Teaching in linguistically and culturally diverse secondary schools
How far have we come?
Thirty years ago Australian researchers led the development of language and content integration in schools,
advocating systematic teaching of language across the curriculum to meet the needs of English as an additional language (EAL)
students. However, despite significant improvements in initial teacher education, targeted professional development and
language-specific curriculum and assessment, this paper suggests that secondary teachers have gained only a superficial
understanding of the language knowledge necessary to teach EAL students. Drawing on questionnaires, interviews, and observations,
this case study of two secondary schools in Sydney reveals the majority of teachers report their perspectives and experiences of
good teaching have equipped them with a repertoire of sufficient strategies to meet EAL needs, and they see little difference
between teaching EAL and learners with low levels of literacy. This paper concludes a renewed focus on integrating language and
content teaching and partnership models of professional learning and evaluation are needed.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Literature review
- 3.Method
- 4.Findings
- 4.1Theme 1: Language teaching is included in good teaching
- 4.2Theme 2: Language teaching is included in literacy teaching
- 5.Discussion
- 5.1Knowledge about language
- 5.2What do content-area teachers need to learn about language?
- 5.3When and how might teachers learn about language?
- 6.Conclusions
- Note
-
References
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International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 25:8
► pp. 2962 ff.
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