Multilingual Learners Research Articles

Language as a tool for intercultural understanding: Multilingual approaches in global citizenship education

The paper explores the pivotal role of language as a catalyst for fostering intercultural understanding within the framework of multilingual approaches in global citizenship education. In an increasingly interconnected world, language is a dynamic tool for bridging cultural divides and nurturing empathy, respect, and appreciation for diverse perspectives. Multilingualism, embraced within educational contexts, becomes instrumental in shaping informed global citizens equipped with the skills and mindset to navigate the complexities of our interconnected world. This paper delves into the theoretical underpinnings of multilingual education and its implications for global citizenship, emphasizing the transformative potential of linguistic diversity. By incorporating diverse linguistic and cultural perspectives into curricula, educators can cultivate a sense of curiosity and open-mindedness among students, facilitating meaningful intercultural dialogue and collaboration. Furthermore, the paper highlights the emerging trends in multilingual education, such as translanguaging pedagogy and content and language-integrated learning (CLIL), as practical approaches to promote language proficiency and intercultural competence. These strategies empower students to leverage their multilingual learning, communication, and problem-solving skills, fostering a deeper understanding of global issues and promoting social justice and sustainability. Through a synthesis of theoretical frameworks, empirical research, and practical insights, this paper seeks to contribute to the ongoing discourse on the role of language in promoting intercultural understanding and global citizenship. By recognizing language as a powerful tool for building bridges across cultures and fostering inclusive societies, educators and policymakers can work towards creating more equitable and interconnected communities where linguistic diversity is celebrated and valued. In addition to exploring the theoretical foundations and practical applications of multilingual approaches in global citizenship education, this study delves into the importance of policy frameworks and institutional support in fostering linguistic diversity within educational settings. Effective language-in-education policies that recognize and promote the linguistic rights of all learners are essential for creating inclusive learning environments where students feel valued and empowered to express themselves in their mother tongue. Furthermore, the paper discusses the need for professional development opportunities for educators to enhance their pedagogical practices and intercultural competence in multilingual settings.

Measurement invariance of the teachers’ awareness scale in content-integrated education for multilingual learners

Measurement invariance of the teachers’ awareness scale in content-integrated education for multilingual learners

Self-Efficacy-Forming Experiences for Experienced Teachers Working with Multilingual Learners

To enhance teachers’ preparedness to support the growing number of multilingual learners, teacher educators need to engage inservice teachers working across K-12 settings in continued professional learning. In this study, we described a teacher education program designed for inservice teachers who were from diverse backgrounds and worked in a variety of instructional settings involving multilingual learners. Based on survey and follow-up interview data, teachers reported enhanced preparedness to work with multilingual learners and shared self-efficacy-forming experiences through the program. The findings revealed learning opportunities aligned with the sources of teachers’ self-efficacy including knowledge development, mastery experiences, and vicarious learning experiences. Implications for inservice teacher education programs that prepare educators for multilingual learners were provided.

Reducing Inequalities Inherent in Literacy Assessment of Multilingual Learners

This 2-year exploratory study of Multilingual Learner’s performance on literacy assessments is grounded in Culturally Responsive Teaching. By examining the protocols for universal screeners and progress monitoring at one midwestern elementary school, teachers and researchers learned more about language vs. literacy-related results and discovered ways to better meet the needs of learners. Data gathered through focus group discussions, classroom observations, literacy assessments, and field notes were analyzed. Findings include: (1) students read passages that lacked cultural and linguistic relevancy, (2) professionals questioned the reliability and validity of assessments for multilingual learners, (3) assessment results perpetuated an idea that students needed to be ‘fixed’ creating a tension between language acquisition and literacy assessment scores, and (4) room for increased awareness and consideration in the selection of literacy assessments for ML learners. Ideas are shared for nuanced improvements in literacy assessments for multilingual learners.

How Can Research-Practice Partnerships Advance Multilingual Learner Equity? A Case Study of Partnership with State-Education-Agency Leaders

ABSTRACT Although multilingual learner (ML) students are present in nearly all K-12 settings, they tend to be served by schools and educators who are inadequately prepared to support them. While state education agency leaders may be well-positioned to address inequities in ML education, given their roles as policy intermediaries, their work is politically complex. Further, professional development support for state-level leaders has historically been limited. Research-practice partnerships (RPPs) represent a promising avenue for addressing this absence in state leadership support, as RPPs aim to promote educational transformation through collaboration between researchers and practitioners. In our case, we posit that state-education-agency leaders’ engagement in a cross-state RPP has the potential to support enactment of transformative-leadership practices, specifically through opportunities to think and work with role-alike colleagues and external researchers. Drawing on qualitative case study methods, our findings reveal how ongoing RPP collaboration in small groups supported state leaders’ enactment of transformative approaches, such as developing a statewide framework for ML education and supporting district leaders with using ML-specific funds in equity- and evidence-based ways. Findings shed light on specific RPP activities that supported leaders’ collaboration, which may inform how future partnerships are facilitated to advance equity-focused change efforts.

Education Research-Practice Partnerships: Impacts and Dynamics

ABSTRACT The emerging literature on research-practice partnerships in education explains the conditions under which these partnerships operate to achieve the desired impact. This study adds to that literature base by exploring variation in the perceived impacts across three partnerships whose goal was improving achievement for multilingual learner students. To examine these partnerships, we posit a conceptual framework that defines partnership impacts and associated supportive dynamics within the partnership. We use this framework to guide our analysis of interviews and observations from three partnerships. Our study finds (1) practitioners and researchers’ motivations to engage in the RPP are different but complementary; (2) practitioners and researchers perceive the RPP as impacting their capacity either to make decisions that change policy and practice or to develop research that is relevant for theory and practice; (3) both researchers and practitioners agree that consistent communication through meetings and reliable funding supports the RPP. Implications for the field and ideas for further research are discussed.

Assessment of Children’s Skill in Noticing Unfamiliar Words within Informational Context

ABSTRACT Reading and language standards, such as the Common State Standards for English Language Arts, indicate that primary-grade students should be able to determine the meaning of unfamiliar words from grade-level context. However, to be able to attempt determining the meaning of an unfamiliar word, the word must first be noticed. There is a lack of research on young children developing skill in noticing unfamiliar words, which may be an important skill for their vocabulary development and comprehension. In the present study, theories of word learning, earlier experimenter-created assessments with older learners, and research with multilingual learners guided the development of such an assessment, the Noticing Unfamiliar Words Assessment (NUWA). Instrument development methods, including expert review and piloting, were performed prior to administering the NUWA to a sample of 55 second graders. Results of the exploratory factor analysis supported the hypothesized unidimensional factor structure and indicated that the assessment had an adequate fit and internal consistency reliability. Findings suggest that the NUWA may be helpful in better understanding the developmental nature of skill in noticing unfamiliar words from context while listening and how it contributes to children’s vocabulary knowledge and other literacy skills.

Exploring views on praxis possibilities of multilingualism in university literacy pedagogies

Background: South African literacy-as-social-practice theoreticians, language-in-education experts, educational linguists, and language policies advocate multilingual pedagogies to acknowledge and cater to diverse multilingual learners’ literacy development. Universities purport multilingualism to provide for the multilingual norm, students’ literacy, and educational development, as scholarship shows that multilingualism benefits academia and literacy education. Yet, these universities remain locations for monolingual and epistemological biases. Concerns about such praxis pretensions in pluralistic literacy education and the failures in literacy-as-social-practice strategies have been raised. However, the perceptions of lecturers and students on their role in implementing desirable praxis in multilingual literacy education are under-researched.Objectives: This qualitative study explores lecturers’ and students’ perceptions and their impact on practising linguistic plurality in literacy for educational development schemes.Method: The research uses in-depth individual and focus-group interviews with four lecturers and four first-year undergraduate students at a selected linguistically diverse university. An interpretivist paradigm was applied consisting of participants’ subjective experiences as members of a higher education institution (HEI).Results: Findings reveal that lecturers have difficulty coping with multiple languages due to inadequate training and misconceptions about multilingualism, and monolingual pedagogy perceptions carried over from their institutions whose culture denies students’ linguistic plurality.Conclusion: The study demonstrates the importance of shifts in epistemological orientation and adequate training, focused on multilingualism, to develop versatile and agile lecturers equipped for multilingual universities.Contribution: This research contributes to understanding the complex implementation problems regarding multilingual literacy education and possible solutions. It postulates new ways of forging multilingual literacy practices to erase praxis morbidity.

Resource to Bridge Language and Learning: Empowering Multilingual Learners in STEM

Resource to Bridge Language and Learning: Empowering Multilingual Learners in STEM

Are WIDA Test Results Appropriately Reflecting Multilingual Learners’ Language Skills According to ESOL Teachers’ Experiences?

Within the field of multilingual learner (ML) education, ESOL teachers’ voices are often overlooked and underrepresented despite their integral role in developing productive and knowledgeable future citizens. This study sheds light on the experiences of ESOL teachers that administer the federally mandated annual standardized testing created by World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment (WIDA). It uses focus-group interviews to gather qualitative data from two neighboring school districts in order to gain insight into the WIDA assessments’ reflection of language proficiency. WIDA testing evaluates English language development by measuring academic and social language skills within the four language domains: reading, writing, listening, and speaking. MLs without severe, classified disabilities in grades K-12 participate annually in the Assessing Comprehension and Communication of English State-to-State (ACCESS) assessment by WIDA. Results place students into proficiency categories ranging from entering (a student new to English) to bridging (a near-fluent ML), as defined by the WIDA language proficiency standards. The interviews allowed the ESOL teachers to share their experiences with MLs’ classroom performances in the four testing domains compared to their performances on the online WIDA assessments. The interview data was analyzed and categorized into three main themes based on teacher responses: assessment preparation techniques, common perceptions of the assessment, and proposed changes to improve the assessment. Each of these themes, with their local and national implications, are discussed as they affect the nature of ESOL instruction and assessment.

Clearing a Path for Renewal and Growth

The spring 2024 issue of GATESOL Journal invites readers to consider how they traverse the path of multilingual learner education. The articles in the issue trace the historical policies that have led to the current state of education for multilingual learners, provide a checkpoint for evaluating assessment, create a plan for visualizing the destination, and explore artificial intelligence tools to help navigate the road ahead. This issue will highlight how language educators can work with and for their students to cultivate language across contexts through interrogating assessment results, reflecting on the trajectory of language policy, envisioning the future, and harnessing technology tools.

Supporting L2 Writing Using QuillBot

As Artificial Intelligence (AI) grows in accessibility and popularity, educators are faced with the challenge to adopt this new form of information disbursement. AI platforms could benefit language learning by providing individual writing support in addition to classroom teacher instructional support. AI platforms could pose risks to student fidelity with AI produced work product. This paper will discuss and exemplify the use of QuillBot, an AI writing platform, that could be used as a teaching and learning tool for second language (L2) writing instruction. By using this technology to plan meaningful and student tailored lessons, educators can continue to provide an interactive learning space for multilingual learners (MLs) in the language classroom.

Content-area teacher candidates’ identity work in an online teacher education course

In an increasingly diverse U.S. classroom landscape, it is crucial to prepare teachers to meet the needs of multilingual learners. However, institutional constraints and a lack of empirical research have left many content-area teachers underprepared in this area. In this study, we explore how 15 content-area teacher candidates (TCs) constructed their professional identities in a sheltered instruction methods course at a Hispanic-serving university in the southwestern U.S. We conducted deductive analysis of participants' coursework (e.g., short essay responses, discussion board posts, and virtual field experience assignments) by using Clarke's (2009) four axes of identity development (telos, authority sources, substance, self-practices). Our findings demonstrated the complex interplay of the four axes in TCs' identity work, which led us to offer a more dynamic, contextually-bound modification of Clarke's framework. The findings call for teacher educators internationally to pedagogize identity by creating classroom spaces in which TCs view their professional learning as part of their identity work and critically reflect on their identities as teachers of multilingual learners.

Harnessing the Power of Generative AI to Support ALL Learners

While generative AI such as ChatGPT has important drawbacks, it can potentially unlock new types of learning and support – specially for English learners and students with disabilities – by facilitating teachers’ Universal Design for Learning (UDL) efforts. As generative AI is quickly becoming an integral part of our lives (e.g., being incorporated into existing tools such as Google products), teachers will need to decide how they can use and benefit from this new technology. Our analysis of data collected during a summer teacher institute found that in Summer 2023 the majority of teachers had never used generative AI and were evenly split on whether it was a “friend” or “foe” in their teaching efforts. Overall, 43% of teachers reported, “ChatGPT and other generative AI will help make instruction more accessible for ALL learners,” while 32% of teachers were “undecided” indicating an opportunity to improve teacher perceptions. In this article we discuss strategies for using generative AI for improving UDL to benefit ALL learners brainstormed by the teachers. Practical implications for multilingual learners are discussed.

The effects of placement method on multilingual learner success in higher education

AbstractIn the United States, many actors are pushing for the use of grade point average (GPA) as the main placement tool for gatekeeper math and English courses for community college students (Quarles, 2022; Scott‐Clayton, 2018; Turk, 2017). One community college system (pseudonymously, SXCC) in a New England state has begun placing students in initial math and English classes based on self‐reported GPA. There have been studies on the effects of placement changes of this type (Belfield & Crosta, 2012; Hodara & Cox, 2016; Ngo & Kwon, 2014; Scott‐Clayton, 2012). However, studies have not included the effects of these changes on multilingual learners (MLLs).Using a census of every MLL placed in SXCC in the summer and fall of 2020 and the spring of 2021 (N = 12,603), a MANOVA found that MLL students in the SXCC system who were placed using previous placement methods had a higher overall GPA than students placed using self‐reported GPA (M = 3.32, SD = 0.740; M = 2.01, SD = 1.27, respectively) and had higher satisfactory academic progress (SAP) (M = 102.98, SD = 51.52; M = 57.66, SD = 55.53, respectively), and took longer to enroll in English 101 (M = 5.11, SD = 3.55; M = 2.36, SD = 1.76, respectively).

Columns: Teaching Multilingual Learners: #ToBeMoreFree: Supporting Multilingual Learners’ Literacies toward Activism and Social Justice

Drawing on one multilingual youth’s literacies, a teacher educator and social media researcher presents a culturally digitized pedagogical framework to guide educators in exploring youth identity, activism, and language, with a focus on social justice issues.

The role of positive learning emotions in sustaining cognitive motivation for multilingual development

This qualitative study explores the influence of learning emotions on the sustainment of cognitive motivation in multilingual development. Specifically, it examines whether positive emotions experienced during the learning process contribute to the maintenance of cognitive motivation in future language use. The study adopted a multiple-case design, involving nine multilingual learners in China, and utilised individual interviews and written documents as data sources. The findings of this study reveal a subtle relationship between positive emotions and the sustainment of cognitive motivation for multilingual development. Specifically, it was observed that not all positive emotions necessarily contributed to the maintenance of cognitive motivation from the learning process to later stages of language use. Rather, the sustainment of cognitive motivation appeared to be more closely linked to positive emotions that were directly related to the learner's sense of self such as self-satisfaction or an enhancement of their self-efficacy. This study thus highlights the need for a more precise approach to fostering positive emotional experiences that are specifically tied to learners' sense of self, in order to promote long-term language learning success and effective language use in professional settings.

The Effects of an Instructional Package on Reading Skills for Multilingual Learners With Extensive Support Needs

In the current study, investigators examined the effects of an instructional reading package consisting of shared reading and systematic instruction (e.g., task analysis, system of least prompts, visual supports, and native language support) in a small group setting on percentage of correct consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words for three elementary participants with extensive support needs who also were multilingual learners. A multiple probe design across word sets with replication across participants resulted in a functional relation between the percentage of correct CVC words acquired and the instructional package. In addition, there were positive changes in exploratory (secondary) dependent variables that included components of reading (i.e., phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and generalization) as demonstrated through pre-posttest assessments. Social validity measures for parents, students, and paraprofessionals also revealed positive pre-post changes. Limitations and future research are discussed.

Pedagogical Translanguaging as a Socially Just Strategy for Multilingual Students in Occupational Therapy

Multilingual speakers’ languaging practices are undervalued and problematised in formal teaching and learning spaces in higher education. The environment has legitimised monolingualism as the only acceptable practice, hence students often lack the confidence to recruit their full linguistic repertoires. In the third and fourth years of their Occupational Therapy studies, many African students faced challenges due to socio-historic-political factors that put them at risk of failure. These challenges were addressed in academic support tutorial spaces using pedagogical translanguaging. The aim of the paper is to demonstrate the use of translanguaging as a socially just strategy, its affordances, and its challenges. This paper utilises data from a case study within a larger project aiming to describe the use of translanguaging in multilingual teaching and learning settings at a historically White university in South Africa. The case study comprised of eight African students. Linguistic ethnography and Moment analysis were employed. Pedagogical translanguaging and humour were used to create a space conducive to collaborative learning and co-construction of knowledge that granted epistemic access to occupational therapy discourse. Respect and dignity were fundamental in fostering cohesion, improving confidence, enacting speaking rights, and creating a sense of belonging among students who often felt alienated.

An Analysis of the Mediating Role of Language in Education in the Context of Internationalisation of Education

In the context of the internationalization of education, multilingual language learning and teaching play a fundamental and very important role in the education system, where different groups learn a uniform curriculum based on different cultural backgrounds and linguistic understandings. This thesis analyses the reason for the imbalance of educational resources for minorities in the educational process. Multilingual teaching materials and related materials are outdated or unavailable. Groups learning through "bridge" languages do not acquire languages through their mother tongue, which makes the acquisition process difficult. On this basis, the thesis proposes to improve pedagogical diversity by increasing teachers' motivation to learn and teach multilingualism. The second is that the creation and enrichment of multilingual corpora and teaching materials can enhance research on multilingualism. The third is a way to reduce the quality gap with the majority population in education by promoting cooperation between universities companies and institutions.