Abstract
How do teacher candidates develop and reflect on their knowledge in second language literacy to support their students in a Professional Development School (PDS)? This article reports preliminary findings of a qualitative study that investigates the learning process of single-subject credential candidates in a pilot urban PDS site where they co-taught and co-learned in an English as a Second Language (ESL) program through an on-site seminar credential class. Data collection included, but not limited to, researcher observational fieldnotes, candidate reflections, term papers, and transcripts of interviews and performances. The study finds that in an interactive, social learning space created by the PDS setting, teacher candidates challenged their assumptions about teaching English among immigrant students, as well as identified language learning opportunities in traditional worksheet-based activities and a communicative project.
Highlights
Fanglin is a recent immigrant student in an American public school, as the student population has been undergoing steady demographic changes in the country over the past decades
In California, for example, the percentage of public school students participating in programs for English language learners (ELs) rose from twenty-six percent to twenty-nine percent between 2002 and 2011
Research shows that mainstream teachers are not sufficiently prepared for ELs (Waxman & Tellez, 2002; Rubinstein-Avila & Lee, 2014), especially those in secondary schools who struggle between low academic achievement and high dropout rates (Major, 2006)
Summary
Professional development schools (PDSs), first proposed by the Holmes Group in 1986, offer both a practical platform for meaningful field experiences and a reflective tool with which teacher candidates integrate first-hand knowledge about students into teaching, and theory into practice, under the tutelage of schoolteachers and university instructors (Gebhard, 1998). 71) can be investigated, designed, and negotiated, respectively, in a context where traditional front-loading of theory and method gives way to purposeful partnership with language teachers in local schools, outside university seminar courses In such spaces, teachers and students share past experiences, understand their changing social roles in relation with other participants, anticipate actions through the interaction of situations and events, and study how language itself works in the classroom – a community of practice – on a daily basis (Hymes, 1974; Lave & Wenger, 1991). The project reported in this article was a pilot before the institutionalization of a PDS partnership with the middle school and its district; findings will shed light on ways to create conditions for effective teacher preparation for language diversity and sustainable collaboration with local school communities
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