoted greater interaction among students and between teacher and students, were more likely to model “science discourse patterns” such as “providing evidence, making scientific explanations, or even proposing methods for conducting inquiry activities,” and were more likely to use “the kind of investigatory and epistemic types of questions and commentary that are highly restricted for ELs in classrooms where yes and no, closed type of questions dominate classroom talk” (p. 14). Two additional studies have investigated different aspects of the same intervention. Solís et al. (2011) found that, according to classroom observations conducted during student teaching and again 1 year after earning the credential, treatment group participants outperformed teachers in the control group on two domains (language and literacy and contextualization). Bravo, Solís, Mosqueda, Collett, et al. (2011) found that the achievement of students on a science writing prompt after a month-long unit taught by ESTELL-trained teachers outperformed students in a control condition.

Preparing Teachers to Scaffold English Learners’ Language Development and Academic Success

Walqui (2011), through WestEd’s Quality Teaching for English Learners (QTEL) initiative, has enacted a vision of pedagogical language knowledge for mainstream teachers—and for those who work to prepare them—that integrates sociolinguistic approaches to language and sociocultural approaches to learning (see also Walqui & van Lier, 2010). Drawing on Vygotsky (1978, 1987a) and others, the initiative was based on a view of learning as “joint activity that focuses on academic concepts and skills, and provides opportunities for learning through interaction” (Walqui, 2011, p. 162). As described by Walqui, because “all learning is mediated through language,” and because, from a sociocultural perspective, development occurs when learners encounter tasks beyond their present ability to carry out independently, the teacher’s role is to offer “deliberate, well-constructed” instruction to foster such development. Joint activity ultimately fosters students’ ability to progress “from apprenticeship to appropriation, from the social to the individual plane” (p. 163). Concurrently, QTEL is based on sociolinguistic principles that privilege students’ ability to use language to communicate “purposely and appropriately within specific contexts” over their accuracy, correctness, or lexical or grammatical complexity (p. 164). In secondary disciplinary contexts, successful communication is inherently linked to the joint activity required for learning, requiring that “participants in an interaction understand each other’s ideas and intentions, respond to them by accepting them, building on what has been stated, or countering arguments in order to accomplish their social purposes” (p. 164).

Sociocultural theory is also the basis for QTEL’s conception of how teachers learn. QTEL participants are invited to work in their own zones of proximal development, to participate in joint activity that requires them to use relevant concepts and appropriate language (e.g., by participating in and analyzing lessons developed for ELs), and to progress from apprenticeship to appropriation over time (by eventually developing their own lessons based on the models and possibly coming up with their own innovations as their own theory and practice develops).

Walqui (2011) describes this process in a collaboration between WestEd and the New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE) designed to prepare both instructional support specialists (those responsible for the professional development of teachers) and in-service teachers for educating adolescent ELs with “high levels of academic engagement, rigor, and depth.” The initiative was designed to help educators learn how to “scaffold the students’ development of conceptual, academic, and linguistic subject matter skills” in the middle and high school grades (see also Walqui, 2006). Using an apprenticeship model grounded in the principles discussed above, QTEL’s work with NYCDOE involved several phases of professional development designed to allow instructional support specialists to appropriate the “tools, resources, language, and understandings” to support teachers in developing their expertise to teach ELs. Phase 1 included three intensive, week-long institutes for the instructional specialists. These sessions were designed to build a “firm base” in theoretical understandings and instructional practices and included opportunities for the specialists to read and critique professional articles, design lessons, and reflect on the relationship between their prior notions of appropriate instruction for ELs and their emerging understandings based on the institute. In Phase 2, the specialists did participant observation as WestEd staff engaged in professional development with teachers from around the city. In this phase, specialists had the opportunity to observe, participate in, reflect on, and discuss the kind of professional development with teachers that they would ultimately facilitate themselves. In Phase 3, focused on enactment, the instructional specialists, after meeting several prerequisites to demonstrate their ability to do so, led QTEL professional development for New York teachers for five consecutive days, assisted by WestEd “coaches” who provided support throughout the process. During Phase 4, designed to foster appropriation, the specialists designed and conducted a minimum of 3 hours of professional development of their own, with WestEd staff serving as consultants but not active coaches. The specialists videotaped their own sessions and had opportunities to reflect upon sections of the videos afterwards.

Walqui (2011) argues that the kind of learning around which QTEL is centered is only visible when measured, both quantitatively and qualitatively, as changes in engagement in participation over time. Although outcomes of the NYC initiative are not reported in detail, Walqui (2011) relates that evaluations of the initial building the base institutes (Phase 1) were “unanimously superlative” (p. 169). In Phase 3, Walqui argues that the number of specialists who passed the prerequisites and successfully conducted their own sessions is indicative of the power of the apprenticeship model to induce both “handover” of responsibility from project leaders to participating educators and the concurrent “take over” of roles by these same educators.

Two randomized experimental studies (Bos et al., 2012; Rockman et al., n.d.) of other QTEL initiatives found no evidence of improvement of school-level standardized test scores for students in schools where some teachers had participated in QTEL, yet neither study was able to isolate student outcomes for students taught by participating teachers, so the meaning of those findings is unclear. Furthermore, fidelity of QTEL implementation was significantly compromised in both studies, and important limitations were associated with available instruments. These factors may account for other disappointing results, including lack of evidence of change in teacher attitudes, beliefs, and practices. Nevertheless, there were some positive outcomes reported in both studies. Using a measure of classroom quality developed specifically to capture practices aligned with QTEL, Bos et al. (2012) found a statistically significant impact of student-to-student interaction on overall scores on this measure in QTEL classrooms compared with the control. Rockman et al. (n.d.) found beneficial impacts for teachers in the treatment group on assessments measuring teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge and on surveys indicating a reduction in teachers’ reliance on teacher-directed instruction (i.e., short, known-answer questions) and a decrease in teachers’ simplification of communication (consistent with QTEL’s promotion of opportunities for the elaborated use of English by both teachers and students). Meanwhile, qualitative data analyzed by Rockman et al. indicate that teachers who participated in QTEL professional development were positive about the program, that qualitative classroom observations revealed increased instances of engagement of students in higher order thinking and reciprocal talk, that teachers reported changes in their own classroom practice, and that teachers and administrators indicated that they observed positive changes in students’ learning behaviors and attitudes when they implemented QTEL tasks.

In all three of the initiatives described in this section (focusing on pedagogical language knowledge through professional learning tasks; preparing teachers with sociocultural tools to integrate a focus on language, science education, and ELs; and preparing teachers to scaffold ELs’ language development and content learning by means of the QTEL initiative), further qualitative and quantitative research would be helpful to understand the precise nature of the pedagogical language knowledge that the teachers were engaged in developing, the role of the various aspects of the intervention in the development of that knowledge, and the relationship between different aspects of that knowledge and change in classroom practice. All three, however, point to how such knowledge can be treated as related to, and developed in, the kinds of practices that will be central to teaching and learning in the era of new standards.

Promoting Students’ Home and Community Language, Literacy, and Cultural Practices as Resources for Learning in Mainstream Classrooms

The importance of conceiving of students’ home language, literacy, and cultural practices as a resource for both learning and language development in English has long been highlighted as an essential aspect of teacher preparation for ELs. In light of increasing globalization, transnational migration, and linguistic heterogeneity in the 21st century, Garcia and colleagues (O. Garcia, 2009; O. Garcia, Flores, & Haiwen, 2011; Garcia & Kleifgen, 2010) have discussed the need for a “dynamic theoretical framework of bilingualism” that “allows the simultaneous coexistence of different languages in communication . . . and supports the development of multiple linguistic identities” (O. Garcia, 2009, p. 119). Even in the midst of increasing racial and socioeconomic segregation, O. Garcia et al. (2011) assert that linguistic heterogeneity within classrooms is on the rise, as Latinos, Black, and Asian speakers of languages other than English often study in the same, non-White classrooms. O. Garcia (2009) and O. Garcia et al. (2011) describe two schools that promote the home language use of students from a wide variety of linguistic backgrounds within classes where the main medium of instruction is English. In a similar vein, Moschkovich (2007, 2012) has highlighted the necessity of teachers understanding the importance of both students’ home languages and their developing English in mathematics classrooms as they demonstrate what they are learning and develop the various “mathematical discourses” relevant to the discipline. Such instructional arrangements are promising for supporting access for ELs to instruction that will prepare them for meeting the new standards, but only if the pedagogical language knowledge of their teachers includes an understanding of the nature of bilingualism, even if those teachers are monolingual speakers of English.

The literature on grounding instruction in the linguistic and cultural practices of nondominant student populations more generally is also relevant for conceptualizing the pedagogical language knowledge for mainstream teachers of ELs. Focusing explicitly on preparing teachers for speakers of stigmatized varieties of English, Godley et al. (2006) focus on sociolinguistic issues, especially those emanating from “negative beliefs about the grammaticality, logic, and even morality of stigmatized dialects” that are “widespread in U.S. society and difficult to change” (p. 30). According to Godley et al., teachers need to learn that “standard” varieties of a language—those valued in schools, businesses, government, and the media—are no better than any other variety by any objective linguistic measures and are preferred only because they represent the varieties used by those in power. The authors point out that substantial research evidence demonstrates “strong connections between teachers’ negative attitudes about stigmatized dialects, lower teacher expectations for students who speak them, and thus lower academic achievement on the part of students” (p. 31). They, therefore, conclude that any efforts to diminish the achievement gap between dominant and nondominant students must include a focus on preparing teachers for working with speakers of stigmatized varieties of English (Alim, 2005; Baugh, 1999). The authors, focusing on efforts that research has shown to have positive results (e.g., A. F. Ball & Muhammad, 2003; Okawa, 2003), propose three themes for foundational teacher education courses and programs to address dialect diversity for future and practicing teachers. First, they advocate for anticipating and overcoming resistance based on negative attitudes toward stigmatized dialects (p. 31). Second, they focus on the need to address issues of language, power, and identity, including the need for teachers to become willing to “teach for social change” because “the very act of affirming vernacular language runs counter to mainstream language ideologies” (p. 33). This includes viewing the teaching of standard English as a move designed to increase students’ linguistic repertoires as opposed to a more correct substitute for the language varieties students already use. The third focus advocated by Godley et al. involves highlighting pedagogical applications of research on language variation for improving students’ academic success and development of literacy by emphasizing dialect diversity as a resource, using contrastive analysis to distinguish dialect patters from errors, and building on rather than replacing students’ “robust language competence” (p. 35).

Focusing specifically on secondary content-area instruction for students from linguistically and culturally nondominant groups, Lee (2007) highlights the “crucial importance of understanding cultural displays of knowledge constructed in the everyday routine practices of children and adolescents and the relationship of such displays to targets of academic knowledge” (p. 25). Highlighting work done to understand and focus on the relationship between the home and school practices of linguistically and culturally diverse students in mathematics (e.g., Nasir & Saxe, 2003) and science (e.g., Rosebery, Warren, & Conant, 1992), and her own work on African American students in English literature classrooms, Lee describes “Cultural Modeling” as “a framework for the design of learning environments that examines what youth know from everyday settings to support specific subject matter learning” (p. 15). Lee presents classroom examples of one teacher’s use of what she calls “culturally responsive instructional discourse”—designed to maximize the ways in which students’ use of “African American Vernacular English and its rhetorical features can serve as a resource for communicating complex discipline specific reasoning, in this case in the study of literature” (p. 107). Lee argues that a wide range of considerations need to be made in order to negotiate differences between community-based and school-based norms (p. 25), several of which are directly related to language and literacy: “linguistic differences, such as differences in norms for verbal interactions, in basic syntactic structures and lexicon, and in assumptions about appropriate gestural language; or other arenas such as in epistemological orientations” (p. 25). To manage such negotiation, Lee (2007) emphasizes the need for teachers to have a deep and broad knowledge of the nature of the target discipline and the role of culture not only in issues such as motivation, topic relevance, and classroom management but also in what she calls the “innards of subject matter learning” (p. 111). Lee argues that while foundational classes during preservice teacher education programs can help, the “pedagogical toolkit” necessary for Cultural Modeling consists of “knowledge-in-practice” that can only be developed in teachers’ own classrooms.

Focusing on Informational Density in Content-Area Texts

Recently, Fillmore and Fillmore (2012) have pointed out that to become proficient in reading the kind of complex texts called for by the ELA standards, ELs must have opportunities to engage with such texts. This is because no one, including native speakers of English, is likely to find conversational partners, even teachers, to interact with them in the kind of language used in complex written texts. Furthermore, the authors argue, academic language cannot be “taught” in separate classes in the way that language teaching has usually been conceived. For ELs, the problem is that they have often only encountered simplified texts. As Fillmore and Fillmore put it, such texts, “given prophylactically as a safeguard against failure—actually prevent [ELs] from discovering how language works in academic discourse” (p. 2). According to the authors, much of the challenge in reading complex texts stems from their informational density, because the linguistic means used to embed such density are often unfamiliar to ELs and inexperienced readers. Therefore, according to Fillmore and Fillmore, ELs need instructional support from teachers to “discover how to gain access to the ideas, concepts, and information that are encoded in the text” (p. 6). The authors are clear to point out that they are not arguing that students need to learn the grammatical terms that linguists might use to describe the complexity of a text but rather need support in accessing meaning in such texts. The authors describe efforts developed by Lily Wong Fillmore in several cities to support students in accessing complex texts in science, social studies, and English literature at various grade levels, K–12. A key component of the strategy is having teachers spend a part of each instructional day focusing on a single sentence chosen from the disciplinary text that students were working on. The goal is to help students unpack language that exhibited informational density in order to “gradually internalize an awareness of the relation between specific linguistic patterns and the functions they serve in texts” (p. 6). Fillmore and Fillmore do not address the preparation of teachers for what they would need to know to help students unpack these “juicy sentences” (p. 8), but it is clear that such preparation would require a particular type of pedagogical language knowledge to help students analyze informational density to unpack meaning in the ways advocated for by the authors.

Talk as a Tool for Learning

Although they do not discuss implications for ELs, Michaels and O’Connor (2011) outline an approach they have found successful in getting teachers to foster productive classroom talk conducive to learning. I discuss the approach here because of its potential implications for ELs and the kind of pedagogical language knowledge that would underlie such an approach. Drawing on sociocultural and sociohistorical theory and research on talk as “mediational means,” Michaels and O’Connor advocate for working with teachers to understand language as a tool, and more specifically, what they call talk moves as a tool teachers can employ to foster learning in “any content area, at any grade level, and often at any point in a discussion” (p. 12). The authors describe working with teachers to understand four “necessary and foundational steps” to create the conditions necessary for discussions that enhance students’ reasoning and understanding: (a) help students share, expand, and clarify their own thoughts; (b) help students listen carefully to each other; (c) help students “deepen” their reasoning; and (d) help students engage with the reasoning of others. Teachers are then provided with 10 explicit “productive talk tools” (see also Chapin, Anderson, & O’Connor, 2003; Michaels, O’Connor, Hall, & Resnick, 2002). For example, to help students share, expand, and clarify their thinking, teachers provide students with time to think through partnering, writing, or wait time; encourage students to say more; and verify or clarify students’ thinking by revoicing what they have said. To help students listen carefully to one another, teachers ask Who can rephrase or repeat? and What did your partner say? Tools designed to meet the goals of helping students deepen their own and others’ reasoning include Asking for Evidence or Reasoning, eliciting a Challenge or Counterexample, and asking students to Add On to their classmates’ arguments. Important questions, not addressed by Michaels and O’Connor (2011), must be considered in thinking about the pedagogical language knowledge that would be required for teachers to create the conditions under which students at various stages of learning English could participate in and benefit from the kinds of talk-centered classrooms advocated. At the same time, a focus on “talk as tools” is clearly one way to get teachers to think about language in a way that can get them to move beyond a focus on “native-like” or “standard” English and instead focus on the role of language as a resource for learning. Simultaneously, with proper support, it is possible that classrooms featuring the kinds of talk moves advocated for by Michaels and O’Connor could serve as productive sites for promoting the kind of interaction productive for the development of English by ELs.

Supporting the Development of Language Functions Corresponding to the New Standards

Finally, another way to think about the pedagogical language knowledge necessary for mainstream teachers to work with ELs can be extrapolated from a new comprehensive framework developed by the Council of Chief State School Officers for the development of English Language Proficiency standards corresponding to the Common Core State Standards and the Next Generation Science Standards (CCSSO, 2012). The framework itself, along with sample English language proficiency standards meeting the framework’s guidelines, suggests that the language demands associated with the standards can only be understood by first looking at the “key practices” associated with each set of standards. For example, key practices in the Common Core standards for mathematics include, among others, making sense of problems and persevering in solving them, reasoning abstractly and qualitatively, constructing viable arguments and critiquing the reasoning of others, and modeling with mathematics. In turn, for each of those practices, the CCSSO framework identifies relevant analytical tasks and productive and receptive language functions.

For example, the analytical tasks behind the practice of constructing viable arguments and critiquing the reasoning of others in mathematics include the following: understanding and using the stated assumptions, definitions, and previously established results; making conjectures and building a logical progression of statements to explore the truth of those conjectures; justifying conclusions, communicating them to others, and responding to counterarguments; and so on (CCSSO, 2012). For that same key practice, the framework identifies relevant receptive language functions, in this case related to comprehending oral and written concepts, procedures, or strategies used in arguments and reasoning: questions and critiques using words or other representations, explanations offered using words or other representations by others (peers or teachers), and explanations offered by written texts using words or other representations. Productive language functions for that same practice include those used to communicate using words (orally and in writing) about concepts, procedures, strategies, claims, arguments, and other information related to constructing arguments and critiquing reasoning: provide written or verbal explanation of argument, justify conclusions and respond to counterarguments, recognize and use counterexamples, and so on.

As reproduced in Table 1, the framework then provides a matrix conceptualizing the different types of communicative activities that would characterize students’ and teachers’ language use in classrooms engaged in learning the key disciplinary practices at the heart of each set of common standards. The matrix includes teachers’ and students’ receptive and productive language tasks, modality (referring to whether communication is “one-to-many,” “many-to-many,” “one-to-group,” or “one-to-one”), and examples of the types of colloquial, classroom, and disciplinary registers that would be relevant for learning in that particular discipline. Although the document was intended to be used by state agencies in their development of English language proficiency standards, it can also be read as an articulation of what would need to be addressed by any attempt to define the pedagogical language knowledge that would serve teachers well in designing classrooms in which ELs could both simultaneously engage with the practices at the heart of the new standards and continue to develop the linguistic resources relevant for doing so.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 1

Discipline-Specific Language in the K–12 Mathematics Classroom

		Students’ Language Use and Associated Language Tasks
			Written
Features of Classroom Language	Teachers’ Receptive and Productive Language Use and Associated Language Tasks	Oral: Receptive and Productive	Receptive	Productive
Modality	Explanations and presentations (one-to-many, many-to-many)	Whole-class participation (one-to-many)	Comprehension of classroom-based and school-based formal and informal written and multimodal communication	Production of classroom-based and school-based formal and informal written communication, such as Explanations of word Descriptions of one’s own reasoning, solutions, or strategies Descriptions of others’ reasoning, solutions, or strategies
	Communication with small groups (one-to-group)	Small group participation (one-to-group)
	Communication with individual students (one-to-one)	Interaction with individual peers (one-to-one)
	Communication with parents (one-to-one)	Interaction with adults within school contexts (one-to-one)
Registers	Colloquial + classroom registers + discipline-specific language and terminology	Colloquial + classroom registers + discipline-specific language and terminology	Math-learner written registers + discipline-specific language and terminology + disciplinary discourse conventions
Examples of registers	Classroom registers used by teachers for several goals or purposes Giving directions Guiding processes Checking for understanding Facilitating discussions Exploring concepts Presenting	Classroom registers used by students for several goals or purposes Comprehending oral directions Asking for clarification Participating in discussions Participating in exploratory talk Participating in presentational talk	Classroom, school, science-learner written texts are of multiple types (and expressed through language in certain registers) Grade-level texts and textbooks Teacher handouts/worksheets Labeling of items in diagrams and other visuals Writing by other students Internet materials Math press articles Syllabi School announcements Formal documents (e.g., grades, assignments, and assessment results)
	Math discourse registers used by teachers for several goals or purposes Describing models, patterns, and structures Explaining relationships between quantities and representations Explaining reasoning Constructing and defending arguments	Learner-appropriate math discourse registers and conventions used by students for several goals or purposes Describing models, patterns, and structures Explaining relationships between quantities and representations Explaining solutions and strategies Explaining one’s own or others’ reasoning Constructing, defending, and critiquing arguments, reasoning, and solutions

Note. Reproduced with permission from the Framework for English Language Proficiency Development Standards Corresponding to the Common Core State Standards and the Next Generation Science Standards, Council of Chief State School Officers, 2012, Washington, DC. Copyright 2012 by the Council of Chief State School Officers.