When it comes to the education of English Learners in America, “there is a need to engage in a rethinking and revisioning of our work . . . a profound rethinking of what we do,” said Guadalupe Valdés, professor emeritus, Stanford University, at Reconceptualizing the Development of Educator Expertise for a Multilingual, Intercultural Future.
In June, nearly 150 English Learner teachers, researchers, and those who support them at the school, district, state, federal, and higher education levels across the country gathered at Oregon State University for the Reconceptualizing the Development of Educator Expertise for a Multilingual, Intercultural Future conference. Participants explored research- and evidence-based findings from the National R&D Center to Improve Education for Secondary English Learners, and heard as well from district, state, national, and even international English Learner experts. But the experience did not stop there.
The conference took participants a step further, actually enabling individuals who serve in very different roles, like teachers and researchers, the time and space to collaboratively determine how to conceptually re-envision systemic approaches—from classroom instruction to educator development to state-level policies and beyond.
The objective throughout each discussion was to reinvent approaches to ensure that, as required by law, English Learners participate meaningfully in educational programs. Specifically, for two days, participants attended thought-provoking presentations and engaged in intense discussions with peers in different roles.
Through jigsaws—cooperative learning strategies that ask groups to become “experts” on different aspects of a topic and then share what they learn with their classmates—participants reported back to and synthesized with one another what they learned in different sessions.
Three major themes arose:
Context matters, as does quality. The multifaceted nature of English Learner education requires teachers, administrators, researchers—and, frankly, the nation—to think deeply about the interrelated nature of systems and the context in which students and their families who are new to this country find themselves.
Fortunately, sociocultural theory and research demonstrate how looking at broad contexts that occur across silos like “research” and “practice”—“state” and “local”—“cultural assumptions” and “classrooms” shows us where and how nested (micro-, meso-, macro-, and exo-) systems are connected.
Once we have the context in hand, we can then identify breakthrough reform throughlines—opportunities to transform the entire ecosystem around what works. Said Ester de Jong, professor at University of Colorado, Denver, speaking to the crowd: “If we have a single story or if we don’t pay attention to contexts, we misconstrue and thus improperly address the variety of ideologies, institutions, systems, and individuals that are at play . . . As long as we do interventions that do symptom stuff, we are not getting at the system, the roots . . . actual causes.”
She added that we must understand context in order to question it, work with it, and figure out what we can do with it, while being sure to not let exploring context keep us from making progress.
Invitations to explore research-based solutions that account for contextual variability—along with quality—and coherently apply across nested systems are key. This starts with invitations to understand longitudinal levers and oral opportunities to learn.
“We have been invited by the center and the many researchers and teachers who have been a part of the work of the center to engage . . . to consider ecological, interacting nested system levels, be part of the solution, to be part of the growing connected community that provides support, information, ideas, new directions, and a sense of joint purpose, and joint mission,” said Guadalupe Valdés, professor emeritus at Stanford University.
“A focus on isolated factors is wrong-headed; nothing is static . . . everything is moving, and transformations take time. As Aída [Walqui, director of the National R&D Center] reminds us, we are not in a bubble. As we move forward, it is important that we see our actions as having intense interactions with the actions of others.”
Complexity must be sustained while scaling up solutions. Researchers and educators further agreed that there is a huge need to scale up impactful research projects, so that improvement is not just happening, for example, at one district in Connecticut or in Oregon but at district, state, and national levels. But the rate of scaling is key, according to Aída Walqui.
If we scale up too fast, she noted, things will get very thin. “Ongoing center studies are deep, rich, and complex, which means we need to figure out which alliances and coalitions we need to build at every level,” noted Ester de Jong. “Changing national discourse will require not just school systems but all organizations to work together.”
Walqui’s frequent use of the word “invite” throughout the conference reveals a profound throughline across multiple dimensions of this work, Valdés noted. The National R&D Center’s invitation to the field to engage in conversations across nested systems to see the forest for the trees (i.e., those cross-cutting, research-based sociocultural concepts we must squarely home in on in order to achieve breakthrough change for English Learners) is not only the same invitation that conference participants reported made this conference transformational—but is also the very same invitation that will lead to the “aha” moment for English Learners.
When students can similarly talk and listen with peers about broad cross-cutting concepts behind lessons and create the meaning of ideas themselves through genuine usage via activities that matter to them, suddenly: they have rigorous opportunities to learn.
It all starts with being invited in through language itself, that tool for action which connects us all.
Valdés’s illustrative closing conference remarks show what coming home with new language means, whether you are an adult change-maker or a student learning English or any other second or third language: Now we return to our ordinary lives and everyday struggles. Hopefully . . . to many triumphs, whether large or small . . .now we return with renewed energy and engaging with new ideas and a sense of confidence in our ability to meet different challenges.
Resources and Events
Access materials from Reconceptualizing the Development of Educator Expertise for a Multilingual, Intercultural Future, including presentations.
Register now for the next IES-funded English Learner research conference, Improving Instruction, Assessment, and Policies for Secondary English Learners Across the Content Areas, September 16 and 17 in Washington, DC.
Subscribe to the National R&D Center’s email newsletter, Where the Evidence Leads, for regular reporting.
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