Scaffolding for Multilingual Learners in Elementary and Secondary Schools 9781032051437, 9781032020471, 9781003196228

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Editor Biographies
Contributor Biographies
Chapter 1: Scaffolding for Multilingual Learners: Concepts and Practices
Terminology and Acronyms
Key Concepts and Ideas
Scaffolding as a Dynamic Process and Contingent upon Learners' Needs
Scaffolding as More than Help and Routine Support
Learning as Participation, Engagement, Appropriation, and Agency
Macro, Designed-in, Planned Scaffolding and Micro, Spontaneous, Interactional Scaffolding
Overview of Chapters
References
Section 1: Theories and Approaches to Scaffolding for Multilingual Learners
Chapter 2: Scaffolding: Implications and Equity for Diverse Learners in Mainstream Classes
Understanding Scaffolding
Intentions and Means of Scaffolding
Layers and Levels of Scaffolding
Cumulative Nature of Scaffolding
Context of the Year 4 Science Program
The Year 4 Science Program
Scaffolding What: Intentions and Means of Scaffolding
Levels of Scaffolding: Designing for Cumulative Learning
Macro-Level Designed-In Scaffolding
Micro-Level Scaffolding: Targeted and Differentiated Support
Conclusion
References
Chapter 3: Reconceptualizing Scaffolding for English Learners: An Ecological/Sociocultural Perspective
The Zone of Proximal Development
Unpacking the Metaphor of Scaffolding
Some History On the Notion of Scaffolding
Features That Characterize Successful Scaffolding
Relationships Enacted in the ZPD
Ecological/Sociocultural Approaches to Learning in an Additional Language
Designing Scaffolding for Classes with English Learners
Three Levels of Scaffolding
An Example of Scaffolding in Action
Preparing Learners
Interacting with Text
Extending Understanding
Conclusion
Note
References
Chapter 4: Scaffolding Multilingual Learners’ Equitable Participation in Disciplinary Learning: A Discussion of Concepts and Tools
Revisiting the Conceptual Roots of Scaffolding
The Zone of Proximal Development
Appropriation and Scaffolding
Participation in Sociocultural Activity and Scaffolding
The Enactment of Student Agency and Scaffolding
An Instructional Tool for Scaffolding the Learning of Multilingual Youth: The WIDA Framework for Equitable Instruction
The FEI and Learning as Appropriation
The FEI and Learning as Participation in Sociocultural Activity
The FEI and Student Agency
Conclusion
Note
References
Chapter 5: Making Science Multilingual: Scaffolding for Equitable Engagement in Science
The Call for Change
Scaffolding Revisited
Design Principles for Equitable Engagement in Three-Dimensional Science
Foundational Commitments to Science Education
Four Pillars of Sense-making
Assurance of Equity
Designing Macro- and Micro-scaffolding with MSM's Design Principles
Foundational Commitments to Science Education, Design Principles 1 and 2
Macro-scaffolding
Additional Resources
Micro-scaffolding
Additional Resources
Four Pillars of Sense-making, Design Principles 3, 4, 5, and 6
Macro-scaffolding
Additional Resources
Micro-scaffolding
Additional Resources
Assurance of Equity, Design Principles 7 and 8
Macro-scaffolding
Additional Resources
Micro-scaffolding
Additional Resources
Conclusion
References
Section 2: Examples and Case Studies of Scaffolding
Chapter 6: Scaffolding in DLBE Secondary Social Studies Classroom: Re-envisioning Equitable Teaching Practices
The Importance of the Social Studies and Civic Education Within the Context of Dual Language Bilingual Classrooms
Using the Inquiry Design Model with Multilingual Students Learning in DLBE Settings
The C3 Framework and the Inquiry Design Model
Dimension One: Developing Questions and Planning Inquiries
Dimension Two: Applying Disciplinary Concepts and Tools
Dimension Three: Evaluating Sources and Using Evidence
Dimension Four: Communicating Conclusions and Taking Informed Action
Strategies and Procedures
Conceptual Development Within Context (English/Spanish)
Supporting Question 1: What Is Public Policy? (English)
Supporting Question 2: What Are Some Ways That People Can Make a Difference in Their Communities? (English/Spanish)
Supporting Question 3: Who Has the Power to Make Decisions in My Particular Community? (Spanish)
Supporting Question 4: What Are Public Policy Issues in My Community? (Spanish)
Summative Performance Task
Argument (Spanish)
Taking Informed Action (Language: Students’ Choice)
Reflection: Building Civic Action Spaces for All Students
References
Chapter 7: “Oh, I Was Scaffolding!”: Novice Teachers’ Use of Scaffolding as Humanizing Practice with Multilingual Students
Why Scaffolding Matters
Methods
Findings
Scaffolding and Equity
Grounding Scaffolding in Practice
Scaffolding in Action
Discussion
Implications and Conclusion
Acknowledgments
References
Chapter 8: Sustaining Quality Interactions for English Learners in Virtual Learning Formats
Quality Interactions
Parameters for Hybrid Lesson Design for English Learners
Notes
References
Chapter 9: MULTIMODALITY AND TRANSLANGUAGING as Scaffolding: Sense-Making in a Bilingual Kindergarten
Literature Review
Translanguaging
Multiple Modalities
Classroom Community
Findings
Discussion
Implications
Notes
References
Chapter 10: Scaffolding in Action: How Exemplary Teachers Use Interactional Scaffolding to Generate and Sustain Emergent Bilinguals’ Engagement with Challenging English Text
Interactional Scaffolds
Scaffolding for Language and Literacy Development
Highlight, Don't Hint
Provide Feed Forward, Not Just Feed Back
Explain Information That Leads to Student Agency, Not Apathy
Model Complex Processes, Not Just Forms
Uptake, Not Evaluation
Conclusion
References
Section 3: Professional Learning with Teachers
Chapter 11: Scaffolding Learning for Teachers of Multilingual Learners through Agency, Leadership, and Collaboration
Quality Teacher Professional Learning
Agency, Leadership, and Collaboration in Professional Learning
eWorkshops: Professional Learning for Teachers of Multilingual Students
Scaffolding Learning for Teachers of Multilingual Learners
Methods
Participants
Data Collection
Data Analysis
Findings
Leadership as Role Versus Action
Self-directed Learning
Meaningful Learning Impacting Meaningful Teaching
Adapting and Applying Learning So That All Learners Can Thrive
Implications and Conclusion
Note
References
Chapter 12: Educative Mathematics Curriculum Materials for English Learners: Varying the Intensity of Scaffolding
Reimagining and Amplifying Mathematics Participation, Understanding, and Practices (RAMP-UP) for English Learners
Center Learning on Generative Ideas That Are Powerful and Relevant
Design Scaffolding in Planned and Contingent Ways at Multiple Instructional Scales
Invite and Support Students in Dialogue to Engage in Disciplinary Practices
Focusing on Varying the Intensity of Scaffolding
Variation Within a Particular Task
Low Level of Scaffolding
Medium Level of Scaffolding
High Level of Scaffolding
Comparing Dimensions of Intensity in Scaffolding
Variation Across a Sequence of Tasks or Lesson
Lesson Design in Mathematics Education
Concentrating Intensity in the Interacting Moment
Design Principles for Teacher-Facing Educative Materials
Clear and Ambitious Vision of Quality
Ideas and Their Interconnections
Signal and Justify Departures
Purpose and Features of Genres
Conclusion: Next Steps in Iterative Development
References
Chapter 13: Scaffolding “Scaffolding” in Pre-service Teacher Education
Conceptualizing Scaffolding
The Program, the Course, and the Assignment
Scaffolding in a Pre-Service Teacher Preparation Course
Exploring Current Conceptions—and Challenging Them (Week 4)
Laying the Foundation (Week 5)
Introduction: The Metaphor of Scaffolding
Round Robin: Key Concepts in Scaffolding
Peekaboo!
Unpacking a Video Example
Scaffolding Scaffolding: The Assignment
Group Demonstrations and Whole-class Debrief
Exploring Figurative Language with Cootie Catchers
Introducing Poetry by Analyzing and Interpreting Art
Introduction to Quadrilaterals: Developing Mathematically Descriptive Questions
Moving Toward Autonomy: Teacher Candidate's Individual Reports
Agency and Autonomy
Pedagogical Structures
Unpredictable Outcomes
Conclusion: The Assignment Itself as an Instantiation of Scaffolding
Notes
References
Index

Citation preview

SCAFFOLDING FOR MULTILINGUAL LEARNERS IN ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY SCHOOLS

This insightful and timely volume addresses how scaffolding can be used to support multilingual learners to amplify their opportunities for learning. As a dynamic educational process, scaffolding facilitates responsive and adaptive teaching and learning; addresses students’ needs; increases student autonomy; and promotes adaptive, high-level learning without simplifying instruction. Section I covers the theoretical grounding and reconceptualizations of scaffolding. Section II offers concrete examples and case studies from varied classroom contexts. Section III provides a window into professional development to discuss the work of pre-service and in-service teachers, and how they develop their understandings and practices of teaching multilingual learners. Contributors address diverse topics, including translanguaging in the classroom, scaffolding as a tool for equitable teaching, virtual learning, as well as learning in dual language and content area classrooms. Featuring examples from teacher education programs as well as principles for design of educative curriculum materials, this book is ideal for pre-service teachers and students in TESOL, applied linguistics, and language education. Luciana C. de Oliveira is Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Graduate Studies and Professor in the School of Education at Virginia Commonwealth University, USA. Ruslana Westerlund is an educational consultant specializing in research, design, and development of professional learning for teachers of multilingual learners across the United States.

SCAFFOLDING FOR MULTILINGUAL LEARNERS IN ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY SCHOOLS Edited by Luciana C. de Oliveira and Ruslana Westerlund

Cover image: Getty images First published 2023 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 Luciana C. de Oliveira and Ruslana Westerlund The right of Luciana C. de Oliveira and Ruslana Westerlund to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this title has been requested ISBN: 978-1-032-05143-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-02047-1 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-19622-8 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003196228 Typeset in Bembo by SPi Technologies India Pvt Ltd (Straive)

CONTENTS

Editor Biographies Contributor Biographies   1 Scaffolding for Multilingual Learners: Concepts and Practices Luciana C. de Oliveira and Ruslana Westerlund

viii ix 1

SECTION 1

Theories and Approaches to Scaffolding for Multilingual Learners   2 Scaffolding: Implications and Equity for Diverse Learners in Mainstream Classes Jennifer Hammond

7 9

  3 Reconceptualizing Scaffolding for English Learners: An Ecological/Sociocultural Perspective Aída Walqui and Mary Schmida

29

  4 Scaffolding Multilingual Learners’ Equitable Participation in Disciplinary Learning: A Discussion of Concepts and Tools Jennifer Wilfrid and Daniella Molle

48

vi  Contents

  5 Making Science Multilingual: Scaffolding for Equitable Engagement in Science Rita MacDonald and David T. Crowther

63

SECTION 2

Examples and Case Studies of Scaffolding

81

  6 Scaffolding in DLBE Secondary Social Studies Classroom: Re-envisioning Equitable Teaching Practices Katherine Barko-Alva, Stephen Masyada, and Claudia Norez

83

  7 “Oh, I was scaffolding!”: Novice Teachers’ Use of Scaffolding as Humanizing Practice with Multilingual Students Megan Madigan Peercy and John K. Chi

102

  8 Sustaining Quality Interactions for English Learners in Virtual Learning Formats 121 Aída Walqui   9 Multimodality and Translanguaging as Scaffolding: Sense-Making in a Bilingual Kindergarten Laura Schall-Leckrone 10 Scaffolding in Action: How Exemplary Teachers Use Interactional Scaffolding to Generate and Sustain Emergent Bilinguals’ Engagement with Challenging English Text Erika Johnson

134

147

SECTION 3

Professional Learning with Teachers

165

11 Scaffolding Learning for Teachers of Multilingual Learners through Agency, Leadership, and Collaboration 167 Kara Mitchell Viesca, Cindy H. Linzell, Peiwen Wang, Molly Heeren, Jessica Mitchell-McCollough, and Alexa Yunes-Koch 12 Educative Mathematics Curriculum Materials for English Learners: Varying the Intensity of Scaffolding Haiwen Chu and Leslie Hamburger

181

Contents  vii

13 Scaffolding “Scaffolding” in Pre-service Teacher Education George C. Bunch and Nora W. Lang

197

Index 222

EDITOR BIOGRAPHIES

Luciana C. de Oliveira, PhD, is Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Graduate Studies and Professor in the School of Education at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her research focuses on issues related to teaching multilingual learners at the K-12 level, including the role of language in learning the content areas and teacher education, advocacy, and social justice. Currently, Dr. de Oliveira’s research examines scaffolding in elementary classrooms. She has authored or edited 24 books and has several and has over 200 publications in various outlets. She served as President (2018–2019) of TESOL International Association and was a member of the Board of Directors (2013–2016). She was the first Latina to ever serve as President of TESOL. Ruslana Westerlund, EdD, is an educational consultant and, previously, a researcher at WIDA, the Wisconsin Center for Educational Research, University of Wisconsin-Madison conducting research on disciplinary literacy for multilingual students, focusing on writing in the disciplines. Her research interests focus on using language as a mediational tool in the service of learning using Systemic Functional Linguistics. She draws on the synergy of Hallidayan linguistics and Vygotskyan pedagogy to inform her work. She is also an author of From Borsch to Burgers: A Cross-Cultural Memoir, where she chronicled her Soviet childhood and an ongoing formation of her transcultural identity as a Ukrainian immigrant living in the Midwest.

CONTRIBUTOR BIOGRAPHIES

Katherine Barko-Alva, PhD, is Assistant Professor and Director of ESL/Bilin-

gual Education Program at William & Mary School of Education in Virginia. She focuses on how teachers understand language in ESL and dual language bilingual education classroom settings. She serves as part of the ESL National Advisory Council for iCivics and is an executive board member of Virginia Dual Language Educator Network. George C. Bunch is Professor of Education at the University of California, Santa

Cruz. An experienced K-12 ESL and social studies teacher and teacher educator, he holds a PhD in educational linguistics from Stanford University. His research focuses on language and literacy challenges and opportunities for multilingual learners in K-12 and higher education and on policies, curricula, and teacher preparation designed to serve them. He has received a Spencer Foundation Midcareer Grant to serve as a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, is a former National Academy of Education/ Spencer Postdoctoral Fellow, and has received the Midcareer Award from the Second Language Research Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association. John Chi is a PhD student in Applied Linguistics and Language Education in the

Department of Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership at the University of Maryland. His research focuses primarily on heritage language education, with an emphasis on minority dialect speakers in the context of communitybased programs. He is also interested in the role of race and identity in language education, humanizing education, teacher preparation for working with multilingual learners, and language program evaluation.

x  Contributor Biographies

Haiwen Chu is a senior research associate in mathematics for the Quality Teach-

ing for English Learners initiative at WestEd. His research lies at the intersection of language, mathematics, curriculum, and professional development. Dr. David T. Crowther co-leads Making Science Multilingual, a WIDA initiative

to support rigorous and equitable science education for multilingual learners. Dr. Crowther is a Professor of Science Education at the University of Nevada, Reno. Previously he served as the Executive Director of the Raggio Research Center for STEM Education (2014–2020) and served as the President of the National Science Teachers Association (2017–2018).Dr. Crowther has 28 years of teaching experience at the university level, 25 of which have been at the University of Nevada, Reno. Previously, he taught public school (grades 4–6) at the elementary level. Dr. Crowther received his PhD in Science Education from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Both at UNR and UNL, Dr. Crowther has taught science methods to undergraduates, general biology for education majors, and a number of different graduate courses in curriculum, science education, and research. Leslie Hamburger is a senior Managing Director at WestEd. She assists states,

districts, and schools in the development and implementation of exemplary educational programs for English Learners and conducts professional development to enhance the expertise of educators to promote the development of disciplinary, analytic, and language practices in tandem. Dr. Jennifer Hammond is Honorary Associate Professor in the School of Edu-

cation, University of Technology Sydney. She has taught for many years in the fields of language and literacy education, English as an Additional Language (EAL) education and research design. Her research interests are in literacy development, classroom interaction, and the implications of sociocultural and systemic theories of language and learning in EAL education. With colleagues, she has completed research into the nature of high-challenge, high-support pedagogies designed to meet the needs of EAL students, including students of refugee background, in mainstream classes. She has published widely in these areas. Molly Heeren is an instructional coach supporting multilingual education in

K-12 settings. She is also a PhD candidate at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln studying multilingualism and multilingual education. Her main interests center on the connections between language identities and pedagogy in content area classrooms. Dr. Erika Johnson is Assistant Professor of Elementary Literacy at the University

of Iowa. Her research examines how teachers working with linguistically diverse student populations can help their students make sense of and discuss texts in

Contributor Biographies  xi

ways that facilitate their literacy and language development. Prior to receiving her PhD in Language, Literacy and English Education from Stanford University, Dr. Johnson taught for ten years in bilingual and sheltered English classes in Title 1 elementary schools. Her research has been published in Research in the Teaching of English; Reading Research Quarterly; TESOL Quarterly; and Teaching and Teacher Education. Nora W. Lang has worked as a teacher in a variety of multilingual educa-

tional contexts in Latin America and received her PhD in Education from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her current research utilizes ecological approaches to explore the affordances for language and literacy development that emerge as recently arrived immigrant students interact with the physical and social environment. Cindy H. Linzell, PhD, is a Lecturer at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her

research focuses on the support and preparation of pre-service teachers through the use of Critical Peer Mentoring. She also prepares pre-service teachers to work with multilingual learners in content area classrooms. Rita MacDonald co-leads Making Science Multilingual, a WIDA initiative to

support rigorous and equitable science education for multilingual learners. As an applied linguist, she has worked in educational linguistics since 2001, as a K-12 ESL teacher, a teacher educator, and, since 2012, as a Researcher at the WIDA Consortium at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is a frequent presenter at national conferences, disseminating research-based approaches to discourse-centered pedagogy for multilingual learners and the equitable inclusion of multilingual learners in rigorous STEM education. Her work on bringing multilingual learners into science discourse can be explored at http://stem4els.wceruw.org/. Megan Madigan Peercy is Professor and Associate Dean for Educator Preparation

and Undergraduate Studies at the University of Maryland. Her research focuses on pedagogies of teacher education; the development of teacher educators; and the preparation and development of teachers throughout their careers, as they work with multilingual students. A former ESOL and Spanish teacher, she is deeply invested in understanding the ways in which practice and theory can be in dialogue. Her recent research appears in Teaching and Teacher Education, Language Teaching Research, Action in Teacher Education, TESOL Quarterly, and TESOL Journal. Stephen Masyada, PhD, is Director of the Florida Joint Center for Citizen-

ship at the Lou Frey Institute at the University of Central Florida. His work and research focus is around civic education curriculum, the C3 Framework, and critical and media literacy for civic engagement.

xii  Contributor Biographies

Jessica Mitchell-McCollough is a doctoral candidate in the College of Educa-

tion and Human Sciences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Previously a secondary teacher of Spanish as both a foreign and as a heritage language, she now studies how different educational contexts and programs support the sustainability of heritage languages of students and their communities; this includes how social reform and education policy interact with student and community agency to inform education theory and classroom practices. Kara Mitchell Viesca, PhD, is Professor of Teaching, Learning and Teacher

Education at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her scholarship focuses on advancing equity in the policy and practice of teacher development, particularly for teachers of multilingual learners. Daniella Molle, PhD, is the Research Director for the CALL-ECL project

funded by the Wallace Foundation and housed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Previously, she worked for more than a decade at WIDA. She conducted qualitative research that could inform professional learning initiatives specifically designed for teachers of multilingual students. Her research interests include supporting equitable educational opportunities for historically marginalized students and multilingual learners in particular. Claudia Norez, MEd, is Dual Language Specialist in Duval County Public

Schools. She supports the instructional practices of DLBE teachers. Her extensive teaching background, in both Texas and Florida, has allowed her to effectively negotiate curriculum and materials development as well as implement researched-based professional development practices. Laura Schall-Leckrone, PhD, is Professor and Director of the TESOL &

Bilingual Education program at the Graduate School of Education at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA. Laura worked as a bilingual (Spanish–English) educator and curriculum director in urban and suburban schools for 16 years prior to completing a PhD. Her scholarship and work in teacher education and educational linguistics seek to bridge knowledge production in K-12 schools and higher education to improve learning opportunities for multilingual learners. Mary Schmida, PhD, is Senior Research Associate in the English Learner and

Migrant Education Services at WestEd. She works in a variety of capacities with teachers, coaches, and administrators to strengthen their expertise in the teaching and learning of English Learners. Aída Walqui directs West Ed’s IES-funded National Research and Development

Center for Improving Education for English Learners in Secondary Schools

Contributor Biographies  xiii

and the Quality Teaching for English Learners (QTEL), focused on improving teacher and educational leadership ability to accelerate and deepen the linguistic and academic disciplinary achievement of English learners in American schools. A native of Perú, Walqui holds a PhD in Education from Stanford University. For over four decades she has worked on the development of deep disciplinary practices in second languages nationally and internationally. Walqui is the author of multiple articles and books, including Scaffolding the Academic Success of Adolescent English Learners. A Pedagogy of Promise, co-written with Leo van Lier. In 2016, on the 50th anniversary of the International TESOL Association, she was selected as one of the 50 most influential researchers in the last 50 years in the field of English Language teaching. Peiwen Wang is a PhD candidate in the Department of Teaching, Learning, and

Teacher Education of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her primary areas of interest in research include teacher education that advances educational equity, critical discourse studies, and intercultural studies. Jennifer Wilfrid specializes in research and development projects related to sci-

ence education with bi-/multilingual learners. She has 20 years of experience in education, including teaching high school biology and ESL, teaching graduate courses in bilingual/bicultural education, supervising bilingual licensure candidates, and facilitating professional learning for educators in the United States and internationally. Jennifer has a BA in biology from Colby College and an MA in Spanish from UW-Madison. She holds teaching licenses in secondary ESL, bilingual/bicultural education, biology, and environmental studies. Alexa Yunes-Koch is a Graduate Research Assistant at the University of

Nebraska-Lincoln, studying the socioemotional well-being of teachers and students. As a Mexican immigrant, her work centers largely around multilingual and otherwise marginalized student populations.

1 SCAFFOLDING FOR MULTILINGUAL LEARNERS Concepts and Practices Luciana C. de Oliveira and Ruslana Westerlund

Since the first use of the scaffolding metaphor by Bruner in 1976 to operationalize Vygotskyan (Vygotsky, 1962, 1978) notions of contingent nature of support in teaching and learning, scaffolding has become a ubiquitous term used in education. Scaffolding has been widely referenced in educational literature and practice over the past several years but often in reductive ways (Athanases & de Oliveira, 2014). Over the years, the term has acquired multiple meanings: from static routine supports such as graphic organizers, word banks, and simplified language to interactional scaffolding, to adaptive and contingent teaching and many others. When scaffolding was applied to multilingual learners, their expectations to participate in learning have been lowered, resulting in negative long-term consequences (Athanases & de Oliveira, 2014). In addition, there is misunderstanding of what scaffolding is and its importance, especially for multilingual learners. This edited volume addresses commonly misunderstood applications of scaffolding, provides a much-needed theoretical grounding to the original concepts of scaffolding, expands the contexts in which scaffolding has been used with multilingual learners, including scaffolding in distant learning as precipitated by Covid-19, and provides case studies of multilingual learners’ high levels of engagement in challenging learning in English, science, social studies, and dual language classrooms. The book concludes by providing examples from teacher education programs as well as principles for design of educative curriculum materials.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003196228-1

2  Luciana C. de Oliveira and Ruslana Westerlund

Terminology and Acronyms The terminology used in research on the teaching and learning of multilingual learners varies considerably as it relates to the identification of the target student population with whom the authors of each separate chapter address. There is little agreement in the scholarly literature as to what name best describes these students. While each designation has different connotations and problems, different terms are favored by researchers within distinct research traditions depending upon one’s philosophical commitment, sociopolitical orientation, and unique focus. These include emergent bilinguals (EB), emergent to advanced bilingual students (EABs), bi-/multilingual students, plurilingual learners, multilingual students, multilingual learners, English as an Additional Language student (EAL), English language learner (ELL), English learner (EL), L2 speaker, and so on. Authors were free to select whatever terminology they saw best fit the chapter content and focus.

Key Concepts and Ideas We now highlight some key concepts and ideas present in the book.

Scaffolding as a Dynamic Process and Contingent upon Learners' Needs Scaffolding as a dynamic process highlights the importance of three instructional conditions: (1) contingency, which involves responsiveness to learners and their performances and needs; (2) fading or gradual withdrawal refers to teachers’ gradually withdrawing supports as students gain capacity; and (3) transfer of responsibility to increase learner autonomy (van de Pol, Volman, & Beishuizen, 2010).

Scaffolding as More than Help and Routine Support Scaffolding is much more than help or routine support (Athanases & de Oliveira, 2014; Daniels & Westerlund, 2018), and this is especially important to consider for multilingual learners. Considering scaffolding as help or routine support does not see scaffolding as adaptive and tailored as students gain responsibility and gain autonomy over their learning.

Learning as Participation, Engagement, Appropriation, and Agency The concept of learning as participation and engagement is critical for multilingual learners’ learning and language development, especially in the disciplines.

Scaffolding for Multilingual Learners  3

Learning as appropriation and agency emphasize that learning is not a linear process but is dependent on students’ different understandings and various learning needs.

Macro, Designed-in, Planned Scaffolding and Micro, Spontaneous, Interactional Scaffolding Means of scaffolding include two main scaffolding types: 1. Macro, designed-in, planned scaffolding refers to what teachers plan for, typically in advance, such as use of students’ prior knowledge and experience, sequence of tasks, and varied participant structures. 2. Micro, spontaneous interactional scaffolding refers to “in-the-moment” oral discourse features to prompt elaboration, clarify, recast, elaborate, and move discourse forward.

Overview of Chapters We start the book with Section 1, “Theories and Approaches to Scaffolding for Multilingual Learners.” This section includes chapters that highlight how the metaphor of scaffolding has evolved, reconceptualizations of scaffolding for multilingual learners, scaffolding for equitable participation in content area classrooms, and scaffolding in dual language bilingual education classrooms. Chapter 2, Scaffolding: Implications and Equity for Diverse Learners in Mainstream Classes, by Jennifer Hammond, addresses questions regarding the metaphor of scaffolding. Hammond describes how we understand scaffolding, what it looks like in classrooms, and what possibilities it offers multilingual learners. Drawing on sociocultural perspectives of Vygotsky, Bruner, Mercer, and others as well as research over a number of years, the chapter builds on this research base and proposes a model that elaborates the relationship between high challenge programs and the support that enables MLs to participate equitably in such programs. In Chapter 3, Reconceptualizing Scaffolding: Promoting Learner Autonomy Using Ecological/Sociocultural Approaches, Aída Walqui and Mary Schmida address five commonly misunderstood applications related to the generative notion of scaffolding, the fostering of learner autonomy in a socially responsible context, and implications for current and future classroom practice. Chapter 4, Scaffolding Multilingual Learners’ Equitable Participation in Disciplinary Learning: A Discussion of Concepts and Tools, by Jennifer Wilfrid and Daniella Molle, explores equitable instruction for multilingual students through the lens of scaffolding by highlighting three concepts from sociocultural theory that ground our thinking about scaffolding: learning as participation in sociocultural activities, learning as appropriation, and learning as the enactment of student agency.

4  Luciana C. de Oliveira and Ruslana Westerlund

They discuss how these concepts shape understanding of scaffolding and its role in fostering equitable learning opportunities for MLs. They conclude the chapter by discussing how an instruction-focused resource, the WIDA Framework for Equitable Instruction, reflects their approach to scaffolding and can be used to support the equitable participation of MLs in disciplinary learning. In Chapter 5, Making Science Multilingual: Scaffolding for Equitable Engagement in Science, Rita MacDonald and David T. Crowther focus on the content area of science to challenge seeing scaffolding as simplification of concepts through generic strategies which fail to support MLs. They illustrate how the Design Principles for Equitable Engagement in Three-dimensional Science, co-created by NSTA science education experts and WIDA language education experts, position educators to apply micro- and macro-scaffolding to provide adaptive and contingent science instruction and support MLs’ engagement in scientific sense-making. Section 2, “Examples and Case Studies of Scaffolding,” provides concrete examples and case studies of scaffolding work done in classrooms to show various dimensions of scaffolding in practice. In Chapter 6, Scaffolding in DLBE Secondary Social Studies Classroom: Re-envisioning Equitable Teaching Practices, Katherine Barko-Alva, Stephen Masyada, and Claudia Norez focus their work on a muchneeded area: dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programs at the secondary level. This chapter addresses how meaningful scaffolding approaches are enacted within the context of a secondary DLBE social studies classroom in order to promote biliteracy, bilingualism, and cross-linguistic communication. They describe how to design a lesson plan—highlighting scaffold approaches— centered around issues of public policy, civic engagement, and social justice, and how to provide bilingual (i.e., Spanish-English) resources and incorporate the disciplinary literacy dimension of the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework. In Chapter 7, “Oh, I was scaffolding!”: Novice Teachers’ Use of Scaffolding as Humanizing Practice with Multilingual Students, Megan Madigan Peercy and John Chi describe the need for more support of novice teachers in the area of scaffolding, including its enactment in classrooms. They situate scaffolding as one of several core practices for teaching multilingual students that can support teachers’ enactment of and reflection on humanizing pedagogy. They conclude with implications for ways to structure teacher education and induction experiences that support novice teachers’ continued growth. Chapter 8, Sustaining Quality Interactions for English Learners in Virtual Learning Formats, by Aída Walqui, addresses distance learning contexts and the need for high-quality learning opportunities, especially as a result of the coronavirus pandemic which precipitated a rapid shift from face-to-face classroom instruction into distance learning. Drawing on a sociocultural/ecological framework, the chapter lays out key parameters intended to enhance the depth and interactivity that promote learning through the use of appropriate

Scaffolding for Multilingual Learners  5

scaffolding. Combining synchronous experiences in oral-to-written modalities, with asynchronous—still interactive engagement—Walqui describes the type of curriculum designed for distance learning and how educators contingently enacted these designs. Chapter 9, Multimodality and Translanguaging as Scaffolding: Sense-Making in a Bilingual Kindergarten, by Laura Schall-Leckrone, examines how a bilingual kindergarten teacher in a multilingual school used multiple communication modes to scaffold language and literacy development. Drawing from observations over one school year, this case analysis illustrates how the teacher employed multimodal ensembles: named languages (Spanish and English), written and oral language, drawings, objects, and gestures to promote sense-making by students. She reports that translanguaging should be integrated with multimodal approaches to scaffold literacy development for multilingual children. In Chapter 10, Scaffolds in Action: How Exemplary Teachers Use Interactional Scaffolding to Generate and Sustain Emergent Bilinguals’ Engagement with Challenging English Text, Erika Johnson uses a comparative case study of four exemplary teachers’ reading instruction with middle school emergent bilinguals to explain how these teachers used interactional scaffolding (in-the-moment supports for language and content) to generate and sustain their students’ engagement with challenging English texts. She demonstrates how teachers use a range of interactional scaffolding to provide challenging content while also supporting students in multilingual classes. Our final section, “Section 3: Professional Learning with Teachers,” moves readers to work with pre-service and in-service teachers to show the continuing need to support these teachers in their teaching of multilingual learners. In Chapter 11, Scaffolding Learning for Teachers of Multilingual Learners Through Agency, Leadership, and Collaboration, Kara Mitchell Viesca, Cindy Linzell Peiwen Wang, Molly Heeren, Jessica Mitchell-McCollough and Alexa Yunes-Koch draw on approximately ten years of professional learning, as well as interviews with participants (n = 15) in that learning, to explore the principles of agency, leadership, and collaboration in teacher learning. Specifically, the chapter discusses the role these principles play in scaffolding meaningful learning for teachers to grow in their theories, values, beliefs, and practices around working with multilingual students and families. The authors argue that these principles in combination work as important scaffolding practices or conditions for teacher learning and are promising principles to replicate in a variety of contexts to support impactful teacher learning. Chapter 12, Varying the Intensity of Scaffolding: Educative Mathematics Curriculum Materials for English Learners, by Haiwen Chu and Leslie Hamburger, describes curriculum materials for in-service teachers whose goals are to expand the expertise of educators using them. They explain the annotations that offer educators choices for how intensely to support English Learners as they complete a

6  Luciana C. de Oliveira and Ruslana Westerlund

task and highlight the framework for the design of these intensities of scaffolding, focusing on the participatory structure of tasks In Chapter 13, Scaffolding “Scaffolding” in Pre-service Teacher Education, George C. Bunch and Nora W. Lang challenge the notion of scaffolding as “help,” and sometimes operationalized in ways that reduce, rather than enhance, English Learners’ (ELs) access to meaningful opportunities for language and intellectual development. Adopting a sociocultural conception of scaffolding, they report on efforts in a specific university course to (a) introduce student teachers to a coherent foundation of scaffolding for ELs, (b) demonstrate instructional practices that instantiate the concept, and (c) provide opportunities for student teachers to develop, implement, and reflect on scaffolding structures that ask their students to work together in collaborative, engaging, and agentive ways. Providing examples of student teachers’ own scaffolding activities, they discuss how their views of scaffolding evolved during the course. The collection of chapters presented in this book highlight the important work that continues to be needed in order for educators to develop better understandings and practices to support multilingual learners. This book adds to existing literature that addresses misunderstandings of what scaffolding is and how it can be used to support multilingual learners to amplify their opportunities for learning, not simplify instruction for them.

References Athanases, S. Z., & de Oliveira, L. C. (2014). Scaffolding versus structured assistance for Latina/o youth in an urban school: Tensions in building toward disciplinary literacy. Journal of Literacy Research, 46(2), 263–299. Daniels, J., & Westerlund, R. (2018). Scaffolding learning for multilingual students in math. WIDA Focus Bulletin. Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. https://wida.wisc.edu/sites/default/files/resource/FocusOn-Scaffolding.pdf van de Pol, J., Volman, M., & Beishuizen, J. (2010). Scaffolding in teacher-student interaction: A decade of research. Educational Psychologist Review, 22, 271–296. Vygotsky, L. S. (1962). Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

SECTION 1

Theories and Approaches to Scaffolding for Multilingual Learners

2 SCAFFOLDING Implications and Equity for Diverse Learners in Mainstream Classes Jennifer Hammond

My interest in the metaphor of scaffolding lies in the possibilities it affords students who are learning English as an Additional Language (EAL students). In the Australian context (where I live and work) most EAL students attend public schools, where, with varying levels of support for cultural adjustment and English language and literacy development, they are placed in mainstream classes and are expected to engage with the same curriculum as their English-speaking peers. While I believe there are strong practical and theoretical arguments in favor of this policy of mainstreaming, its successful implementation is complex. It is dependent on a strong whole school approach to the well-being and education of students; on the planning and implementation of classroom programs that build from what students know, challenge them intellectually, and provide high levels of targeted support. It is also dependent on mainstream as well as specialist EAL teachers’ access to significant levels of professional support to build relevant knowledge and skills. So what is the role of scaffolding in all this? If EAL students are to have access to education that develops their potential and that opens up possibilities in future life choices, they need to be able to access the full curriculum. My colleagues and I have long supported the argument that “it is better to set the same high expectations for all students and to provide differentiated levels of support to ensure all students have a fair chance to achieve those expectations” (ACARA, 2009, p. 8). Like Walqui (2006, p. 159), we support “a pedagogy of rigour and hope,” and we argue that scaffolding plays a pivotal role in the planning and

DOI: 10.4324/9781003196228-3

10  Jennifer Hammond

implementation of programs that provide students with access to targeted and differentiated support. However, we have also long argued that, as well as being supported, students need to be intellectually challenged; and that, when planning and implementing programs in multilingual classrooms, teachers need to address the role of scaffolding in combination with other key factors. In this chapter, I draw on research undertaken with colleagues over a number of years to elaborate these arguments. Before doing so, however, I address a number of questions about the metaphor of scaffolding. To some extent the term “scaffolding” has been a victim of its own success. It is now so widely used in different contexts of education, that its meaning has become diffuse. Indeed, the breadth of its use to refer to any kind of help is often regarded as a major limitation (Smit, van Eerde, & Bakker, 2013; van de Pol, Volman, & Beishuizen, 2010). It is useful therefore to begin the chapter by elaborating theoretical principles that have informed my own work, and by addressing the question of why there are ongoing debates regarding the nature of scaffolding and its role in education.

Understanding Scaffolding Despite, or perhaps because of, its popularity, questions remain about the nature of scaffolding: what it looks like in classrooms; how we know when scaffolding has taken place, and what its contribution is to students’ learning. Some years ago, Mercer (1994) argued that scaffolding offers a conceptual metaphor for the quality of teacher intervention in learning, and that it seems to capture teachers’ intuitive conceptions of what it means to provide help for students within classroom contexts. Its resonance with teachers goes some way to explaining the extent of “take-up” of this metaphor in education, and the flurry of publications that address questions about the nature and value of scaffolding in learning. As a result, there is now a rich literature on scaffolding that traces its development from the initial work of Wood and others (Wood, Bruner, & Ross, 1976); its basis in Vygotskyan theory (Vygotsky, 1978); and its connections with sociocultural theory (Mercer & Littleton, 2007; Rojas-Drummond & Mercer, 2003; Wertsch, 1991). While definitions vary, in their comprehensive review of scaffolding in teacher–student interactions, van de Pol et al. (2010, p. 5) argue that “in general, scaffolding is construed as support given by a teacher to a student when performing a task that the student might otherwise not be able to accomplish.” They also argue that despite changing definitions in the literature, there are a number of commonly agreed characteristics of scaffolding. These include: contingency, where the teacher’s support is targeted in recognition and response to the current level of students’ knowledge and abilities; fading, where, as students develop relevant knowledge and skills, the support provided by the teacher is decreased over time; and transfer of responsibility, where responsibility for the performance of a task is gradually transferred to the learner who is subsequently

Scaffolding  11

able to work more independently. My own favorite definition, from the work of Mercer and his colleagues, reflects these characteristics: (Scaffolding) is not just any assistance which helps a learner accomplish a task. It is help which will enable a learner to accomplish a task which they would not have been quite able to manage on their own, and it is help which is intended to bring the learner closer to a state of competence which will enable them eventually to complete such a task on their own. (Maybin, Mercer, & Steirer, 1992, p. 188) This frequently quoted definition emphasizes the contingent “intellectual push” that occurs as students work with the support of a more knowledgeable “other” to develop understandings, or to undertake tasks that are just beyond their current capabilities. It emphasizes the temporary, or fading nature of scaffolding, where help and support are provided for the time needed to enable students to progress with their learning, but which can then be withdrawn as students become increasingly familiar with new concepts or skills. And it highlights handover of responsibility for learning—as students develop new levels of competence, they are able to work increasingly independently, with the result they are subsequently able to engage independently with related tasks and problems. As many have noted, the concept of scaffolding is embedded in sociocultural theories of learning that draw on the work of Vygotsky (1978) and on others who have worked with Vygotsky’s theories (e.g., Mercer, 1994; van Lier, 2004; Wells, 1999). Specifically, it draws on the Vygotskyan concept of the Zone of Proximal Development, and the argument that good learning is that which is ahead of actual development (Vygotsky, 1978), or that which “anticipates the child’s own internalisation of mental functions” (Mercer, 1994, p. 96). It builds on the assumption that learning is essentially a social and cultural process that occurs in the interaction between individuals. It also builds on the assumption that knowledge is collaboratively constructed in interactions between teacher and student (rather than something that is passed from teacher to student), and that all participants are actively involved in the learning process. Yet, as van Lier (2004, p. 147) has argued “scaffolding in learning is a somewhat troublesome notion.” The initial work of Wood and colleagues (Wood et al., 1976) addressed the role of scaffolding in supporting learning in a oneon-one situation. In education, however, the metaphor has been broadened to include collaborative and whole class learning, with the result that discussion continues about what scaffolding looks like when it is enacted in whole class contexts (Bakker, Smit, & Wegerif, 2015; Smit et  al., 2013). While there is general consensus that scaffolding is characterized by contingency, fading, and responsibility, Smit et al. (2013) suggest that features of diagnosis, responsiveness, and handover to independence more accurately capture scaffolding in whole

12  Jennifer Hammond

class contexts. They argue that diagnosis of students’ current developmental level precedes and should be distinguished from the adaptive (contingent) support that is central to scaffolding, and that handover to independence includes fading of the teachers’ support. They also argue that scaffolding in whole class contexts is layered in that it operates at the interactive level of whole class discussion, but also at a more macro level outside these interactions and between lesson; it is distributed, often over several teaching episodes; and it is cumulative, in that handover may not be realized within one lesson, but rather may occur across a series of teaching events. Further questions arise about the nature of the ZPD and its implications for scaffolding in whole class contexts. Initially regarded as pertaining to individual learners, its extension to groups of learners in whole class contexts has resulted in further theorizing of the concept as potentially communal (Mercer, 2000; Wells, 1999). As Cazden (1979, p. 175) argued some years ago, “group scaffolds are conceivable in which ZPDs for individual members will differ but within a range that makes collaboration in a common effort still possible.” Smit et al. (2013, p. 822) make a similar point: “we view a group ZPD to exist alongside individual ZPDs in whole classroom settings”; however, they also note the challenge in whole class contexts for teachers who are working with multiple ZPDs and thus with multiple layers of students’ understandings and skills. Van Lier (1996, p. 103) further complicates discussions by proposing that students can work productively in their ZPD using a variety of resources that include assistance from more capable peers or adults, interaction with equal or even less capable peers; and by drawing on inner resources. Within the ongoing discussions and debates about scaffolding, there are three interrelated issues that, in my view, are especially relevant to the education of linguistically and culturally diverse students in multilingual classrooms. In research that my colleagues and I have undertaken over a number of years these issues have been central to our ongoing analysis of scaffolding and its contribution to EAL students’ learning. These are: • Intentions and mean of scaffolding: the what and the how (of scaffolding language and literacy development as well as educational knowledge); • Layers and levels of scaffolding; • The cumulative nature of scaffolding.

Intentions and Means of Scaffolding Decisions about the knowledge and understandings that students should engage with are central to policy and curriculum development, and have implications for goals and learning intentions in any educational program. They also have implications for how, as educators, we understand the nature and role of scaffolding in supporting students’ learning. Of particular relevance here is the

Scaffolding  13

distinction between the intentions of scaffolding (what knowledge or conceptual understanding is to be scaffolded) and the means of scaffolding (how concepts are to be scaffolded through engagement with specific strategies, such as modeling, clarifying and questioning). The nature and significance of this distinction has been addressed by a number of researchers in recent years (e.g., Bakker et al., 2015; Prediger & Pohler, 2015; Van de Pol et al., 2010). Some address the distinction in relation to specific tasks and strategies. Van de Pol et al. (2010), for example, propose a framework that distinguishes intentions and means in analysis of specific scaffolding strategies. Others address intentions at the level of programs. Smit et al. (2013), for example, suggest that in whole class contexts where scaffolding is distributed across several teaching episodes, intentions can be analyzed at the level of a whole program, as well as at the level of strategy or single task. In our own research, the distinction between intentions and means has been a central issue. Our initial research in EAL education prioritized the means of providing EAL students with high levels of scaffolding (Hammond & Gibbons, 2005). However, follow-up research highlighted the importance of a clearer focus on intentions—of whole program intentions, as well as intentions of specific tasks. As a result, we placed more emphasis on program design, in particular on the design of programs that were characterized by high expectations and high challenge, and that aimed for deep knowledge and deep understanding (Gibbons, 2008, 2009; Hammond, 2014b). The emphasis that emerged from this research on challenging students intellectually, as well as providing high levels of targeted and differentiated support, has continued to inform our subsequent research (Hammond, 2014a, 2018). It is an approach that explicitly rejects assumptions that a modified or simplified curriculum benefits EAL students, and instead proposes, that with appropriate support, even recently arrived EAL students, can, and do, participate in programs that challenge them intellectually—a point elaborated in later discussion of a junior Science program. This emphasis on challenge and support has also informed our understanding of the relationship between intentions and means of scaffolding. We take the view that unless scaffolding is planned and implemented in response to overall program intentions and goals, it is likely simply to be a waste of educational opportunity. This distinction between program intentions and means of scaffolding is especially relevant in multilingual classrooms. In a review of scaffolding in mathematics education Bakker et al. (2015) note that “what is scaffolded,” although diverse, primarily addresses content-related understanding (such as problem solving, mathematical thinking). Such findings are not surprising. In multilingual classrooms, as in other classrooms, intentions and means of scaffolding are typically directed to supporting students’ development of curriculum concepts and skills. However, for EAL students the development of (English) language and literacy abilities so they are able to talk, read, and write about key curriculum

14  Jennifer Hammond

concepts are equally important. As Smit et  al. argue (2013, p. 822), for these students, scaffolding the development of subject specific languages is essential for participating at school. Yet there is relatively little emphasis in the literature on the role of scaffolding in supporting multilingual students’ language and literacy development (exceptions include Gibbons, 2015; Prediger & Pohler, 2015; Smit et al., 2013). This is not to say that the role of language in learning is ignored. As many researchers have argued, a key element of scaffolding is the assumption that learning occurs in the interaction between teacher and students; and that the language that occurs in this interaction mediates and is pivotal to the success of learning (Rojas-Drummond & Mercer, 2003). A number of researchers have also pointed to the complementary and productive relationship between scaffolding and dialogic approaches to teaching (Bakker et  al., 2015; Rojas-Drummond, Torreblanca, & Pedraza, 2013). Nevertheless, there appears to be insufficient attention to the specific developmental language and literacy needs of multilingual students. In our research, we believe the role of language in mediating learning is central to our understanding of scaffolding; and we regard the intersection between scaffolding and dialogic teaching as highly productive (Hammond, 2018; Hammond, Cootes, & Valdez-Adams, 2018). However, we take the view that support to develop control of the academic language that is specific to different curriculum disciplines is something different. We argue that programs designed for EAL learners need to include goals (intentions) that address students’ language and literacy development as well as their conceptual development. We also argue that the specific strategies (the means) of scaffolding in these programs need to support students’ language and literacy development as well as their conceptual development.

Layers and Levels of Scaffolding A second issue relevant to the role of scaffolding in the education of multilingual students is that of layers and levels. In many ways this issue intersects with the above distinction between intentions and means, as it raises questions about the place of program design in scaffolding. For example, a number of authors have addressed the intersection of program design and learning trajectories to better understand how scaffolding unfolds within lessons (Bakker et al., 2015; Gibbons, 2015; Prediger & Pohler, 2015). Some have pointed to the layered nature of scaffolding in whole class contexts, where scaffolding may be realized through sequences of instructional activities within lessons, but also extended through interactions that occur outside the lesson or between lessons (Smit et al., 2013). Others have argued the need to distinguish, and align, micro-level support with macro-level program intentions and learning trajectories (Prediger & Pohler, 2015).

Scaffolding  15

Of particular relevance to our research has been the work of van Lier (2004) and Walqui (2006) and their identification of macro, meso, and micro levels of scaffolding. Here, the macro level represents the planned progression of the curriculum; the meso represents the procedures and sequencing of tasks used in a particular activity; and the micro represents the local interactional collaboration that occurs as the teacher contingently supports students’ participation. Walqui describes these levels as operating simultaneously and as being mutually interactive, involving shifts between macro and micro, between planned and improvised, and between structure and process. Boblett (2012, p. 11) describes the relationship between these levels as “a balancing act between the planned, on the one hand, and the unpredictable or improvised, on the other.” In our own early research, we distinguish levels of “designed-in” and “contingent” scaffolding (Hammond & Gibbons, 2005), and this distinction has continued to prove useful. For us, designed-in scaffolding consists of the macro level of program planning where teachers build on their knowledge of students’ abilities and needs; where they clarify learning goals; and where they select and sequence tasks to achieve program goals and address students’ needs. Contingent scaffolding then refers to ways in which teachers interact with students in response to the teaching and learning opportunities that arise as lessons unfold—for example, by linking and recapping prior and current learning; appropriating and recasting students’ contributions; and probing students’ responses to seek further understanding or clarification. Our distinction between designed-in and contingent scaffolding overlaps with the levels identified by van Lier and Walqui. We see designed-in scaffolding as incorporating macro and meso levels, while contingent scaffolding is similar to micro scaffolding. Like van Lier and Walqui, we regard these levels as interdependent. We see the interactional support available at the contingent level as enacting scaffolding in the classroom, but we argue that without the designed-in level, this support is likely to be a hit-and-miss affair, and that the relationship between these levels is pivotal to effective scaffolding within multilingual classrooms.

Cumulative Nature of Scaffolding The third (and again interrelated) issue particularly relevant to students in multilingual classes is the question of whether scaffolding is limited to the successful completion of a single task, or the result of a series of related tasks. A number of researchers have proposed that scaffolding in whole class contexts is the result of sequences of tasks, and that the learning that occurs as students complete these tasks is cumulative. Smit et al., for example, argue that learning is a longitudinal process that involves “the cumulative effect of many diagnostic and response actions over time” (Smit et al., 2013, p. 817). They suggest that students’ independence develops as a result of these cumulative actions which may be distributed, or “scattered” over time and may include actions that take place within

16  Jennifer Hammond

the classroom as well as outside the classroom (when, for example, the teacher assesses a students’ work in preparation for providing feedback to the student). While not using the term “cumulative,” Gibbons (2009, 2015) addresses the significance for multilingual learners of sequences of related tasks that provide students with spiral access to specific concepts or skills. She uses the term “message abundancy” to summarize students’ access to learning when a teacher introduces a concept but then provides opportunities for students to visit and revisit the same concept in different ways and via different modes of meaning—for example, by drawing on prior knowledge; providing physical demonstrations; shifting between everyday and more academic language; using visuals to reinforce or clarify meaning; color-coding to highlight specific features. Walqui, 2006, p. 169) makes a similar point. For multilingual students, she argues, subject matter needs to be amplified, rather than simplified, so they have more than one opportunity to engage with concepts. She suggests students need access to “message abundancy” where they have opportunities to construct their understandings on the basis of multiple clues and perspectives in a variety of class activities. In my research with colleagues, the notion of “message abundancy” has been central to our understanding of the cumulative nature of scaffolding. We argue that for multilingual learners, the selection and sequencing of tasks within and between lessons, and their access to message abundancy, is critical. It ensures that students have opportunities to visit and revisit key concepts; that their learning can progress in small steps; and that they have the time to learn relevant aspects of language and literacy as they engage with these concepts. We take the view that scaffolding is distributed across sequences of related tasks, and it is through the cumulative nature of these tasks that scaffolding is enacted. In sum, what emerges from even this brief discussion is that the concept of scaffolding is complex and contested. While there is general agreement on broad characteristics of scaffolding, questions remain about its nature and role in education: about its purpose and scale; about its duration; and about its relationship with program intentions and design. Some years ago, Rojas-Drummond et al. (2013, p. 15) argued: In spite of recent advances in the field, we still need further theoretical and empirical work to increase our understanding of how scaffolding is enacted through the dialogic interactions among participants in diverse educational contexts, and how these processes enhance children’s development and learning. I believe this statement remains valid. In multilingual classrooms, the role of scaffolding is further complicated by the diverse nature of student populations, and the need to recognize and respond to students’ diverse educational and linguistic needs. As van de Pol et al. (2010, p. 272) point out, the support given by the teacher during scaffolding strongly depends upon the characteristics of the situation—with the result that scaffolding will look different in different situations, and will need to draw contingently on different techniques and strategies. For students in multilingual classes, further analyses of how scaffolding is enacted

Scaffolding  17

in specific classrooms, and how it enhances students’ learning, is therefore a useful enterprise. In what follows, I turn to discussion of one multilingual program. My aim here is to address implications of the questions raised earlier about the nature and role of scaffolding as it is enacted in a specific program. My aim also is to highlight the place of scaffolding in relation to other factors that contribute to students’ learning—a combination that may contribute to a working model of scaffolding. I begin by outlining the context in which this program was planned and implemented.

Context of the Year 4 Science Program The Year 4 Science program, discussed here, was planned and implemented as part of recently completed research (Hammond, Cranitch, & Black, 2016–2017). As indicated, our earlier research had highlighted the value of high-challenge and high-support programs for the diverse range of EAL students attending school in Australia. However, in this research we focused specifically on the educational development of very recently arrived EAL and refugee students. Our aim was to investigate how realistic it was to expect students with limited prior access to formal education, and limited literacy development, to participate in highchallenge programs. Our aim also was to analyze the kinds of differentiated and targeted support that would be necessary to enable this participation. We took the view that while pedagogical choices in any program impact on students’ educational development, with recently arrived students, this impact is amplified. The research itself took place in two primary (junior) and two high schools. These schools already had strong programs in place to address the well-being and educational development of recently arrived students. Teachers from these schools were invited to participate in cycles of professional input, program planning, implementation, and feedback. Our aim was to build on analysis of strong programs with a view to providing professional support for other teachers working with similar students (Hammond, 2018). While no formal evaluation of the programs was undertaken in the research, documentation and analysis of data provided evidence of students’ engagement and progress with learning. The Year 4 Science program, discussed below, has been selected as a positive example of a program that challenged, but also supported and enhanced students’ learning. Students in the Year 4 class were nine to ten years old. The 24 students in the class were all from language backgrounds other than English, and 11 were from refugee backgrounds. Some had been in Australia for two to three years and were familiar with Australian schools and class routines. The majority had very recently arrived and were in the process of adjusting to life and school in Australia. As a result, the Year 4 students’ educational knowledge and literacy skills in their mother tongues, as well as in English, varied considerably. Students were also often diverse in terms of their experiences of poverty and social and

18  Jennifer Hammond

family disruptions. The student profile of this class was typical of other classes in the school, and in other local schools. In line with Australia’s EAL policy of mainstreaming-with-support, all newly arrived students were allocated to a “home class” where they were expected to participate with their peers in programs that addressed key curriculum areas of maths, science, English, and so on. At times these recently arrived students were withdrawn from their class for specialist assistance with language development and cultural adjustment, while at other times a specialist EAL teacher worked collaboratively with the class teacher to provide in-class support. In the Science program, newly arrived students received in-class support from the EAL teacher who also worked collaboratively with the class teacher to plan and to implement the program. The nature of the program is summarized below.

The Year 4 Science Program The Year 4 Science program was based on compulsory curriculum documents that specified required curriculum content to be taught, in this case the impact of heat on specific objects or materials. The program was then further developed and fleshed out by the Year 4 class teacher and the specialist EAL teacher who worked collaboratively in response to the students’ diverse needs. The process of program planning involved: − Analysis of students’ current abilities, knowledge and needs, and analysis of demands of the curriculum; − Identification of program goals that addressed curriculum content and students’ language and literacy development; − Planning and sequencing of lessons within the program; − Selection of tasks within lessons to “design-in” sequences of controlled, guided, and independent learning of key curriculum concepts and of the language and literacy necessary to engage with those concepts; − Planning for differentiated levels of scaffolding to address students’ diverse needs; − Processes for monitoring students’ learning. The program was structured around the overarching goal of learning to “think and talk like scientists.” More specific goals then addressed the impact of heat on different objects or materials, and the academic language and literacy that would enable students to engage with this topic. These goals are summarized in Table 2.1. Note: the term “procedural recount” refers to the type of text (genre) that students wrote to communicate the outcomes from their experiments. Stages within this text-type include: Aims; Materials; Steps (or Procedure); Results; Conclusion.

Scaffolding  19 TABLE 2.1  Goals of the Science Program

Goals for curriculum content

Goals for language and literacy

• To investigate the impact of heat on specific objects or materials; • To develop science process skills of observing, questioning, hypothesizing, predicting, planning, investigating, and communicating.

• To support students to learn to talk, read, and write like scientists; • To extend students’ understanding of purpose and structure of procedural recount; • To extend students’ understanding of grammatical features of procedural recount (noun groups, verb groups, and adverbial phrases) and of relevant scientific vocabulary.

The Science program was implemented over a period of approximately eight weeks. It included a series of experiments that investigated the impact of heat on different materials. In one experiment, for example, boiling water was poured into containers made of different materials and the relative heat of these containers led to discussion and conclusions about good and poor conductors of heat. Another experiment (discussed further below) involved placing four common objects (plastic and metal spoons; wooden and bamboo skewers) into a beaker. A small bead was stuck onto the end of each object with a dab of butter; then boiling water was poured into the beaker. Students observed which bead fell off which object first, and drew conclusions about good and poor conductors of heat. While initial lessons focused primarily on building students’ shared knowledge of scientific concepts, later lessons shifted to the language of science. Here, in preparation for writing up outcomes from their experiments, students discussed and analyzed models of procedural recounts. These discussions included analysis of the sequence and different functions of stages within the text, as well as key grammatical features. Brief summaries of two lessons provide a flavor of teaching and learning practices within the program (for convenience, labeled Lesson 1 and Lesson 2). Lesson 1 took place approximately two weeks after the program began. In this lesson, students undertook the experiment on the heat conductivity (described above). Lesson 2 took place some weeks later when students were preparing to write-up their findings from the experiment. This lesson focused on the structure and function of procedural recounts. As the summaries show, both lessons began with a review of purposes of the program and of the lesson, and a review of previous learning. Both ended with a reflection of what students had learned and how that learning related to the purposes of the program (Table 2.2). The processes involved in planning and implementing the Year 4 Science program highlight issues raised earlier regarding the nature and role of scaffolding in whole class contexts: of intentions and means, of layers and levels; and of the

20  Jennifer Hammond TABLE 2.2  Summaries of two lessons from the Year 4 Science Program

Lesson 1

Lesson 2

Stage 1: Introducing the lesson: Review of purposes of program and learning in previous lesson, including key scientific vocabulary. Stage 2: Preparing for the new experiment: Aims of experiment; key scientific words; instructions for experiment.

Stage 1: Introducing the lesson: Review of previous learning on heat conductors and of procedural recounts.

Stage 2: Addressing purposes of procedural recount; purpose and audience of text; structure and purposes of each stage of procedural recount. Stage 3: Modeling of the experiment: Stage 3: Reconstructing procedural Following procedural directions: recount: Observing the experiment; “Reconstructing” procedural recount from Hypothesizing what might happen. cutup sequence of sentences. Stage 4: Doing the experiment: Stage 4: Wrapping up of lesson Students conducting experiment in groups; Reviewing of learning intention for lesson; discussing observations and outcomes; reflection on significance of learning reflecting on outcomes. (scientists need to explain findings from experiments). Stage 5: Writing up of experiments findings: Teachers supporting students who work in groups to summarize outcomes on written template Stage 6: Wrapping up of lesson: Sharing discussion of scientific observations, and their significance; pointing forward to next lesson.

cumulative nature of scaffolding. They also raise questions about the relationship between scaffolding and other key factors that, together, enhance students’ learning. In what follows, I draw out implications from the program for understanding the contribution of scaffolding in multilingual classrooms and its relationship with other key factors that contribute to students’ learning.

Scaffolding What: Intentions and Means of Scaffolding The Year 4 Science program highlighted the need to clarify program intentions prior to addressing means. As in other programs, planning processes were informed by the teachers’ knowledge of science and by their theoretical understanding of learning, and of language development. The teachers’ collaboration in program planning was important as it enabled them to draw on complementary areas of expertise in curriculum knowledge and in language and literacy, and it enabled them to “diagnose” students’ needs and demands in relation to

Scaffolding  21

both these areas. As a result, their program goals (and intentions) addressed three interrelated areas of learning: − science and scientific processes (what is science; how do scientists think and write); − curriculum knowledge (doing science: the impact of heat on specific objects); − language and literacy development (talking, reading and writing science). While most programs include goals that specify intended learning of curriculum knowledge, it is less common, at least in the Australian context, for programs to articulate the higher order focus on what is science (or history or maths), and the explicit, systematic focus on language and literacy development within a mainstream curriculum program. This triple focus is likely to be of value for all students, but especially so for recently arrived students such as those in the Year 4 Science program, who are adjusting to unfamiliar and different pedagogical practices in a new educational context. Not only does it provide a basis for teachers to clarify purposes and intentions of learning for themselves, it also provides a basis for ongoing discussions with students about purposes of learning within the program. As the earlier summary of lessons showed, lessons in the Science program typically began with discussion of purposes of the program and of individual lessons, and ended with reflections on what had been learned and why that mattered. The program goals also provided the frame, within which the purposes of individual lessons and tasks were developed. The result was a cohesive program where learning intentions at the levels of program, lessons, and tasks were aligned—and this had implications for how scaffolding was enacted in the classroom. Decisions about what was to be scaffolded (learning of both curriculum content and language development), as well as how scaffolding would take place (which strategies would be employed in the program, in what sequence, and with which students) were made in response to program intentions. These decisions enabled scaffolding to be targeted, differentiated, and cumulative.

Levels of Scaffolding: Designing for Cumulative Learning In their planning and implementation of the Year 4 Science program, the teachers worked with principles of high challenge and high support. They also worked with concepts of designed-in and contingent scaffolding (Hammond & Gibbons, 2005). As indicated, these levels were distinguished in our early research and have proved useful in subsequent work with teachers (Hammond, 2014b, 2018; Hammond & Valdez-Adams, 2021). In response to their program goals, the teachers planned sequences of lessons, and then selected and sequenced tasks within lessons that built from what students already knew, and assisted them

22  Jennifer Hammond

to develop the knowledge, skills, and language they needed to advance their learning. The teachers thus “designed-in” at a macro level the sequence of lessons and tasks that would enable students to build relevant knowledge and skills cumulatively across the program.

Macro-Level Designed-In Scaffolding The heat experiment lesson (Lesson 1) provides an illustration of macro-level designed-in scaffolding at work. As indicated, the lesson itself took place a couple of weeks into the program, when students had already been introduced to scientific process skills (observing, questioning, hypothesizing, investigating, predicting, interpreting, communicating) and had completed a number of experiments. In many ways the lesson was typical of other junior science lessons: students were introduced to specific scientific concepts; they explored these concepts through group experiments; and they engaged in a final whole class discussion of findings from the experiment. However, the lesson illustrates a number of features that were especially relevant for the newly arrived multilingual learners who participated in the class. To remind the reader, the sequence of tasks within the lesson was as follows: Stage 1: Introduction to lesson: Review of purposes of unit and learning in previous lesson Stage 2: Preparing for the new experiment: Aim of experiment; key scientific words Stage 3: Modeling of the experiment: following directions: hypothesizing what might happen Stage 4: Doing the experiment: observing and discussing outcomes Stage 5: Writing up of experiments findings: written template Stage 6: Wrap up of lesson: share scientific observations; pointing forward to next lesson. Tasks in the lesson were sequenced, initially, to provide high levels of support (mediated discussion of aims of the experiment; and modeling the experiment). Subsequent tasks enabled students to work more independently (group experiments; group summaries of observations and findings). The lesson was notable for its layers of high support. By modeling the experiment before students were expected to undertake it themselves, teachers provided additional opportunities for students to build understanding of relevant concepts and language. By the time students worked on their own experiments they were able to do so with confidence and success. Tasks in the lesson were also designed and sequenced to provide students with  maximum access to “message abundancy.” As indicated, we regard this notion of message abundancy as central to the cumulative nature of scaffolding.

Scaffolding  23

The sequence of tasks in the lesson introduced students to key curriculum concepts (the impact of heat on different materials) and enabled them to visit and revisit those concepts in a range of different ways (through discussion of previous related learning and the aims of the current experiment; through observing teachers’ modeling of the experiment; through hands-on interactions and peer discussions as students’ completed their own experiments; through reflections on findings from the experiment; through group summary of observations on written template; and through final class reflections on significance of findings). That is, students revisited the same key concepts a total of six times in the lesson, and as they did so, they heard and began using the vocabulary and patterns of language needed to talk about these concepts. Similar features were evident in the design and sequence of tasks with the procedural recount lesson (Lesson 2). As in the heat experiment lesson (Lesson 1), tasks were sequenced from those that provided high levels of modeled and guided support to those where students worked more independently. They were also sequenced to provide students with access to message abundancy (students visited and revisited similar concepts a total of five times in the lesson). The selection and sequencing of tasks within both lessons (and others in the program) contributed to a supportive learning environment where all students, including those who had recently arrived, were included, and where they could all participate in the full curriculum. It enabled students’ learning of science and of language to progress in small cumulative steps, and for students to work a little more independently with each task. It also enabled teachers and students to participate in on-going dialogic conversations about the key concepts. These conversations were cumulative across tasks, and contributed to students’ engagement in their learning. In addition, the macro, designed-in level of scaffolding provided a context where micro-level contingent scaffolding within tasks could be targeted and differentiated, and where the learning that occurred within tasks contributed to cumulative learning across the lesson.

Micro-Level Scaffolding: Targeted and Differentiated Support Teachers in the science program provided micro-level support that was targeted and differentiated in response to students’ specific needs. A short extract from the heat experiment lesson (Lesson 1) illustrates the nature of this contingent support within the program. The extract is from Stage 3 of the lesson, where the teachers demonstrated the experiment. To remind the reader, in the experiment, four common objects were placed in a beaker; a dab of butter was used to stick a small bead onto each object; boiling water was poured into the beaker. Students observed which bead fell off which object first, and drew conclusions about which object was the best conductor of heat. To observe the demonstration students were gathered around a table on which the experiment took place. The extract begins as students waited to see which bead would fall off first. T1 was the class teacher, and T2 the specialist EAL teacher.

24  Jennifer Hammond

EXTRACT 1  S:  Which one’s going to go first? … T1:  Put up your hand if you think the plastic spoon is going to be the best

conductor. T2: Alright, I’ve got another question for you. Put your hands down. Let’s

hypothesise. Which bead on which material would fall off first? [general calling out] T2:  Plastic spoon? S: Yes. T2:  Hand up if you think the bead on the straw would fall off first? S:  The straw. T2: Hand up if you think the metal spoon? Hand up if you think it’s the skewer? The wooden skewer would fall off first. S:  The straw () melt. T2:  What about the plastic spoon? T1:  So when you say that, are you saying that out of all these materials you think the plastic material is the best conductor of heat? S: Yes. S:  No. Cos I can—whoop! (the bead falls off the metal spoon) [laughter and calling out] T1:  What happened? T2:  What did we just observe? Which bead fell off first? S:  The metal one. T2:  Okay, tell me in a sentence, the bead on… [general] The bead on the metal spoon== T2:  ==One person at a time. (), share what you observed. S:  I just observed that the bead on the metal spoon just fell off first. T2: Wonder why the bead on the metal spoon fell off first. I wonder why. Mm. T1:  Back to our investigation, our aim. S:  Because like the metal, the metal ah the hot water () the metal and like and you can like (heat) the metal and so like, so like==the bead S:  so the bead on () fall off the, on the bottom. T:  So (E), when you said that you think the heat has travelled through it, what do we call that? S: Conductor. S: Conductor. T:  So, metal spoon… S:  Is the best conductor.

Scaffolding  25

As teachers demonstrated the experiment, students were encouraged to take on the role of scientists and to hypothesize what might happen in the experiment. Here the teachers pushed students to provide answers in full sentences and to use appropriate scientific terms. (S: I just observed the bead on the metal spoon fell off first.) The discussion then shifted from what students had observed to why the phenomenon had happened: Wonder why the bead on the metal spoon fell off first. Some students’ responses indicated they understood the question, but they struggled to articulate a coherent response. (S: Because like the metal, the metal ah the hot water () the metal and like and you can like (heat) the metal and so like, so like==the bead; S: so the bead on () fall off the, on the bottom.) The teacher supported such students by elaborating and recasting their responses, and by clarifying understanding of the term “conductor.” Teacher and students were then able, jointly, to conclude the metal spoon is the best conductor of heat. Within the extract, the teachers encouraged students to “think like scientists,” but they also supported students by modeling use of language, by pushing them to articulate statements in more detail, by recasting and elaborating their responses, and by clarifying meaning of key terms. Students thus had opportunities to build shared knowledge of relevant scientific concepts and to hear and begin using the language that would enable them to engage with the science. The support here was targeted in that it contributed to students’ understanding of specific scientific concepts, it was differentiated as teachers interacted differently with different students, and it was cumulative in that it built students’ understanding of key curriculum concepts within this task and prepared them for the next stage of the lesson where they revisited the same concepts but worked more independently. In addition, the mediated interactions that were evident in the extract provided a basis for ongoing dialogic conversations about key concepts. The kind of micro level of scaffolding evident here contributed to an inclusive and supportive learning environment for all students, including recently arrived EAL students. However, without the macro-level program design, with clear program goals, with sequenced lessons, and with carefully selected and sequenced tasks within lessons, the contingent micro-level scaffolding is unlikely to be more than a hit-and-miss affair. It was the combination of macro and micro levels that enabled scaffolding to be implemented cumulatively and effectively in the program.

Conclusion My interest in scaffolding, as indicated, lies in its contribution to the education of EAL students in mainstream classes. Despite ongoing questions and debates in the literature about its nature and role, I believe scaffolding plays a pivotal role in the planning and implementation of programs that provide all students, including

26  Jennifer Hammond

EAL students, with equitable access to education. This chapter elaborates my own understanding of scaffolding. To this end, I have first addressed three related issues in the ongoing debates that I regard as especially relevant to ways in which scaffolding can be understood and enacted in multilingual classes. These are: − The need to distinguish and address intentions and means of scaffolding, that is, to address what is to be scaffolded as well as how scaffolding will take place; − The need to take account of layers and levels of program design as well as contingent interactions at the local level, that is, to take account of macrolevel intentions in the planning and implementation of contingent micro levels of scaffolding; − The need to understand scaffolding as cumulative, that is, not just as the successful completion of a single task, but as a contribution to learning that is cumulative across sequences of tasks, interactions and responses over time. To explore implications of these issues, I have outlined a Year 4 Science program developed as part of recent research that investigated ways of supporting recently arrived EAL students in mainstream classes. Outcomes from this research showed that newly arrived students could participate in programs that challenged them intellectually, if they also had access to high levels of support, and it was the nature and quality of support available to the students that was pivotal to this participation. It is also the nature and quality of that support that is relevant to discussions of scaffolding in this chapter. In the Year 4 program, support was planned and implemented in response to overall program goals and intentions, and thus the means of support was responsive to program intentions. It was designed into the program at a macro level through the sequencing of lessons, and through the sequencing of tasks within lessons. It was then enacted contingently in the moment by moment interactions that occurred in the unfolding of lessons. As a result, the support was also cumulative in that it enabled students to build understanding of curriculum concepts and of the language and literacy that enabled them to engage with these concepts over time. In my view, this support constituted scaffolding that was intentional, layered, and cumulative. Importantly, however, the research also highlighted the somewhat blurred nature of the relationship between scaffolding and other factors in enabling the participation of EAL students’ in their mainstream classes. For example, participation for all students, including those who had recently arrived, was enhanced where programs were carefully planned with clear learning goals that were shared with students, where tasks were selected to ensure students’ learning was sequenced in small and manageable steps, where students were engaged in dialogic interaction and sustained conversations about key curriculum concepts

Scaffolding  27

while also being supported to learn academic English, and where all of this occurred within a positive and welcoming learning environment. While the role of scaffolding at both designed-in and contingent levels was pivotal here, the blurred distinction between scaffolding and other factors suggests that an expansive and inclusive model of scaffolding may be useful to take forward in EAL education. As Pauline Gibbons and I argued some years ago, the hallmark of effective teaching lies both in teachers’ abilities to plan, select and sequence tasks in their programs in ways that take account of different levels and abilities of specific groups of students, and in their ability to make the most of the teachable moment. (Hammond & Gibbons, 2005, p. 10) I suggest this statement still holds and that it sits comfortably with an expansive and inclusive model of scaffolding that prioritizes educational inclusion and positive outcomes.

References ACARA. (2009). The shape of the Australian curriculum. Version 2.0. Retrieved from www. acara.edu.au Bakker, A., Smit, J., & Wegerif, R. (2015). Scaffolding and dialogic teaching in mathematics education. ZDM Mathematics Education, 47, 1047–1065. Boblett, N. (2012). Scaffolding: Defining the metaphor. Teachers College, Columbia University, Working Papers in TESOL and Applied Linguistics, 12(2), 1–26. Cazden, C. (1979). Peekaboo as an instructional model: Discourse development at home and school. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Department of Linguistics. Gibbons, P. (2008). It was taught good and I learned a lot: Intellectual practices and ESL learners in the middle years. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 31(2), 155–173. Gibbons, P. (2009). Challenging expectations: Literacy, intellectual quality and English language learners in the middle years. Portsmouth NH: Heinemann. Gibbons, P. (2015). Scaffolding language, scaffolding learning: Teaching English language learners in the mainstream classroom (2nd ed.). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Hammond, J. (2014a). The transition of refugee students from intensive English Centres to mainstream high schools. Final report to equity. Learning and Leadership Unit, NSW Department of Education. Hammond, J. (2014b). An Australian perspective on standards-based education, teacher knowledge and english as an additional language students. TESOL Quarterly, 48(3), 507–532. Hammond, J. (2018). Classrooms of possibility: Working with students from refugee backgrounds in mainstream classes. Final Report to State of New South Wales, Department of Education. Hammond, J., Cranitch, M., & Black, S. (2016–2017). Classrooms of possibility: Working with students from refugee backgrounds in mainstream classes. Project funded by Learning and Leadership Unit, NSW Department of Education. Hammond, J., & Gibbons, P. (2005). Putting scaffolding to work: The contribution of scaffolding in articulating ESL education. Prospect: An Australian Journal of TESOL, 20(1), 6–30.

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Hammond, J., & Valdez-Adams, C. (2021). Revisiting the role of scaffolding. In H. Harper, & S. Feez (Eds.), An EAL/D handbook (pp. 63–75). Sydney: Primary English Teaching Association of Australia. Maybin, J., Mercer, N., & Steirer, B. (1992). Scaffolding learning in the classroom. In K. Norman (Ed.), Thinking voices, the work of the national Oracy project (pp. 165–195). London: Hodder and Stoughton. Mercer, N. (1994). Neo-Vygotskian theory and classroom education. In B. Steirer, & J. Maybin (Eds.), Language, literacy and learning in educational practice (pp. 92–110). Multilingual Matters. Mercer, N. (2000). Words and mind: How we use language to think together. London: Routledge. Mercer, N., & Littleton, K. (2007). Dialogue and the development of children’s thinking: A sociocultural approach. London: Routledge. Prediger, S., & Pohler, B. (2015). The interplay of micro and macro-scaffolding: An empirical reconstruction of the case of an intervention on percentages. ZDM Mathematics Education, 47(7), 1179–1194. Rojas-Drummond, S., & Mercer, N. (2003). Scaffolding the development of effective collaboration and learning. International Journal of Educational Research, 39, 99–111. DOI:10.1016/S0883-0355(03)00075-2 Rojas-Drummond, S., Torreblanca, O., & Pedraza, H. (2013). ‘Dialogic scaffolding’: Enhancing learning and understanding in collaborative contexts. Learning Culture and Social Interaction, 2, 11–21. Smit, J., van Eerde, A., & Bakker A. (2013). A conceptualisation of whole-class scaffolding. British Educational Research Journal, 39(5), 817–834. DOI:10.1002/berj.3007 van de Pol, J., Volman, M., & Beishuizen, J. (2010). Scaffolding in teacher-student interaction: A decade of research. Educational Psychology Review, 22(3), 271–296. van Lier, L. (2004). The ecology and semiotics of language learning: A sociocultural perspective. New York: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Walqui, A. (2006). Scaffolding instruction for English language learners: A conceptual framework. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 9(2), 159–180. Wells, G. (1999). Dialogic inquiry: Towards a sociocultural practice and theory of education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wertsch, J. (1991). Voices of the mind: A sociocultural approach to mediated action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wood, D., Bruner, J. S., & Ross, G. (1976). The role of tutoring in problem solving. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 17, 89–1000.

3 RECONCEPTUALIZING SCAFFOLDING FOR ENGLISH LEARNERS An Ecological/Sociocultural Perspective Aída Walqui and Mary Schmida

American researchers are constantly seeking to discover how the child came to be what he is; we in the USSR are striving to discover not how the child came to be what he is, but how he can become what he is not yet. (Leont’ev, cited by Bronfenbrenner, 1977)

Almost 80 years after Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky formulated his immensely influential ideas about a sociocultural theory of mind, his work continues to be studied and enhanced by multiple researchers in many fields, including psychology, cognition, and second language development theory. In the education of English Learners, Vygotsky’s ideas, though frequently mentioned, have been imprecisely understood, or misunderstood and inappropriately used. As a result, their promise—that education help students become who they are not yet by developing their immense potential—remains largely unfulfilled. That Vygotsky’s ideas continue to influence the field of educating English Learners so long after his untimely death at the age of 38 reflects the compelling nature of his proposal that human beings gain control of their psychological functioning as a result of initial interaction with others, where language becomes the central mediating tool. These interpersonal processes, situated in particular social and cultural environments, influencing and influenced by them, give rise to individuals’ intrapersonal knowledge, control, and self-direction. For Vygotsky, thought is not merely expressed in words; it comes “into existence through them” (Vygotsky, 1986, p. 218). Formulations of Vygotskyan ideas situated in the second language development field are known as sociocultural theory. In this chapter we discuss three main pillars based on sociocultural theory, and our work using and adapting this

DOI: 10.4324/9781003196228-4

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framework for over 18 years in the Quality Teaching for English Learners initiative at WestEd (QTEL). These three developments are: (1) a pedagogical interpretation of the zone of proximal development (ZPD) and the types of pedagogical activity that take place within it; (2) a deep and comprehensive unpacking of the metaphor of scaffolding; and (3) an elaboration of ecological/sociocultural approaches to learning in an additional language. We also discuss common educator misconceptions and the need to redress them in order to build English Learners’ promising futures. Because the chapter is mainly of pedagogical interest, we illustrate concepts related to ecological/sociocultural theory and their application, using examples from a lesson designed for and enacted in classes where English Learners in middle and high schools simultaneously develop conceptual understanding, analytic, and subject matter language practices (Glick & Walqui, 2021; Valdés, Kibler, & Walqui, 2014).

The Zone of Proximal Development In Vygotsky’s formulation, development takes place as a result of learners’ engagement in activity that places them beyond what they know and already have under their individual control. The space created to situate that learning, and promote development, constitutes what he termed the Zone of Proximal Development and the activity of constructing new development engages learners in interactions with others and with themselves in the ZPD. The ZPD is where “those functions that have not yet matured and are in the process of maturation” are supported and grow (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 86). Pedagogically, the ZPD is a metaphor. It denotes the importance of teachers creating learning spaces that invite all students in a class to participate in activities that move them beyond their current level of development. Throughout each activity, the teacher keenly observes student interactions and decides what type of further support individuals or groups need. Six key misconceptions about ZPD and scaffolding often result in negative classroom consequences, especially for students who require that teachers provide robust and well-supported learning opportunities. The following discusses those misunderstandings: 1. Moving students “beyond” what they already know does not entail linearity; there is no invariable developmental route. It means, rather, what needs to be done next in a specific course of study with students who have varied talents and competences. What needs to be done next may be determined by an important theme in the curriculum or by the teacher’s or students’ deciding that it would make sense to continue exploring a subject within their chosen theme.

Reconceptualizing Scaffolding for English Learners  31

2. “Moving beyond” does not mean that the next theme to be considered for learning is accomplished by all students at once. That conception is a fallback to the false relationship expressed by variations of the phrase “teachers teach, students learn.” Rather, students appropriate learning; they gradually come to own and be in control of practices. This appropriation results from meaningful and well-supported work that learners are invited to engage in over time. Each activity deepens their understanding and strengthens their communicative abilities in reading, writing, listening, and speaking about the practices at hand and their implications. Since students start from different points of development, they will grow differently. But all of them do develop, and students who need the most growth develop more significantly (van Lier & Walqui, 2012). The ZPD has been often misunderstood as being “one level” beyond what the student knows, and that one level has been further proposed as being defined linguistically. As a result, one example with serious impact in the field has been the correlation of the notion of “comprehensible input” proposed by Krashen, i+1 (Krashen & Terrel, 1983) and the ZPD. Dunn and Lantolf (2000) elaborate thoroughly on this misconception explaining that these two constructs “are rooted in incommensurable discourses” (p. 411). The concept of i+1 emanates from a cognitivist view of learning, where learning happens in the student’s head as a result of the teacher’s input, rather than students engaging in thinking, processing, and interacting in order to construct new understandings. In contrast, in a classroom based on sociocultural ideas, the learner is actively engaged in interactions, and because of this activity, they increasingly develop understandings and practices needed for the situation, not determined by “what comes next.” In other words, development occurs as a consequence of participation in well-structured and responsive invitations to act. 3. A sender–receiver relationship mischaracterizes how learning occurs. van Lier (2004) discusses the erroneous “computational assumption”—the belief that an interlocutor “inputs” a message encoded in language that goes into the listener’s head. The listener automatically decodes the message and “outputs” a response. The computer in the head does the work. But sociocultural theory asserts that communication is instead about negotiation between interlocutors and their worlds (their knowledge, understanding of the context, predilections, gestures, proximity, etc.). 4. English Learners are not in school just to learn English. As with all students, they are there to develop their ability to effectively participate in community, college, and career (Hess & Noguera, 2021; Walqui & Bunch, 2019; Westheimer, 2015), using English and their other languages. To do that successfully, they have to develop their communicative abilities, learn to think critically and deeply (Chow, 2017), problem solve, understand multiple perspectives, learn how to learn, and be creative. English Learners

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take their invaluable resources to school, among them a developed, ageand situation-appropriate family language, knowledge of the environments where they live and have lived, family values and cultures, problem solving in real-life circumstances. To build on those resources, schools need to be places that invite students to work in zones of proximal development, where their growth will continue, deepen, and expand. 5. Scaffolding is not “anything that helps” a student complete a particular task. Rather, it is generative, responsive, and always predicated on the teacher’s knowledge of students as well as situated appropriateness. We discuss this further in the next section. 6 . It is not the case that “only he who knows more, in interaction with someone who knows less, can scaffold for the less knowledgeable member of the team.” van Lier (2004) expands the kinds of relationships enacted during scaffolding, as we discuss in the next section. In summary, the ZPD is a metaphoric space that teachers create so that all their students through interactive work develop their conceptual, analytic, and language ability. As we and other colleagues in the QTEL initiative like to say, the pedagogy based on this understanding is proleptic, future-oriented. It is a pedagogy of promise (Walqui & van Lier, 2010) that believes in students’ potential, builds it, and does not lament their pasts.

Unpacking the Metaphor of Scaffolding If we want to encourage students to stretch into higher levels of independent functioning and launch into activities that they cannot yet successfully engage in on their own, we need to support them. The goal of the support is development of student potential—to increase students’ ability to self-regulate and to add to their repertoire of practices, thus fostering increased autonomy.

Some History On the Notion of Scaffolding Applying proposed the ZPD with the goal of explaining the nature of the support required for growth, Jerome Bruner and his colleague Virginia Sherwood (1976) introduced the term “scaffolding” to elaborate on the game of peekaboo as played by mother and child. The child increases his ability to initiate the game because the game, as it is modeled, has a structure, which makes it predictable (establishing contact, disappearing, reappearing, reestablishing contact). Yet novelty can be introduced within these obligatory characteristics (vocalization, gestures, ways of hiding). The structure enables the child to increasingly take a more active part in the game. As the child does so, the attentive mother hands over responsibility for particular actions the child is comfortable with, while

Reconceptualizing Scaffolding for English Learners  33

guiding him in actions that still need support. Peekaboo thus illustrates the three important elements—structure, process, and hand over/take over that were set as essential features in this first formulation of scaffolding (Walqui & van Lier, 2010, pp. 18–19). Later on in 1976, Bruner worked on a study with other collaborators, funded by the National Institutes of Health, which examined tutorial sessions. The authors (Wood, Bruner, & Ross, 1976) concluded that six conditions made scaffolding successful during tutoring: recruiting interest in the task, reducing the degrees of freedom, maintaining the goal, marking contrasts between what the learner produces and the ideal solution, controlling learners’ risk and frustration, and modeling an idealized version of the task.

Features That Characterize Successful Scaffolding At QTEL, we base our views of pedagogical scaffolding on van Lier’s ecological views (2004) which outline six features that characterize successful scaffolding (Figure 3.1): Predictability and coherence: The tasks students are invited to work through have a predictable way of operating that is flexible and allows for novelty and variation over time. Furthermore, there is a clear way in which tasks fit together harmoniously, almost like steps in a dance. Supportive environment: Pedagogical action needs to take place in a context that values the students and the resources they bring and clearly communicates to them that these resources are the base on which they will build new ones. As Valenzuela potently argues in Subtractive Schooling (1999), students are not being asked to leave behind practices developed in the home and community. Teachers have immense power to model and promote this sine qua non characteristic of classes where scaffolded activity takes place. Intersubjectivity: The mutual, almost tacit, agreement is that interlocutors will work their hardest to understand and be “in tune” with each other, beyond superficial imperfections, as they try to mutually communicate. Listening attentively, asking questions, not completing partners’ answers unless asked to, and responding appropriately are all part of an intersubjective relationship. Flow: Lessons flow when the scaffolding offered is “just right”—that is, it is there when needed and is shaped precisely for and by the need. In this case, students’ abilities and learning challenges are in balance so that they are all engaged. There is not too much unneeded “support” (which would trigger boredom), nor too big a gap that is not bridged by appropriate scaffolding (otherwise rendering a frustrating situation). Contingency: Scaffolding is always responsive to the learners’ needs. If planned, teacher support is based on their assessment of where students are, what they

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More Planned

Continuity and Coherence Task repetition with variation; connecting tasks and activities in lessons, and lessons in units Supportive Environment Environment of safety and trust; experiential links, bridges, and affordances lntersubjectivity Mutual engagement; being "in tune" with each other Flow Student skills and learning challenges in balance; students fully engaged Contingency As the student looks ready to take over practices, hand them over!

More Improvised

FIGURE 3.1 

Handover/Takeover Increasing importance of formative assessment and learner agency

Features of Pedagogical Scaffolding (based on Walqui & van Lier, 2010)

respond to, and where to take them. If it is unplanned, scaffolding responds to formative assessment (Walqui & Heritage, 2012), of what the student is doing at the moment, his emerging needs, and how to support him to continue his growth. This is why planning lessons ahead of time is not on its own sufficient, no matter how well the planned lessons design is for one group of English Learners, they need to be redesigned, at least slightly, to meet other English Learners’ growth and their current needs. Handover/Takeover: In the same way in which a parent supports his three-yearold learning to ride a bicycle, the support offered should be precisely what is needed. If the child takes off by himself and the parent recognizes that he can do it, he should let go. If the child is nervous and clumsy, and needs the support, support is offered until the parent perceives and the child demonstrates it is no longer needed. In the classroom, teachers’ attentiveness is essential for this handover/takeover to be realized. Keen observation is a vital characteristic that determines how much scaffolding is warranted. If a teacher scaffolds

Reconceptualizing Scaffolding for English Learners  35

beyond need, without sharing the responsibility for support, the student feels devalued and loses initiative. Attentive teacher observation is indispensable for handover/takeover to be successful. This brings us to most common misinterpretation of the immensely complex nature of scaffolding. As mentioned above, scaffolding is not “anything that helps” a student complete a particular task. It is generative, responsive, always predicated on knowledge of students and a class, and situated appropriateness. And it must meet the six features we have outlined (see Figure 3.1). In fact, we can say that the degrees of freedom increase as we go down the list of features which in the chart are considered as ranging from more planned to more improvised.

Relationships Enacted in the ZPD Further, we consider it to be a misinterpretation to think that “only he who knows more, in interaction with someone who knows less, can scaffold the less knowledgeable member of the team.” van Lier (2004) expands the kinds of relationships enacted during scaffolding, as we discuss in the next section. In the situations described above, the relationship of the person promoting learning, and the learner represents this interaction, between somebody who is more capable (teacher, parent) and somebody who is in the process of developing new practices (student, child learning to ride a bicycle). van Lier (2004) expands these scaffolding relationships to include three others (Figure 3.2). In our work we have corroborated that this expansion illuminates the kinds of processes that are productive in classes with English Learners. A caveat needs to be mentioned here, and that is that the interactive structure—which serves as a scaffold—is indeed designed by a more capable person, the teacher. That is, behind the scenes, the teacher sets up the opportunity in order for students to engage in scaffolded interaction which supports development between or among peers. The traditional relationship where one who knows more about the practices students are apprenticing into and dialogically supports their development of new understandings, and corresponding actions, has been successfully implemented by our Australian colleagues (Hammond, 2001, 2014) and Gibbons (2009). Readers of this volume can appreciate the value of this work with students for whom English is an additional language in Chapter 1. Another type of relationship van Lier proposes is the one that takes place between equal peers. All of us have experienced situations where we were working with somebody who knew almost as much as we did about the task at hand, and faced with a challenge that was supported, talking and working together, we could both advance in our understanding and practice. This is the second type of relationship van Lier proposes; two students who share about the same level of understanding and control of new practices can, supporting each other, provide

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FIGURE 3.2 

Expanded ZPD (based on van Lier, 2004)

each other the needed help to advance. This, of course, depends on whether they are provided with the right support, if the task both recruits English Learners’ interest, and if it is perceived as relevant. In this case, the teacher creates the structures through which students will enact an interactive, mutually supporting engagement. van Lier’s third type of relationship relates to experiences we may have had as teachers when, for example, a student asks a question we do not immediately know the answer to, but prompted by the student’s request, we reflect, investigate, and soon have an answer. This is the third quadrant in our diagram, the one van Lier labeled “docendo discimus,” we learn by teaching. An example from the class is evidenced in well-constructed jigsaw projects, where students in groups read about and discuss an aspect of a theme, while other groups research three other related topics. Then students are invited to move to groups of four where each participant is privy to different information, which now needs to be shared in order to tackle an assignment that requires application of the four perspectives to a novel problem (an information gap task). Finally, if we are interested in developing students who are autonomous, who can efficiently self-regulate, we have to invite them to support their own thinking and deliberate participation, through the use of metacognitive and metalinguistic activities which will allow them to “talk to themselves” and support

Reconceptualizing Scaffolding for English Learners  37

their own “working at the edge of their competence” (Bruner, 1983) as they apprentice and become increasingly more autonomous. In this way, following the notion that learning is first socially constructed, we propose to develop metacognition through carefully crafted interaction across four different relationships. The study of metacognition was developed during the cognitive revolution, and from that perspective, students were supposed to be metacognitive “inside their heads,” thus placing the responsibility for learning squarely on the learner. If she did not learn, it was her fault. Instead, we, following the notion that learning is first socially constructed, propose to develop metacognition first through carefully crafted interaction that begins in the social plane, in work with others, and is then internalized within the learner’s head. This interaction is based on what plans of action the students have at hand, how to implement them in their work, and how to assess how they are functioning, to either persevere or reconsider their choices.

Ecological/Sociocultural Approaches to Learning in an Additional Language Learning does not take place in a vacuum. The educational context can be viewed as a set of ecosystems, each nested inside the other: the classroom and everything that happens inside it is nested within the school and the neighborhood; the school and neighborhood are nested within the district and the state. Each system has its own way of being, acting, valuing, and so on. The systems enter into complex interrelationships (Hawkins, 2020; van Lier, 2004, 2011) that enhance or constrain the possibility of success in school. What occurs in classrooms has to be viewed as intimately impacted by and impacting the other levels. We offer a couple of examples to illustrate this interconnection and the impact on the education of English Learners when mismatches occur. Our first example shows what happens when there is a mismatch between expectations of school authorities and the more-current expertise of knowledgeable, accomplished teachers. A principal visits the classroom of an accomplished teacher who routinely invites her Multilingual Learners in an eighth-grade English Language Arts class to engage in stimulating, subject- and grade-appropriate activity. The students read an essay together, taking turns reading passages aloud, annotating and discussing as they go along, aided by the foci the teacher sets up before the activity. The principal walks into the class, stays by the door for about five minutes, and leaves. Later, he mentions to the teacher that he did not see her teaching and, worse, that her students were making too much noise. He tells her that she needs to change the way she acted in class. This principal’s lack of understanding of the high-quality pedagogy and the teacher’s ability to implement it has thus impeded the opportunity for quality classroom teaching. In a more harmful example, students who are used to talking fluently but are in the process of developing their accuracy (syntactical correctness) take an

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English test where the only concern is whether students can produce sentences in correct form or identify errors presented in isolated sentences. The result is that a student who the teacher and peers know is quite adept at using English to participate in sophisticated academic interactions is categorized as “not knowing enough English.” This evaluation carries severe consequences for him, including affecting advancement, eligibility for electives, and the quality of his course placements. In this case, there is a disconnect between state mandated exams and classroom practices and beliefs. Very good scaffolding in action in his class is misunderstood and its value underestimated. A teacher scaffolding well is, unfortunately, not enough. Sociocultural perspectives posit that language learning is a complex, nonlinear, adaptive system from which the “the behavior of the whole emerges out of the interaction of its parts” (Larsen-Freeman, 2003, p. 157). From this stance, the interactions between an individual’s patterns of experience, social interactions, and cognitive processes lead to emergence of new language uses (Beckner et al., 2009). Consistent with this viewpoint, English Learners need opportunities in the course of a lesson to develop situated language competencies through interactions with peers and teachers while simultaneously learning academic content (Bailey & Durán, 2020) and English language practices. Students’ capacity to use an additional language adds to the already valuable language resources they bring to school from their community and their lived experiences and enables them to participate in a broad range of academic contexts in the classroom (Haneda, 2017; Walqui & Bunch, 2019). To serve English Learners, American classrooms need a coherent way of connecting the diverse contexts that have an impact on these students’ education and a generative understanding of both scaffolding and the nonlinear nature of language development. In spite of multiple systemic disconnects, we firmly believe that teachers have enormous power. In the classroom, they can prepare students for the discontinuities that exist outside of it. On the other hand, we need to promote across all contexts English Learners’ ability to engage in “languaging” (Swain, 2006), that is, using developing English to keep proficiency growing, while focusing on the power of expressing ideas in a supportive environment.

Designing Scaffolding for Classes with English Learners Imagine a teacher planning her next unit of study, consisting of six weeks of instruction for her English Language Arts class, a class that has English Learners at varying levels of English proficiency, as well as, perhaps, native English speakers. The purpose of the unit is to help students develop deep (pivotal and interconnected) conceptual, analytic, and language practices (Valdés et  al., 2014; Walqui & Bunch, 2019) that support their reading and discussion of the lesson’s ideas and concepts, claims and counterclaims, as well as development of the language of persuasion.

Reconceptualizing Scaffolding for English Learners  39

The unit is called Persuasion Across Time and Space: Analyzing and Producing Complex Texts (Figure 3.3). We chose it because it exemplifies scaffolding on multiple levels and is available to download through the Understanding Language website.1 It has key themes that the teacher has selected, which her students will examine through multiple lenses across four or five lessons. She will first need to consider the goals of her unit and what she wants her students to have learned and accomplished at the end of the set time. She will then trace the road that will take her students there, beginning with the unit’s first lesson. She will consider and identify the key disciplinary practices—conceptual, analytic, and language which students will engage in, which are woven throughout each lesson. Conceptual practices to be actively and repeatedly explored by students throughout the unit include bravery in the face of injustice, expressing responses to unfair treatment, perseverance, strength of character, and the social power of ideas that are compellingly articulated. Throughout the unit, some of the analytic practices the teacher will invite students to use to think through these ideas include comparing diverse points of view, comparing and contrasting, analyzing persuasive texts, and practicing the art of persuasion through spoken and written discourse. The unit has five lessons—advertisement in contemporary times, the Gettysburg address, the Civil Rights movement, the situation of girls in Pakistan, and the power of young voices—and these analytic practices run through each. Students thereby have multiple opportunities to explore, consider, reflect, and appropriate practices. The teacher will also identify the language required to express ideas and thinking woven throughout. The focus is not on words or sentences in isolation, but rather on having students understand the purposes of texts, their organization and moves, and the typical expressions used in specific text types. Three Levels of Scaffolding Throughout the unit, the teacher’s goal is to successfully support students in working beyond their current abilities. She needs to engage students with deep disciplinary practices while developing those practices. Naturally, students will have diverse levels of academic growth, and the teacher needs to scaffold (support) activity that engages the whole class regardless of individual starting points. All this requires that the teacher attend to the structure and interaction of pedagogical activity at three levels (unit, lesson, and task): She must therefore weave those practices throughout the unit’s lessons. In the next section of the chapter, we revisit and unpack concrete examples of levels of scaffolding that support students in working beyond their current abilities at the unit (macro), lesson (meso), and task (micro) levels. (1) Macro scaffolding. Macro scaffolding is the design at the unit level, driven by teacher considerations of how to support students’ increasing development of understanding and command of practices over an extended period of

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FIGURE 3.3 

Five-Lesson Spiraling Unit Example

time (between four and six weeks). This planned curriculum design and progression is chosen deliberately to weave together ideas and the ways of expressing them, not language in isolated bits and pieces. A unit promotes the deepening and generative appropriation by the student of skills, knowledge, and abilities. The diagram in Figure 3.3 represents our five-lesson unit example. The spiral indicates students’ growth and deepening of understanding over time. The bold letters indicate the key ideas that become clearer for students each time they are revisited, among them taking a stance, engaging with community and society, and expressing powerful ideas. The arrows represent analytic practices also woven throughout, for example, comparing and contrasting key ideas, recognizing and articulating arguments, and the power of deliberately using one’s own voice. (2) Meso scaffolding. Meso scaffolding refers to the lesson architecture. It responds to teachers’ need to support students as they enter the exploration of a theme, unpack it, and apply it to novel contexts. A lesson is the symphonic exploration of the themes of the unit focused on one or a few events or texts that thematically explore those themes from the specific lens of the unit.

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Each lesson consists of three moments; the tasks within the moments serve to support students as they move increasingly toward the goals or objectives of the lesson itself. The first moment, Preparing Learners, prepares students to engage with the themes and concepts they will encounter in the lesson by focusing their attention, accessing related experiential knowledge they may have about the theme to be developed. The second moment, Interacting with Text(s), offers students opportunities to deconstruct complex texts, establish connections between ideas within a text, and make connections across texts, thus developing key analytic practices. In the third moment, Extending Understanding, students apply newly gained knowledge and practices to novel situations or problems. Also within the meso scaffolding or lesson level, teachers will consider the affordances—opportunities for meaning making—offered to students that serve to support their increasing autonomy. For example, affordances may include photos from a particular era or event that students will be reading about, or maps that serve to situate the reading within a particular place in the world. These affordances amplify meaning for students, and are tools that students can perceive and use, if they choose, to make sense of practices. This concept of affordances replaces the idea of input/output discussed previously. Only if students perceive an affordance and use it, they incorporate it into their practice set. In our sample lesson, students are able to view images of schools in Pakistan, clothing expectations for girls, hear audio versions of Malala’s speech, and so on. All of these affordances surround students with contextual and multimodal meaning-making opportunities that can support and add to their growing knowledge about injustice and ways of facing injustice in the world. ( 3) Micro scaffolding. Micro scaffolding refers to the opportunities that a teacher provides for her students to collaborate and interact with the texts and with each other, and as a result of this participation, grow. Instantiated by tasks, this scaffolding has to be deliberately designed and enacted to support students’ growth. A task is a concrete activity that invites students to interact, work in specific ways through a concept or interrelated concepts, run through concrete mental operations (such as comparing positions, identifying the arguments an author uses to support a position), and use the language required to express all of this. A task has a clear beginning, a way of progressing, and an end which typically involves a performance. We will see these components of tasks in action in our examples. These three levels of scaffolding—at the levels of a task, a lesson, and a unit— are interrelated and serve to support students’ progression. They move students from more simple understandings of a theme, analytic and language practices, to increasingly more complex, interrelated, deeper, and more sophisticated ones, with the result that students gain expanding autonomy and self-direction.

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An Example of Scaffolding in Action Preparing Learners Let us examine Lesson 4 of the Persuasion unit more closely, at both the mesoand micro-levels, and consider how the scaffolding serves to support students’ engagement, interactions, and language development. The lesson begins with four tasks that are designed to prepare students for their reading and engaging with the complex texts to follow. One of the four tasks we use to prepare students in this lesson is called Silent Graffiti. In this task, teachers arrange students in heterogeneous groups of four. Each group is provided a large piece of chart paper. Pasted into the center of the paper is a powerful and controversial image—in this case, a photograph that shows a group of girls standing outside of a school, being denied entry by men and boys. Each student is given a unique color marker. Silently, using their individual markers, students sign their names on the poster and then work for two minutes reacting and responding to their reading of the picture by writing what they think and what they feel. Then, students are asked to rotate around the table, still silent, and to spend a couple of minutes reading, commenting, or adding questions, using their color marker, to remarks others in the group have recorded. Finally, students are asked to discuss the similarities they found among their responses, and to note any outliers. To complete the task, students are asked to discuss in their small groups their observations, variations of responses, and to jointly craft one or two questions they would like to focus on during the lesson. In this Silent Graffiti task, students draw on their own prior experience and their knowledge of the world to interpret and reflect on an image, and pose questions that they will explore more deeply as they begin reading about Malala, her experiences, and the consequences of those experiences. The structure of this task and its steps make student participation move from thoughtful silence to interactive analysis. During this task, students first use their inner resources to view, make sense of, and reflect on the image. Then, as they read and respond to their classmates’ comments and questions, they socially construct a deeper and expanded understanding of the image. Here, too, as students engage with the visual text—as well as with the written texts—and their peers, we see examples of the features of scaffolding. The teacher planned the activity, which is connected to the themes of the text students read next; students interact with the image and with each other’s comments and questions in a supportive environment, and the progress of the task itself is dependent on the actions of the students as they build, interact, and relate to each other’s ideas and responses.

Reconceptualizing Scaffolding for English Learners  43

Interacting with Text In the next portion of the lesson, students are invited to interact with texts using a variety of interactive tasks. We will examine here two of the tasks in this moment of the lesson: The Clarifying Bookmark and Reading with a Focus. By this time in the lesson, students have already read and discussed Malala’s biography and they are now poised to read her speech, which they will do twice. In the initial reading of the speech she gave to the General Assembly of the United Nations, students take turns reading aloud the first four paragraphs of the text with a partner, using a Clarifying Bookmark. The Clarifying Bookmark provides students a structure for reading aloud, and offers both selected strategies and the language to reflect on and articulate their emerging understanding of a text. The Clarifying Bookmark is a two-column organizer that has on the lefthand side five strategies that students can use as they make sense of the text, and on the right-hand side, three formulaic expressions they may use if they need them, to initiate their interaction. For example, some strategies and formulaic expressions include: Strategy: Summarizing what I have read so far Formulaic Expressions to choose from: • •

“I understand this part and can summarize by saying…” I think the main point or idea in this section is…” Strategy: Clarifying what I don’t understand Formulaic Expressions to choose from:

• •

“I have a question about…because…” “I am not sure what this means, but I think it means…”

Students take turns reading a paragraph at a time, and using the strategies in the Clarifying Bookmark to articulate their reflections. After discussing the paragraph, partners switch roles and follow the same structure in the subsequent paragraph. The Clarifying Bookmark task invites students to deliberately consider what strategies are available to them when they read difficult or complex texts (e.g., summarize, clarify, question) and provides them with the language support to do so. Equally important, by engaging with this task, students develop metacognitive awareness as they apply specific reading strategies and discuss their understandings with a partner. The task exemplifies Misconception Six, namely, the false belief that metacognition always happens in the student’s head. Here, students build their metacognitive awareness by reading a portion of the text aloud with a partner, pausing after each paragraph to reflect on their understanding.

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The second task in this moment is Reading with a Focus. After reading the first four paragraphs aloud with a partner, using the Clarifying Bookmark, students read the rest of the speech silently on their own, focusing and taking notes on two key questions: 1) What authority does Malala have to give a speech at the United Nations about human rights advocacy? 2) What is the purpose of Malala’s speech? In this first reading of the speech, students consider, based on what they learned about Malala by reading her biography, what firsthand experience and knowledge she has on the subject of violation of human rights and how her background has positioned her for writing and delivering of her message of advocacy for girls and women. They will also consider a key element of any text: the purpose. By examining her purpose—what she wants people to do, think, or feel—students are able to reference and build upon their learnings from Lesson 1 on advertisements as persuasive texts, as well as what they learned about audience and purpose in Lessons 2 and 3.

Extending Understanding In the final moment of the lesson, the Extending Understanding Moment, students have an opportunity to synthesize and solidify their understandings by applying them to new situations. After all, the purpose of being engaged in learning is to develop students’ ability to use their own knowledge outside of the class. In this lesson, we have selected two of the tasks in this moment to illustrate how students both synthesize and deepen their understanding of Malala’s speech. First, students engage in a task called Play the Language Detective (Walqui & Bunch, 2019). Here, students work together in their small groups to determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the speech, thereby enhancing their metalinguistic knowledge. They then analyze sentences from Malala’s speech, preselected by the teacher, to determine her attitude or tone, first analyzing selections for positive and negative connotations, and then determining tone from that analysis. The focus for this task is not on isolated words or vocabulary, but, rather, on what the author is doing with language, and the impact her language choice has on the selected text segment, on the whole text, and on her audience. For example, from Malala’s speech, a teacher may offer the phrase, “I raise up my voice—not so that I can shout, but so that those without a voice can be heard.” Students are then invited to work together with a partner or in a small group to find examples of language used in the phrase to suggest a positive or negative tone, and an explanation for their choice. This task is followed by students engaging and interacting with each other using a Claim/Counterclaim Matrix. Students individually identify a claim that

Reconceptualizing Scaffolding for English Learners  45

Malala makes in her speech and locate two or three pieces of evidence she gives to support that claim on the matrix. In the next step of this task, students identify a counterclaim, and one piece of evidence that Malala uses to refute the counterclaim. This activity supports students’ emerging understanding of how an author considers her audience and anticipates rebuttals, a very important skill to use when they write.

Conclusion This chapter addresses an important question that teachers need to resolve: Why does it matter what interpretation of scaffolding I adopt for my work as an educator engaged in the development of English Learners’ subject matter practices? We offer four reasons why a clear understanding of scaffolding is necessary for its power to be realized: 1. Scaffolding is not just about the piecemeal support teachers offer their learners as they grow and increasingly take over that support until it is appropriated; it is not about having a list of strategies. The work requires a clear vision of where learning is headed and the deliberate and coherent design of interactive supports to assist students as they work hard to reach their destination. This means there is a prerequisite before scaffolding is designed and put in action: teachers understand the individual strengths students bring to the task, and how these may be grown. They also clearly understand what is needed. With this knowledge they design the supports required to move closer to the pedagogical destination. Furthermore, an accomplished teacher creates and implements effective practices to support students in becoming lifelong learners who believe that they can learn another language and are able to assume responsibility for their own learning. 2. Student agency is the goal of scaffolding. In other words, while scaffolding supports students in engaging in readings, discussions, and writing that is beyond their current abilities, the goal of scaffolding is always student autonomy. Over time, students internalize scaffolds and ultimately, make them their own, able to use them when needed, across genres and contexts, in and out of the school setting. 3. Learning and teaching take place in a specific time and space, within a dynamic and ever-changing ecology in which all participants, teachers, students, pedagogical materials, educational authorities, their mandates, and everybody’s beliefs and attitudes play a key role in promoting or eroding learner agency. 4. A misunderstanding of the purpose and nature of scaffolding can lead to teachers attempting to support students in ways that are not generative and do not promote student growth or autonomy. For example, a teacher may simplify a task for students, selecting, for instance, a shorter or parsed down

46  Aída Walqui and Mary Schmida

version of a text, and think that she is scaffolding for them. Instead, with a clear and deep understanding of scaffolding, she will support students’ reading of the text by providing appropriate scaffolding, such as providing guiding questions, including subheadings announcing a new episode or idea, inviting students to read using a Clarifying Bookmark with a partner, and so on. In this way, rather than adjusting the expectations for her students, she adjusts the scaffolding they need in order to meet her expectations. To go back to our starting quote, in sociocultural theory learning is proleptic; it leads to the future, to developing the potential of our students. The work of promoting learning, if clearly understood, derives immense benefits for English Learners, their communities, and society as a whole. It also, of course, brings us, as educators, great professional satisfaction.

Note 1 The unit was developed by the QTEL initiative for Understanding Language to illustrate proposed shifts in English Learning pedagogy. It can be downloaded from https://ell. stanford.edu/. Accompanying videos can be found in the Teaching Channel; look for Persuasion Unit, Understanding Language.

References Bailey, A. L., & Durán, R. (2020). In Language in practice: A mediator of valid interpretations of information generated by classroom assessments among linguistically and culturally diverse students. In S. M. Boookhart, & J. H. Mc Millan (Eds.), Classroom assessment and educational measurement (pp. 46–62). Routledge. Beckner, C., Blythe, R., Bybee, J., Christiansen, M. H., Croft, W., … & Schoenemann, T. (2009). Language is a complex adaptive system: Position paper. Language Learning, 59, 1–26. Bronfenbrenner, U. (1993). The ecology of cognitive development: Research models and fugitive findings. In R. H. Wozniack, & K. W. Fischer (Eds.), Development in context. Acting, thinking in specific environments (pp. 3–44). Earlbaum. Bruner, J. (1983). Child’s talk. Norton. Bruner, Jerome S., & Virginia Sherwood. (1976). Early rule structure: The case of peekaboo. Life Sentences: Aspects of the Social Role of Language, 55–62. Chow, B. (2017), Foreword. In R. Heller, R. E. Wolfe, & A. Steinberg (Eds.), Rethinking readiness: Deeper learning for college, work, and life (pp. v–vii). Harvard Education Press. Gibbons, P. (2009). English learners, academic literacy and thinking: learning in the challenge zone. Heineman. Glick, Y., & Walqui, A. (2021). Affordances in the development of student voice and agency: The case of bureaucratically labeled long-term English learners. In A. Kibler, G. Valdés, & A. Walqui (Eds.), Reconceptualizing the role of critical dialogue in American classrooms. Promoting equity through dialogic education (pp. 23–51). Routledge.

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Hammond, J. (2001). Scaffolding and language. In J. Hammond, & P. Gibbons. (Eds.), Scaffolding: Teaching and learning in language and literacy education (pp. 15–30). PETA. Hammond, J. (2014). The transition of refugee students from intensive English centers to mainstream high schools: Current practices and future possibilities. Sydney, NSW: Department of Education and Communities. Haneda, M. (2017). Dialogic learning and teaching across diverse contexts: Promises and challenges. Language and Education, 31(1), 1–5. Hawkins, M. (2020). Plurilingual learners and schooling. A sociocultural perspective. In L. de Oliveira (Ed.), The handbook of TESOL in K-12 (pp. 11–24). Wiley. Hess, R., & Noguera, P. (2021). Lessons learned from a search for common ground. Phi Delta Kappan, 102(5), 29–32. Krashen, S., & Terrel, T. (1983). The natural approach: Language acquisition in the classroom. Oxford. Larsen-Freeman, D. (2003). Teaching language: From grammar to grammarizing. Heinle & Heinle. Swain, M. (2000). The output hypothesis and beyond: Mediating acquisition through. Sociocultural Theory and Second Language Learning, 78(4), 97. Swain, M. (2006). Languaging, agency and collaboration in advanced second language proficiency. In Advanced language learning: The contribution of Halliday and Vygotsky (pp. 95–108). Valdés, G., Kibler, A., & Walqui, A. (2014). Changes in the expertise of ESL professionals: Knowledge and action in an era of new standards. Valenzuela, A. (1999). Subtractive schooling. US-Mexican youth and the politics of caring. SUNY Press. van Lier, L. (2000). From input to affordance: Social interactive learning from an ecological perspective. In J. Lantolf (Ed.), Sociocultural theory and second language learning. Oxford University Press. van Lier, L. (2004). The ecology and semiotics of language learning. A sociocultural perspective. Kluwer Academic Publishers. van Lier, L., & Walqui, A. (2012). Language and the common core state standards. Commissioned Papers on Language and Literacy Issues in the Common Core State Standards and Next Generation Science Standards, 94, 44. Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society. Harvard University Press. Vygotsky, L. (1986). Thought and language. MIT Press. Walqui, A. (2019). Shifting from the teaching of oral skills to the development of oracy. In Luciana C. de Oliveira (Ed.), The handbook of TESOL in K-12. Wiley & Sons Ltd. Walqui, A., & Bunch, G. C. (Eds.) (2019). Amplifying the curriculum: Designing quality learning opportunities for English learners. Teachers College Press. Walqui, A., & Heritage, M. (2012). Instruction for diverse groups of ELLs. In Understanding language conference, Stanford, CA. Walqui, A., & van Lier, L. (2010). Scaffolding the academic success of adolescent English learners. A pedagogy of promise. WestEd. Westheimer, Joel. (2015). What kind of citizen?: Educating our children for the common good. Teachers College Press. Wood, D., Bruner, J., & Ross, G. (1976). The role of tutoring in problem-solving. Journal of Child Psychology and Child Psychiatry, 17, 89–100.

4 SCAFFOLDING MULTILINGUAL LEARNERS’ EQUITABLE PARTICIPATION IN DISCIPLINARY LEARNING A Discussion of Concepts and Tools Jennifer Wilfrid and Daniella Molle ERIC:  ((to

himself)) Ok, put it right there. ((to the group)) Right there?

JASON:  No. ALICE:  No,

not like that. It’s supposed to be right at the top! ERIC:  You’re like scientists right now. JASON:  Look at the picture! ((pointing to the board)) ERIC:  ((looks towards the board)) Oh, yeah, it’s supposed to go on the top! • students building a bottle-and-pipe system in a 3rd grade science class JASON:  No!

[The zone of proximal development] is a dialogue between the child and [their] future; it is not a dialogue between the child and an adult’s past. Griffin and Cole (1984, p. 62) The excerpt above shows a small group of culturally and linguistically diverse learners working together to conduct a science experiment related to thermometers. What they are doing is a commonplace activity in classrooms: they are following multistep directions. The excerpt showcases some of the resources the students could access that set them up for success in the activity: their groupmates and a drawing of the bottle-and-pipe system that they were constructing. The students were not told to use the drawing; it was just there, available to them. They were not explicitly told how to interact, but they knew that they were expected to work together even if only one student was actually performing the steps. The students’ leveraging of available resources illustrates the approach to scaffolding that we take in this chapter. We view scaffolding as a dynamic, collaborative process that supports the expression of student agency DOI: 10.4324/9781003196228-5

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and helps ensure that all students, no matter their linguistic competencies, have multiple opportunities for participation in disciplinary learning. In this chapter, we highlight theoretical principles related to scaffolding that are often obscured by common uses of the term but have important implications for how we design and think about equitable instructional contexts. Drawing on sociocultural theory, we approach scaffolding as a metaphor that explains Vygotsky’s (1978) notion of the zone of proximal development (ZPD). We focus on three features of the ZPD that have strong implications for our thinking about scaffolding: appropriation, participation in sociocultural activities, and the enactment of student agency. These three features of the ZPD shape how we think about scaffolding in terms of its role in fostering equitable participation in disciplinary learning for multilingual learners. We conclude the chapter by discussing how an instruction-focused resource, the WIDA Framework for Equitable Instruction, reflects these ideas about scaffolding and can be used to support the equitable participation of multilingual students in disciplinary learning.

Revisiting the Conceptual Roots of Scaffolding The metaphor of scaffolding is a core component of discussions about highquality instruction for multilingual students (e.g., Walqui, 2006). The meaning behind the metaphor is strongly connected to Vygotsky’s school of culturalhistorical psychology (Shvarts & Bakker, 2019). Despite this relationship, the metaphor of scaffolding is frequently used in ways that are divorced from cultural-historical theories of learning and development. Without this theoretical grounding, scaffolding can limit our understanding of learning and promote instructional practices that constrain, rather than expand, students’ agency, participation in disciplinary learning, and language development. Some common misconceptions about scaffolding include: • • • • • • •

any kind of teacher support represents scaffolding; teachers choose the scaffolding and set the goals for learning; teachers know what kind of support students need ahead of time; the kinds of scaffolding teachers provide does not change in the course of the learning activity; learning proceeds in a predictable and linear direction, and is the result of specific scaffolds; teachers and other adults are the ones who provide scaffolding; and only beginning students need scaffolding, i.e., the need for scaffolding disappears as students become more comfortable with a task or the language associated with it.

To challenge these misconceptions, we revisit concepts of learning and development introduced by Vygotsky and his contemporaries and built upon in more

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recent generations of cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT). We strive to offer a perspective on scaffolding that captures some of the richness of the theories that inspired it.

The Zone of Proximal Development The concept of scaffolding has long been associated with Vygotsky’s concept of the ZPD, which he considered an essential feature of learning (Vygotsky, 1978). Vygotsky defined the ZPD as “the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers” (1978, p. 86). The ZPD expresses Vygotsky’s belief that learning awakens developmental processes, rather than occurring as a result of developmental processes. Vygotsky further argued that observing what children can do with assistance from others offers a glimpse into developmental processes that are underway, whereas individual tasks only reflect development that has already occurred. The distinction between actual (or completed) development and the zone of proximal development is key to organizing learning interactions that enable children to go beyond what they can already do alone. Cultural historical activity theorists, conceptualizing learning as collective and distributed (Cole & Engeström, 1993; Engeström, 1987, 2001), expanded the concept of the zone of proximal development and connected it to group learning and the ongoing development of cultural activity. Joint activity generates the potential not only for individuals to act in more “expert” ways by imitating others, but also for entirely new possibilities for action and new forms of activity to emerge. Emphasizing the relationship between individual learning and societal development, Engeström (1987) redefined the ZPD as “the distance between the present everyday actions of the individuals and the historically new form of the societal activity” (p. 39). This reformulation of the ZPD as a unity of individual and collective learning highlights the dynamic nature of cultural tools and practices. Learning does not always involve transformation and creativity (as in the case of rote memorization), but learning in a zone of proximal development does (Engeström, 1987). Engeström (1987) explains that from an instructional point of view, our definition [of the ZPD] means that teaching and learning are moving within the zone of proximal development only when they aim at developing historically new forms of activity, not just at letting the learners acquire the societally existing or dominant forms as something individually new. (p. 39) Furthermore, learning isn’t always a process of moving from novice to expert, but can proceed in varied directions and generate alternatives to standard

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concepts and practices (Engeström, 2001). An example of this emergence of novel ways of thinking or doing things is the construct of the Third Space (Gutiérrez, Baquedano-López, & Tejeda, 1999), which is created through the use of multiple, diverse, often competing, discourses and practices in a social setting. Teachers’ ability to recognize and view diverse cultural resources as assets to the learning activity, Gutiérrez et al. (1999) argue, “helps make visible developmental spaces that may have been ignored previously” (p. 287) and can enable new tools, practices, and communities to emerge in the classroom. Scaffolding and the ZPD are two interrelated concepts that inform each other. Scaffolding highlights the social and interactive nature of learning processes and the role of others in a person’s learning. Since scaffolding in the real world is moveable and temporary, the metaphor suggests that supporting learning is a dynamic process that is responsive to the needs of the individual or the group. On its own, however, the metaphor falls short in terms of representing the contingent nature of learning interactions, the inherent diversity of learners and learning settings, and the interrelatedness of individual and collective development. It is therefore important to maintain the connection between scaffolding and the evolving conceptualizations of learning and development in CHAT. From a Vygotskyan and CHAT perspective, to think about scaffolding is to think about how social processes in classrooms are organized, and the multiple ways that any social practice can be changed to allow for different kinds of learning. In the sections that follow, we discuss how the CHAT concepts of learning and development apply not only to teacher-to-student learning interactions but also to the collective practices of the classroom community. These concepts deepen our understanding of scaffolding and inform how we use scaffolding to design learning environments that are responsive and empowering to multilingual learners.

Appropriation and Scaffolding One of the CHAT concepts that is foundational to our understanding of learning and scaffolding is appropriation. In CHAT, learning is not a linear process of transmission or acquisition but one of appropriation in which individuals, working in jointly constructed zones of proximal development, take up and transform tools and practices that are modeled and created in the context of social practice. Appropriation is not simply a one-way process in which a child imitates or acquires adult behaviors. As Brown et al. (1993) explain, learners of all ages and levels of expertise and interests seed the environment with ideas and knowledge that are appropriated by different learners at different rates, according to their needs and to the current state of the zones of proximal development in which they are engaged. (p. 193)

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Conceptualizing learning as appropriation emphasizes both the unpredictability of the process and its agentic nature: as students learn, they transform what they are learning based on their different understandings and to meet their different learning needs. Thinking of learning as appropriation has direct implications for our understanding of scaffolding. The first implication has to do with the relationship between scaffolding and desired learning outcomes. The notion of appropriation underscores that (a) there is no one right scaffold for learning something and (b) the outcome of learning is unpredictable even when all learners have access to the same scaffold. In the context of the opening vignette, for instance, some of the groups used the pipe-and-system drawing to guide their construction while others did not. The availability of resources does not guarantee their usefulness. Available resources become scaffolds for learning when they are made relevant in the process of collective activity. Understanding learning as appropriation and not as acquisition also means that learners are creative and active, and that learning entails the transformation and not the transmission of ideas and practices (Engeström, 1987; Moll, 2014). Scaffolding, then, is a dynamic process that encourages and supports this creative use of knowledge and tools. This type of scaffolding is present, for example, in learning environments that give students the freedom to experiment with using language creatively, including by drawing on and moving between multiple languages and modalities (e.g., diagrams, equations, realia, and models). The language support teachers provide in these environments stems from the language that students are already using and is not limited to language generated by the teacher. Scaffolding entails encouraging and supporting learners in using all their tools and practices to engage in disciplinary learning, including their imagination and creativity. A third implication of conceptualizing learning as appropriation has to do with the relationship between new and existing knowledge. Any learning starts with the familiar (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000). Connecting to students’ existing understandings and ways of using tools, therefore, is a key form of scaffolding (de Oliveira, Jones, & Smith, 2020). A practice that can enable this kind of scaffolding is teachers’ exploration and documentation of what students already know and how they already use language (e.g., García & Kleifgen, 2020). This exploration can support teachers in connecting new knowledge to students’ existing practices in and out of school, and in making out-of-school learning and uses of language a foundation for school learning. Grounding the metaphor of scaffolding in learning as appropriation means that scaffolding becomes a flexible and dynamic process whose outcome is always uncertain and socially determined. Scaffolds that promote the learning of some students may not be recognized as resources by others or be consistent with their ZPD or learning goals. In addition, CHAT guides our understanding of what scaffolding is for. The notion of appropriation suggests that important aims for

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the scaffolding process are encouraging and supporting learners’ agency, imagination, and creativity as well as making familiar practices and existing knowledge relevant to disciplinary learning.

Participation in Sociocultural Activity and Scaffolding The cultures of classrooms and the kinds of participation in collective activity that they promote are fundamental to multilingual students’ disciplinary learning and language development. As Nasir, Scott, Trujillo, and Hernández (2016) argue, “the idea that all learning is part of a socially organized set of activities means that we must attend carefully not only to the academic content that is taught but also to how learning settings are organized” (p. 365). This involves, for example, attending to not only the tools and scaffolds made available to students, but also the roles of teachers and students, the overall purpose or aims of teaching and learning, and the connections between school and other learning environments (de Oliveira, Jones, & Smith, 2021). From a cultural-historical perspective, the collective nature of our everyday activities is central to understanding human learning and development (Cole, 1996; Vygotsky, 1978). In CHAT, social practices are considered the source of human development and “not merely its setting” (Moll, 2014, p. 43). The process of learning to think, remember, solve problems, and the like originates in and cannot be understood apart from a person’s interactions with others and cultural artifacts over time. CHAT offers powerful tools for thinking about the intersection of the individual and the collective, and about learning over time. One such tool is the focus that CHAT places on the nature of people’s participation in collective activity. Indeed, some scholars define learning as changes in participation (Rogoff, 2003). When thinking about participation, we can pay attention to the roles and responsibilities that different actors take, the division of labor among them, the rules (implicit or explicit) that shape the interaction among group members, and the different ways in which actors use available tools (Engeström, 1999). Identifying the different factors that influence individuals’ participation in collective activity enables us to find ways to support students’ meaningful and equitable participation in disciplinary learning. The emphasis on collective activity in CHAT pushes the focus of scaffolding beyond individual learning and discrete, short-term tasks. Foregrounding the nature of student interactions draws attention to, for example, the need to reexamine routinized patterns of classroom talk that limit students’ opportunities for participation, such as the IRF exchange (Gibbons, 2006; Wells, 1999). Routinized patterns, Gibbons (2006) argues, are like “rules of the game” that can be interrogated and changed to enable new ways of interacting. This is particularly relevant to shifts toward pedagogical models that encourage collaborative reasoning and sense-making such as those promoted by the NGSS

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and the standards for mathematical practice (CCSSO, 2010; NGSS Lead States, 2013). According to both of these sets of standards, classrooms need to facilitate students’ active participation and rich discourse in order to provide high-quality learning opportunities that lead to academic achievement. Scaffolding, then, is a process that makes visible participants’ expectations for collective engagement in learning and opens up spaces for those expectations to be interrogated. Scaffolding is not limited to tangible resources that can support students’ learning (e.g., visuals) but encompasses discussions of classroom norms and routines, and dialogue with students about ways in which these routines support their learning. This type of dialogue allows teachers to make their expectations for student participation explicit, and allows students to have an opportunity to question routines that may be unfamiliar, uncomfortable, or unproductive for their learning. The collective, critical, and ongoing examination of classroom norms enables students to learn the “rules of the game” and at the same time have a hand in changing them. The focus on student participation in learning also encourages us to think of scaffolding as a process that aims to broaden the forms of participation available to students. Varied opportunities for participation are particularly important for multilingual youth, as they typically involve slightly different ways of using language. We can think, for instance, of the language we use to add on or question an idea, and the different kinds of language we would use to invite someone to participate, cut someone off if they are dominating the floor, and bring together ideas expressed by different people. Similarly, when students take on different roles in a learning activity (e.g., leading a group project, helping a peer understand a concept, representing a group’s ideas graphically, or sharing expertise or experience) they have opportunities to use language in varied ways and in combination with other meaning-making resources. Expanding the opportunities for participation available to students is a form of scaffolding because it requires intentionality in both designing learning opportunities and responding to students’ contributions during learning. In sum, learning as participation in sociocultural activity encourages a view of scaffolding as facilitating learning at both individual and collective levels. Scaffolding is a mechanism for examining and changing classroom norms and routines so that they can better meet the evolving and varied needs of multilingual learners. The purpose of scaffolding encompasses expanding multilingual learners’ familiar ways of relating to one another, the teacher, and the content with the aim of deepening their engagement in learning and opening up opportunities for language development.

The Enactment of Student Agency and Scaffolding A concept that sits at the core of both the ZPD and the metaphor of scaffolding is the enactment of student agency. Fostering student agency requires shifts of

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responsibility from the teacher to the students. In this section, we focus on two such shifts: the development of metacognitive awareness and the co-construction of learning goals. These shifts encourage us to think of scaffolding as a collaborative and evolving process. CHAT emphasizes that students are active participants in their own learning. An important implication of this position is that both the ZPD and scaffolding are collaboratively constructed (Griffin & Cole, 1984; Moll, 2014; Roth & Lee, 2007). This view runs counter to the common understanding of scaffolding as something the teacher provides to students. CHAT encourages us to approach scaffolding as a process that promotes the active engagement of students in meeting their own learning needs. One of the key aims of scaffolding then becomes the development of metacognitive awareness. For multilingual users, metacognition also includes the development of critical language awareness.1 These metacognitive processes engage students in reflecting on their own learning and language use, and actively finding ways to make both more effective. The role of the teacher in this process is to open up opportunities for students to engage in metacognitive reflection and learning, to offer flexible guidance, and also to be receptive to changes initiated by the student in the processes or tools of learning. The development of metacognitive awareness includes opportunities for students to set their own learning goals and design ways to meet them. This means that scaffolding is a dynamic and responsive process: dynamic because students’ understanding and needs change, and responsive because it takes into account students’ own priorities and preferences. In the process of learning, students may discover new learning goals they want to set for themselves, and new ways of meeting these goals (Griffin & Cole, 1984). From the teacher’s point of view, scaffolding entails the frequent and dialogic reflection on and revisiting of students’ learning goals. It also means giving students options for how to work toward their own goals rather than picking a path for them to follow. Anchoring our understanding of the metaphor of scaffolding in foundational CHAT concepts highlights the following features and aims of the process: •

Scaffolding is: Flexible—one kind of scaffolding may not be sufficient to meet the needs of all learners; o Dynamic—scaffolding changes in the process of the learning activity and across learning activities, no matter how similar those activities might be; o Responsive—scaffolding varies based on students’ own priorities and preferences; o Socially determined—a resource in the environment cannot become a scaffold until it is leveraged as such by the learner; o Collaborative—scaffolding entails peers learning from peers, not only from adults; students can learn from less knowledgeable or experienced others as well as from those with similar or greater knowledge and experience; o

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Necessary—joint activity is an integral part of all learning; students need scaffolding no matter their familiarity with a task or their language competence. Scaffolding supports: o students’ creative use of knowledge and tools that goes beyond the replication of familiar, valued, or privileged practices; o students’ building on familiar understandings and practices as they appropriate new ones; o expanding the ways in which students participate in learning and relate to others; o the development of metacognitive awareness; o individual as well as collective learning; o the continuous transformation of existing classroom routines into practices that can better serve students’ varied and evolving needs. o

•

In the following section, we explore how an instructionally focused resource reflects the view of scaffolding that is anchored in the three CHAT concepts we foregrounded.

An Instructional Tool for Scaffolding the Learning of Multilingual Youth: The WIDA Framework for Equitable Instruction The WIDA Framework for Equitable Instruction (FEI) is a research-based resource that offers educators guidance in fostering the equitable engagement of multilingual youth in the kinds of disciplinary learning promoted by challenging content-area standards (Molle et al., 2022). At its core, the FEI aims to ensure that: (a) multilingual youth can participate in high-quality disciplinary learning no matter their language proficiency, and (b) disciplinary learning opens up rich and authentic opportunities for language development. The FEI has several core components (see Table 4.1). The first component is the Foundations for Equitable Classroom Engagement. This component emphasizes that equity is at the center of high-quality content-area instruction for multilingual learners. The Foundations consist of sample actions teachers can take that apply across the disciplines and are divided into four themes: connecting to students’ lives, fostering equitable community norms and peer collaboration, encouraging the use of students’ home languages and multiple modalities, and fostering language growth and developing students’ awareness of how language woks in context. The second organizing component of the FEI is language practices. WIDA studied a variety of standards-based learning activities across content areas and

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identified four high-leverage language practices. These practices describe frequent purposes for language use in content-area classrooms: • Express ideas: get initial ideas out “on the table” and clarify emerging ideas; • Co-construct ideas: deepen and transform understanding through collaborative reasoning; • Interpret ideas: expand content understanding by making sense of different sources of information; and • Present ideas: convey what is learned for particular audiences and situations. Like disciplinary practices, the language practices do not necessarily occur in a particular order and frequently overlap in the process of learning. The language practices intentionally integrate different language domains (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) to reflect how communication really happens in classroom settings. The language practices are also multimodal, involving a combination of spoken and written language, visual representations, gestures, and so on that are a natural and expected element in representing disciplinary ideas. Each language practice includes four subcomponents: teacher actions, student actions, language functions, and language trajectories. The teacher and student actions are discipline specific. The FEI includes different sets of actions for the core content areas of language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies. The teacher actions offer high-level ideas for ways in which teachers can support multilingual students’ engagement in disciplinary learning, language development, and critical language awareness (for examples of teacher and student actions, see Table 4.1). The student actions represent recommendations that teachers may share with their students and students may choose to appropriate to guide their own learning. The other two subcomponents of language practices are language functions and language trajectories. The language functions describe how students may need (or want) to use language as they engage in disciplinary learning. The language trajectories offer a big-picture overview of how students develop language over time. Although each student’s language development follows a unique pathway, the trajectories describe in general terms what students can do with language when they are beginning to learn English, and how different language competencies develop. Taken together, the components of the FEI are intended to support the academic success of multilingual youth by offering teachers actionable ideas for what they might do to promote equitable student participation in disciplinary learning and students’ language development. The FEI also provides lenses through which teachers can think about the opportunities for language use that their instruction opens up for students. The FEI aims to convey that with the appropriate scaffolding, all students, no matter their language proficiency, can participate in disciplinary practices and discourses.

58  Jennifer Wilfrid and Daniella Molle TABLE 4.1  The WIDA Framework for Equitable Instruction and Its Components

Component of the FEI Features

Examples

Foundations for Equitable Classroom Engagement Language Practices

The same across core content areas

“Position all students as capable and reinforce the idea that everyone’s contributions are important and valued”

The same across core content areas Organized by core content area

Express, Co-construct, Interpret, Present

Teacher Actions

Student Actions

Organized by core content area

Language Functions

Organized by core content area

Language Trajectories

Organized by core content area

“Center group work around a phenomenon or driving question that provides a genuine need to talk” (language practice of Express) “Ask questions about others’ claims and evidence to understand their reasoning” (language practice of Co-construct) “Integrate information from multiple and varied sources” (language practice of Interpret) Beginning students can: “respond to known audience questions with short and simple rehearsed responses” As language develops, students can: “respond to anticipated audience questions in some detail, especially if given the opportunity to clarify meaning” (language practice of Present)

In the sections that follow, we illustrate some of the ways in which the FEI reflects the three foundational CHAT concepts we have highlighted so far.

The FEI and Learning as Appropriation The view of scaffolding as connecting the familiar with the new is present in the language practices. The language practices encompass a wider range of language than is typically thought of as academic language (or the language of school). Rather than limiting academic language to abstract, technical, and grammatically complex language, the language practices also include the interactive, often messy, authentic uses of language that are essential in the process of learning and that naturally occur in classroom interaction. Paying attention to language practices expands the kinds of language we value for rigorous learning in the disciplines. In addition, the view of scaffolding as a process that supports the creative use of students’ full (linguistic) repertoires is reflected in multiple FEI components,

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including the Foundations for Equitable Classroom Engagement, teacher actions, and student actions. These components emphasize the importance of encouraging the use of languages other than English as well as multiple modalities. The FEI positions both translanguaging (e.g., García & Kleifgen, 2020) and the use of multiple modalities as necessary scaffolding for all students and not as a temporary support for beginning learners of English. Translanguaging supports students in building relationships, deepening their content understanding, and developing metalinguistic awareness. The use of multiple modalities is essential for the exploration of disciplinary concepts and the presentation of disciplinary ideas (e.g., Moschkovich, 2013). Examples of the ways in which the multilingual and multimodal nature of communication are reflected in the FEI include: • Foundations for Equitable Classroom Engagement: “Develop a classroom community where multiple languages are recognized and overtly appreciated”; • Teacher action: “Model ways to incorporate multiple modalities in scientific argumentation (e.g., using combinations of text, data displays, diagrams, symbols, mathematical expressions)”; • Student action: “use multiple languages to make sure that everyone’s ideas are understood.” These are a few of the multiple ways in which the FEI reflects a view of scaffolding as anchored in the CHAT concept of appropriation, and promoting students’ use of familiar language practices and non-linguistic resources in the service of disciplinary learning.

The FEI and Learning as Participation in Sociocultural Activity The view of scaffolding as expanding students’ repertoires of participation in disciplinary learning is at the core of the FEI. As we mentioned in the FEI overview, one of the themes that organize the sample teacher actions included in the Foundations for Equitable Classroom Engagement is “foster equitable community norms and peer collaboration.” The emphasis on collaboration reflects the fact that productive peer interactions that foster a respect for difference and at the same time support the deeper exploration of disciplinary concepts do not emerge organically but require guidance, practice, and reflection (Molle & Lee, 2017). In addition to the example included in Table 4.1, other suggestions under this theme include: “encourage and model respect for difference,” “engage students in reflection on how we use language to maintain effective group relationships,” and “provide ample wait time after inviting students to share or revise ideas, and after students finish speaking.” The FEI foregrounds the establishment and maintenance of effective classroom routines because of the social nature of the ZPD and scaffolding.

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The understanding of scaffolding as supporting the expansion of students’ repertoires of participation is also embedded in the language practices of the FEI and their subcomponents. Some of the clearest examples are the language functions and accompanying language trajectories in the language practice of Express. The language functions associated with this practice include but are not limited to: “contribute and clarify own ideas,” “ask and respond to questions,” “initiate, maintain, and end discussions,” and “make and respond to requests, suggestions, and invitations.” The purpose of these language functions is both to describe how students are likely to use language as they engage with others’ ideas, and to highlight for educators the multiple social actions that students need opportunities to practice. The language trajectories reinforce this purpose. One of the descriptors for how language develops, for instance, states “with guidance and prompting, use an increasing range of discourse moves” (Michaels & O’Connor, 2015). As these examples illustrate, one of the chief aims of the FEI is to support the expansion of multilingual students’ participation in disciplinary learning by attending to classroom norms for collaboration that support multiple social actions.

The FEI and Student Agency The understandings that fostering metacognitive awareness is a key aim of scaffolding and that the scaffolding process entails responsiveness to evolving and varied student needs are reflected in the student and teacher actions of the FEI. We included student actions in the FEI because we wanted to position students as agents in their own learning, and also give teachers examples of metacognitive guidance they could share with their students to strengthen disciplinary learning, peer relationships, and language development. Metacognitive awareness can support any activity in which the students are engaged. For that reason, we included student actions with all four of the language practices in the FEI. Examples of student actions include: “listen carefully to understand others’ ideas,” “ask questions about others’ claims and evidence to understand their reasoning,” and “treat audience expectations as guidelines, not as rules, and reflect on how you can use these guidelines to achieve your goals in terms of self-expression and audience response.” The teacher actions in the FEI direct attention explicitly to the evolving, negotiated, and situated nature of students’ needs. Example teacher actions that reflect this understanding of learning include: “support students in using multiple tools and modes (e.g., flow charts, concept maps, t-tables, diagrams) to represent the development of ideas within whole texts and sections of a text,” “provide students with explicit guidance as well as flexibility when they engage with particular genres,” and “if you paraphrase a student’s idea, ask the student if you understood and stated it correctly; invite the student to correct your expression until clarity has been negotiated and achieved.” These teacher actions are intended to support scaffolding that is evolving and responsive, and applies to individual as well as collective learning.

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Conclusion In this chapter, we anchor our discussion of the metaphor of scaffolding in core concepts from cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT). We explore how conceptualizing learning as appropriation, participation in sociocultural activity, and the enactment of student agency encourages us to shift our thinking about the nature and aims of scaffolding. We also illustrate how an instructionally focused resource, the WIDA Framework for Equitable Instruction, reflects some of the features of scaffolding that CHAT brings to the fore. We hope that this discussion inspires reflections in the reader about their own approach to scaffolding, and that it offers concrete guidance on instructional practices that an understanding of scaffolding anchored in CHAT would support.

Note 1 The development of critical language awareness entails an increase in students’ capacity to use language strategically to accomplish their goals in specific contexts. It includes an awareness of how language is intertwined with power relations that privilege particular ways of speaking and understanding the world (Alim, 2005)

References Bransford, J., Brown, A., & Cocking, R. (Eds.). (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school (expanded edition). National Academy Press. Brown, A., Ash, D., Rutherford, M., Nakagawa, K., Gordon, A., & Campione, J. (1993). Distributed expertise in the classroom. In G. Salomon (Ed.), Distributed cognitions: Psychological and educational considerations (pp. 188–228). Cambridge University Press. Cole, M., & Engeström, Y. (1993). A cultural-historical approach to distributed cognition. In G. Salomon (Ed.), Distributed cognitions: Psychological and educational considerations (pp. 1–46). Cambridge University Press. Council of Chief State School Officers (2010). Common core state standards for mathematics. http://www.corestandards.org/Math/Practice/ de Oliveira, L. C., Jones, L., & Smith, S. (2020). Interactional scaffolding in a firstgrade classroom through the teaching-learning cycle. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2020.1798867 de Oliveira, L. C., Jones, L., & Smith, S. (2021). A language-based approach to content instruction (LACI) for multilingual learners: Six Cs of scaffolding in first grade. Journal of Language, Identity & Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/15348458.2021.1885409 Engeström, Y. (1987). The zone of proximal development as the basic category of educational psychology. The Quarterly Newsletter of the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition, 8(1), 23–42. Engeström, Y. (1999). Activity theory and individual and social transformation. In Y. Engeström, R. Miettinen, & R. Punamaki (Eds.), Perspectives on activity theory (pp. 19–38). Cambridge University Press. Engeström, Y. (2001). Expansive learning at work: Toward an activity theoretical reconceptualization. Journal of Education and Work, 14(1), 133–156. http://dx.doi. org/10.1080/13639080020028747

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García, O., & Kleifgen, J. (2020). Translanguaging and literacies. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(4), 553–571. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/rrq.286 Gibbons, P. (2006). Changing the rules, changing the game: A sociocultural perspective on second language learning in the classroom. In G. Williams, & A. Lukin (Eds.), The development of language: Functional perspectives on species and individuals (pp. 196–216). Continuum. Griffin, P., & Cole, M. (1984). Current activity for the future: The zo-ped. In B. Rogoff, & J. Wertsch (Eds.), Children’s learning in the “zone of proximal development:” New directions for child and adolescent development (No. 23, pp. 45–64). Jossey-Bass. Gutiérrez, K. D., Baquedano-López, P., & Tejeda, C. (1999). Rethinking diversity: Hybridity and hybrid language practices in the third space. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 6(4), 286–303. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10749039909524733 Michaels, S., & O’Connor, C. (2015). Conceptualizing talk moves as tools: Professional development approaches for academically productive discussion. In L. Resnick, C. Asterhan, & C. N. Clarke (Eds.), Socializing intelligence through talk and dialogue (pp. 347–362). AERA. http://dx.doi.org/10.3102/978-0-935302-43-1 Moll, L. (2014). L. S. Vygotsky and education. Routledge. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/ 9780203156773 Molle, D., & Lee, N. (2017). Opportunities for academic language and literacy development for emergent bilingual students during group work. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 20(5), 584–601. https://doi.org/10.1080/13670 050.2015.1103206 Molle, D., Wilfrid, J., MacDonald, R., Westerlund, R., & Spalter, A. (2022). The WIDA framework for equitable instruction of multilingual children and youth in content-area classrooms (WCER Working Paper No. 2022-1). University of Wisconsin– Madison, Wisconsin Center for Education Research. Moschkovich, J. (2013). Principles and guidelines for equitable mathematics teaching practices and materials for English Language Learners. Journal of Urban Mathematics Education, 6(1), 45–57–45–57. https://doi.org/10.21423/jume-v6i1a204 Nasir, N., Scott, J., Trujillo, T., & Hernández, L. (2016). The sociopolitical context of teaching. In D. Gitomer, & C. Bell (Eds.), The handbook of research on teaching (5th ed., pp. 349–390). AERA. http://dx.doi.org/10.3102/978-0-935302-48-6_5 NGSS Lead States. (2013). Next generation science standards: For states, by states. https:// www.nextgenscience.org/ Rogoff, B. (2003). The cultural nature of human development. Oxford University Press. Roth, W.-M., & Lee, Y.-J. (2007). “Vygotsky’s neglected legacy”: Cultural-historical activity theory. Review of Educational Research, 77(2), 186–232. Shvarts, A., & Bakker, A. (2019). The early history of the scaffolding metaphor: Bernstein, Luria, Vygotsky, and before. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 26(1), 4–23. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/10749039.2019.1574306 Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Harvard University Press. Walqui, A. (2006). Scaffolding instruction for English language learners: A conceptual framework. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 9(2), 159–180. Wells, G. (1999). Dialogic inquiry: Toward a sociocultural practice and theory of education. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511605895

5 MAKING SCIENCE MULTILINGUAL Scaffolding for Equitable Engagement in Science Rita MacDonald and David T. Crowther

Science education and language education have historically different paths of development with very few intersections. However, with new research in both fields, the opportunity for significant collaboration and innovation abounds. A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas (National Research Council [NRC], 2012) proposed innovations in teaching inquiry science by conceptualizing performance expectations (standards) comprising three interwoven dimensions: disciplinary content, science and engineering practices (SEPs), and crosscutting concepts (CCCs). This three-dimensional approach to teaching and learning science was foundational to the development of the Next Generation Science Standards (NRC, 2013). Emphasis was placed on “doing” science (as represented in the SEPs) as well as on connections to other areas in science and to the real world (CCCs), all of which connect to the more familiar science content (disciplinary core ideas [DCIs]). These changes create a more coherent three-dimensional structure that promotes more effective science learning. Additionally, socially and culturally relevant phenomena are chosen to anchor student learning, shifting the focus away from the traditional “learning about” to “figuring out” science. Together with the increased emphasis on the SEPs, or on doing science, this leads to a better connection to the real world (Creative Commons, 2016)—the main goal of science education. This is a fundamentally and historically different approach to science instruction (Table 5.1). Science education is about helping students make sense of the world. But, which students? Critical to the innovation of three-dimensional science was finding ways to provide equitable access to science for all students, a concern further highlighted by the National Academy’s English Learners in STEM Subjects (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine [NASEM], 2018), which shone a light on multiple ways that the nation’s most rapidly growing DOI: 10.4324/9781003196228-6

64  Rita MacDonald and David T. Crowther TABLE 5.1  The Three Dimensions of Science Teaching

Science and Engineering Practices (SEPs)

Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCIs) Crosscutting Concepts (CCCs)

1. Asking questions and defining problems 2. Developing and using models 3. Planning and carrying out investigations 4. Analyzing and interpreting data 5. Using mathematics and computational thinking 6. Constructing explanations and designing solutions 7. Engaging in argument from evidence 8. Obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information

Physical Science PS 1: Matter and its interactions PS 2: Motion and stability: forces and interactions PS 3: Energy PS 4: Waves and their applications in technologies for information transfer Life Sciences LS 1: From molecules to organisms: structure and processes LS 2: Ecosystems: interactions, energy, and dynamics LS 3: Heredity: inheritance and variation of traits LS 4: Biological evolution: unity and diversity Earth and Space Science ESS 1: Earth’s place in the universe ESS 2: Earth’s systems ESS 3: Earth and human activity Engineering Technology and the Application of Science ETS 1: Engineering design ETS 2: Links among engineering, technology, science, and society

1. Patterns 2. Cause and effect 3. Scale, proportion, and quantity 4. Systems and system models 5. Energy and matter 6. Structure and function 7. Stability and change

(NRC, 2012, p. 3)

group of students, multilingual learners (MLs), were being left behind or left out in science, and highlighted promising practices that would include them in the critical sense-making that constitutes contemporary science education. The focus on sense-making has a fortunate parallel in language education: the language-in-use theory. As a foundation for supporting language development in classroom settings (Heritage, Walqui, & Linquanti, 2015; Kibler &Valdés, 2016: NASEM, 2018, p. 66), the language-in-use approach focuses on language as a means of communication, with increased effectiveness developed through

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multiple meaningful interactions with others over time, rather than focusing first or foremost on linguistic correctness or precision. When applying this approach, educators recognize that students have multiple ways of using language to engage effectively with ideas, including the everyday language with which many enter the science classroom. The highly technical, precise, or complex language choices often associated with the term academic language are understood as a result of multiple instances of supported engagement in sense-making over time and across a range of contexts. Put simply, students learn the language of science over time, by doing science. The confluence of these reform movements around sense-making underlies Making Science Multilingual (MSM), through which WIDA and the National Science Teaching Association joined forces to challenge exclusionary beliefs and practices and support more equitable science engagement for MLs. To help realize the critical changes recommended by NASEM, MSM’s experts in science education and language education co-authored the Design Principles for Equitable Engagement in Three-dimensional Science (MacDonald et al., 2020).

The Call for Change The Design Principles work toward a long-held goal in science education. “Arguably, the most pressing challenge facing U.S. education is to provide all students with a fair opportunity to learn” (NRC, 2012, p. 281), and this is especially challenging in science. A Framework for K-12 Science Education states: A major goal for science education should be to provide all students with the background to systematically investigate issues related to their personal and community priorities. They should be able to frame scientific questions pertinent to their interests, conduct investigations and seek out relevant scientific arguments and data, review and apply those arguments to the situation at hand, and communicate their scientific understanding and arguments to others. (NRC, 2012, p. 278) All these desired aspects of a “good” science education are challenging for even the best science teachers to integrate into instruction and, as a result, students with rich background knowledge, experience, and learned skills aligned with dominant classroom practices ultimately are more successful in such instruction. Being born into a racial minority group with high levels of economic and social resources—or into a group that has been historically marginalized with low levels of economic and social resources—results in very different lived experiences that include unequal learning opportunities, challenges, and potential risks for learning and development. (Banks et al., 2007 as quoted in NRC, 2012, p. 280)

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To further complicate the issue, a fair and equitable science education as traditionally taught in U.S. schools typically uses the language and discourse style aligned with the mainstream, even though the languages and discourse styles that multilingual students bring to their classrooms are perfectly sufficient for the work of sense-making in science. Many teachers lack the training to work effectively with linguistically diverse students and when they use strategies, with the best intentions, that are founded in more traditional methods, the unintentional result is inequitable access for MLs. Increasing the science engagement of our nation’s rapidly growing group of MLs is a matter of urgency. Persistent disparities in MLs’ access to rigorous science education place MLs at a disadvantage in terms of access to college education and to the many stable and interesting careers linked to knowledge and skill in science and technology (NASEM, 2018). The importance of making science accessible to all students is also emphasized in the Call to Action (NASEM, 2021). • “The accomplishments and discoveries of science are inspirational, especially for children, as they come to understand their world and develop a sense of agency within it.” (p. 14) • “Understanding science and the practice of scientific thinking are essential components of a fully functioning democracy.” (p. 16) • “Expanding the pool of talent is important for ensuring that science takes up questions and problems that are important for a wide range of communities. Building a diverse scientific workforce can help ensure that science better serves all people.” (p. 18) This lack of access puts all of us at risk. MLs are capable learners, well able to learn the science they need to ensure their participation in science-related work and their informed engagement in civic decision-making. Adjusting our classroom practices to assure them that access will invite their inclusion and input into collaborative solutions to the important global, national, and community crises we face. If we do not challenge and change exclusionary practices, we risk our shared future and place MLs and their families downstream of decisions made by others. Although this chapter includes examples of science instruction and references the three dimensions of science understanding, our intent is not to offer guidance in teaching three-dimensional science. Rather, our intent is to show how good three-dimensional science instruction can be improved to more equitably include MLs. We will illustrate how MSM’s Design Principles connect to a robust and much-needed re-conceptualization of instructional scaffolding and converge to support MLs’ engagement in the critical sense-making activities and discourse of rigorous science, while supporting their deeply contextualized development of English. This chapter will offer multiple examples for using the Design Principles to plan effective scaffolding to help overturn the persistent disparities that place our shared future at risk.

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Scaffolding Revisited Gibbons (2015) states that scaffolding is a special kind of help that assists learners to move toward new skills, concepts, or levels of understanding. Scaffolding is thus a temporary assistance by which a teacher helps a learner know how to do something, so that the learner will later be able to complete a similar task alone. (p. 16) Vacca (2002) explained that teachers scaffold instruction by providing large amounts of support and assistance early on in instruction of a new concept, and then gradually decrease the level of support and assistance as the learners gain experience and knowledge and require less support to accomplish the task at hand. Echevarria, Vogt, and Short (2008) describe two types of scaffolding as verbal and procedural. Verbal scaffolding uses strategies as paraphrasing, think-alouds, reinforcing contextual definitions, providing pronunciations, and slowing speech. Procedural scaffolding includes using an instructional framework that includes explicit teaching, modeling, practice, one-on-one teaching, small group instruction, and partnering or grouping students for learning. Scaffolding in the traditional sense mentioned above resulted in science instruction that was an oversimplification of concepts through generic strategies, such as pre-teaching content or vocabulary, which failed to support MLs by attempting to teach complex ideas and language without embedding them in activity or connecting them to sense-making—the central activity of contemporary science education. This practice of providing static supports is called into question by examinations of scaffolding practice by Van de Pol, Volman, and Beishuizen (2012). Additional studies by Hammond and Gibbons (2005), de Oliveira and Athanases (2017), and an excellent Focus Bulletin from WIDA [Daniels & Westerlund, 2018] outline a more productive approach. Hammond and Gibbons (2005) make a helpful distinction between two types of scaffolding: •

•

macro-scaffolding, or planned scaffolding “happen[s] before a lesson, at the global level, when teachers develop a long-term vision with clear learning goals for their students and sequence lessons that build on students’ cumulative and coherent body of knowledge” (Daniels & Westerlund, 2018, p. 3). Hammond and Gibbons (2005) refer to these as “the curriculum area or field of inquiry of their learners” (p. 10). micro-scaffolding, or interactional scaffolding “happen[s] during a lesson in the interactions between the teacher and students” (Hammond & Gibbons, 2005, p. 3). These interactions are immediate, in the moment, and “enable the learners to achieve relevant goals” (Hammond & Gibbons, 2005, p. 10).

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Hammond and Gibbons make the point that the two types of scaffolding work together. The learning that occurs as a result of support provided at a micro level of interaction (at a task level) needs to be located within the macro framework of a planned program, so that there is a clear relationship between sequential tasks and also that these tasks relate to articulated program and curriculum goals. (Hammond & Gibbons, 2005, p. 11) Moving this idea a step further, Daniels & Westerlund (2018) state that it is important to situate practices within a pedagogy that values and affirms students … [where] language serves as a tool that students use in order to reason together, to critique or support a line of reasoning, to develop models, and to investigate and solve problems. (p. 3) Similarly, A Framework for K-12 Science Education (NRC, 2012) clearly articulates that science, at the macro level, must be taught in a way that engages all learners in the SEPs and applies CCCs to deepen students’ understanding of the core concepts in these fields (p. 8). When Hammond and Gibbons’ (2005) concept of two types of scaffolding is combined with the goals and ideals outlined in A Framework for K-12 Science Education (NRC, 2012) at the macro level, and considerations of equity, society, and culture are used to leverage the sense-making and combined contentlanguage learning at hand (micro level), all students benefit, but MLs receive the essential support and practices to be as successful as their peers in learning science. The MSM Design Principles can guide the development of both overarching structures that set up classroom expectations (macro-scaffolds) and specific ways of interacting with students (micro-scaffolds).

Design Principles for Equitable Engagement in Three-Dimensional Science The full version of the Design Principles is available as an open-access paper at http://www.wcer.wisc.edu/publications/working-papers. This schoolhouse figure (Figure 5.1) conveys their organization into three themes. Subsequent figures illustrate how the Design Principles interact as a framework to support equitable engagement in science.

Foundational Commitments to Science Education MSM’s first two Design Principles state clear beliefs about the need to improve MLs’ access to science:

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Principle 1: Principle 2:

Students have the right to learn science. The legacy of disparities in science education can be disrupted.

Figure 5.2 highlights some elements of the legacy that can block MLs’ access to and engagement in rigorous science education.

FIGURE 5.1 

Design Principles and Their Thematic Organization

FIGURE 5.2 

Obstacles to MLs’ Rightful Access to Science Education

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Four Pillars of Sense-making

Principle 3: Principle 4: Principle 5: Principle 6:

Phenomena matter Student ideas matter SEPs matter. Positioning students with agency and authority matters.

When science instruction begins with students experiencing and exploring appropriate and relevant phenomena (see Using Phenomena in NGSS Designed Lessons and Units, Creative Commons, 2016), learning becomes much more engaging for students. Instructional models shift from “learning about” to “figuring out,” which activates student engagement and sense-making, ultimately improving both content and language learning. Teachers use student-generated ideas and questions to plan additional stages of inquiry, connecting ultimately to the DCIs of science and to the big ideas of science, the CCCs. Because the collaborative inquiry is based on a shared experience accessible to everyone, rather than an abstract concept presented in a textbook, each student can speak with authority about his or her experience. The use of equitable classroom discourse routines can further support each student’s agency so that students can speak to what they, their family, community, or tribe know about the phenomenon under investigation. Figure 5.3 shows how a wellchosen phenomenon stimulates student ideas and engages their authority and agency. Principle 5 names the fourth pillar of sense-making: the set of eight SEPs. This critical element of three-dimensional science helps students learn how to “do science.” Students learn to ask good questions based on the phenomenon at

FIGURE 5.3 

The Power of a Phenomenon to Generate Sense-making

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hand, and they learn how these questions drive observations, as well as how to understand what kind of evidence is needed to answer those questions and turn them into claims and arguments with scientific authority and confidence. Thus, the integration of the SEPs into instruction strengthens students’ skill in working with ideas in the domain of science and strengthens the authority with which they can speak as they address science questions and issues that may reach into the community and beyond their personal experience. This strengthening of student ideas and student agency and authority is depicted in Figure 5.4. These four pillars of sense-making show how the use of phenomena to drive sense-making engages students’ ideas and agency. But, to make sense-making equitable for MLs, some additional factors must be considered.

Assurance of Equity Principle 7: Educators must leverage and sustain students’ cultural and linguistic assets. Pr inciple 8: Students learn through expanding science and language repertoires. In contemporary education, we assert that MLs’ cultures and languages are assets to our collaborative learning. Design Principle 7 captures the importance of

FIGURE 5.4 

The Influence of the SEPs on Sense-making

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leveraging those assets, not as stepping-stones to a presumably better way, but as an expansion of our collective ways of using language (Martinez, Morales, & Aldana, 2017) and of interacting, working, and understanding the world around us. Viewed through the perspective of culturally sustaining pedagogy (Paris, 2012), equitable engagement is not simply channeling everyone into one lane believed to be the best one, but entails a willingness to have customary patterns disrupted and an openness to multiple ways of interacting and incorporating students’ cultural and linguistic assets into science instruction. Principle 8 captures the integration of recent reforms in both science education and language education that view learning from the sociocultural perspective, in which “knowledge is not only a possession of the teachers but also the creation and shared property of learning communities” (Westerlund, 2018, p.  3). This principle highlights the importance of beginning where students are—with initial ideas about a phenomenon, expressed in everyday or imperfect language—knowing that, over time and with guidance and instruction, both their science understanding and their language use will become more nuanced and more precise. Figure 5.5 illustrates that Design Principles 7 and 8 must reach into, or permeate, all aspects of sense-making.

Designing Macro- and Micro-scaffolding with MSM's Design Principles Macro-scaffolding as applied to contemporary science instruction begins with knowledge of A Framework for K-12 Science Education (NRC, 2012) and the three-dimensional construct (described above) as seen in each of the Performance Expectations (standards) found in the Next Generation Science Standards (NRC, 2013). Knowledge of the specific components of each of the three dimensions (SEP, DCI, and CCC) and of the progressions (found in Appendix E, F, and G) along with the NGSS Evidence Statements is essential

FIGURE 5.5 

The Overlay of Design Principles 7 and 8 onto Sense-making

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for understanding what students are expected to accomplish by standard and at the end of each grade band (K-2, 3-5, 6-8, 9-12). This essential knowledge is used at the macro level for planning, preparing, teaching, and assessing science. Additionally, if a teacher is assigned a curriculum by a district, the curriculum and associated lessons can be evaluated on their integration of the three-dimensions via the NGSS EQuIP Rubric (NRC, 2013) for alignment. Additionally, macro-scaffolding would consider the social and cultural assets MLs bring to the classroom and would intentionally integrate those assets by choosing appropriate phenomena and planning science instruction that actively engages students. Finally, many science teachers may have only had one or two courses in language acquisition, so either the collaboration with a language specialist or a working knowledge of how linguistic meaning-making evolves with repeated opportunities for sense-making in science will be important. Approaches to content-language integration such as LACI can be helpful (de Oliveira, Jones, & Smith, 2021). Additional considerations for macro-scaffolding will be how to provide appropriately comprehensible input to MLs at varied English proficiency levels, how to make full use of MLs’ existing repertoires of verbal and nonverbal expression, and how to provide additional opportunities and guidance to support the development of additional linguistic registers (NASEM, 2018, p. 59). Macro-scaffolding, as applied to language development embedded into science instruction, calls for educators to develop an awareness of the English language development standards that apply to their contexts. With the assistance of a language specialist, or through their own study, they can understand significant differences among the proficiency levels in terms of what students can comprehend or produce at those levels and anticipate the levels of support students will need. Micro-scaffolding, by contrast, will be supported by educators’ commitments to being responsive to student ideas, learning how to facilitate students’ sensemaking discourse, and doing so in real time in ways that equitably engage all students. The following section illustrates how the Design Principles can guide both macro- and micro-scaffolding for equitable engagement in science.

Foundational Commitments to Science Education, Design Principles 1 and 2 Macro-scaffolding Although few would argue that every student has the right to learn science, unintentionally exclusionary school or district policies may bar the participation of many MLs (NRC, 2012, p. 280). Policies that make access to rigorous science classes dependent on required minimum scores on English

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language proficiency assessments (NASEM, 2018, p. 44) have not kept pace with pedagogical change. When science is centered on phenomena, threedimensional inquiry, and collaborative sense-making, advanced or intermediate proficiency in English is not necessary. Everyday English is supported by translanguaging, drawing, gesturing, and other means of conveying ideas is sufficient for meaningful engagement (NASEM, 2018, pp. 99–102; NRC, 2012, p. 285). Revising unnecessarily exclusionary policies such as this one would go a long way to supporting MLs’ equitable access to rigorous science. Similarly, programmatic structures that provide supposed (but rarely equivalent) alternatives to rigorous science instruction, and pedagogical practices such as ESL pullout sessions focused on learning decontextualized science vocabulary, or interactional structures that group ELs homogeneously based on English proficiency levels must also be interrogated due to the unintended, but highly consequential, exclusion of MLs from authentic sensemaking with their peers. Figure 5.2 shows additional obstacles that can be mitigated by thoughtful macro-scaffolding. Selecting phenomena related to students’ lived experiences, interests, and concerns demonstrates that science can be useful and important for them and for their communities. Teachers can support critical connections to family and community knowledge by having students interview family members about the phenomenon or related ideas, and can use the ideas generated as they progress through the unit—perhaps inviting family or community members to join the class periodically. Integrating in-person or video-based classroom visits by the diverse community of those who work in science-related fields can counter stereotypes of what science is for, what science does, and who does science. Including readings or videos about science achievements across time and continents can further support a more positive identification with science by those from historically marginalized communities, as can stories about contemporary young scientists and their impact on local issues.

Additional Resources The Harvard Gazette. This Is What a Scientist Looks Like. July 23, 2020 https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/07/i-am-a-scientist/?fbclid=I wAR1tBkfKIsM4pgx277nRSXno3069h2qMpwY8N2MnfrrVjYL5RjndBJAkfng. This resource shows young scientists from all over the world talking about their lives and their exciting work. Scientist cards: free student-friendly resources showing many types of scientists and what they do https://go.info.amplify.com/take-on-the-role?utm_source=hs_email&utm_ medium=email&utm_content=81661652&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8JpI6drEsjlzrjFc WLXl6ODS08YPG6E_7OFBC1UCX1LlZH_bK0adIA9hQkiuYj9ZNyKtnZNInI2aD4gpzHajTsEbBkWg&_hsmi=81661652

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Micro-scaffolding Because science identity also operates at a personal level, interactional scaffolds are important and necessary to counter the effects of generations of marginalization and exclusion. Teachers should regularly engage students in making connections between the phenomenon under investigation and their own experiences and knowledge. Additionally, teachers can reflect periodically on their classroom discourse practices to note any unintended patterns of responding more frequently or with greater patience to ideas from males than to females, or to English-fluent students versus English learners. When educators learn strategies to support MLs’ expression and clarification of ideas, and model patience and persistence in understanding ideas that may not be expressed clearly or fluently, all students learn that their ideas matter, and that they have a place in and ideas to contribute to science endeavors.

Additional Resources http://stem4els.wceruw.org/resources.html Open-access resources; strategies for reflection on equitable discourse practices. See the Reflection Questions for teachers, students, and student groups.

Four Pillars of Sense-making, Design Principles 3, 4, 5, and 6 Macro-scaffolding As noted above, the selection of an appropriate phenomenon to anchor a unit of study is an important macro-scaffold. Educator knowledge of community issues and student interest, gathered from family visits, student surveys and interviews, and local news articles, can help identify phenomena of interest and relevance. Additionally, establishing a clear stance that the generation of multiple, divergent ideas supports scientific reasoning and that all ideas are worthy of consideration encourages the sharing of student ideas. Discussing how some well-accepted ideas evolved can underscore the importance of ongoing idea generation and exploration (People thought…until…noticed that…) and encourages students’ openness to using scientific reasoning and evidence to challenge ideas. Finally, the transparent integration of the NGSS SEPs as a macro-scaffold for all lessons leads to productive discussion of questions such as: How do we find things out in science? How do we ask testable questions? What counts as evidence? How do we know what we know?

Additional Resources Choosing phenomena for classrooms http://stemteachingtools.org/brief/28 https://www.nextgenscience.org/ resources/phenomena

76  Rita MacDonald and David T. Crowther

Working with divergent student ideas http://stemteachingtools.org/brief/37

Micro-scaffolding When it comes to the four pillars of sense-making, many teachers would ask what differentiates good teaching practices from intentional micro-scaffolding. Maybin et al. (1992), as quoted in Hammond and Gibbons (2005), states: “[Scaffolding] is not just any assistance which helps a learner accomplish a task. It is help which will enable a learner to accomplish a task which they would not have been quite able to manage on their own, and it is help which is intended to bring the learner closer to a state of competence which will enable them eventually to complete such a task on their own” (p. 11). During sensemaking discussions, students may need assistance in formulating a question for investigation. Rather than providing some questions from which students could choose (a static scaffold), a teacher may micro-scaffold that interaction by having students clarify their thoughts on what they are trying to investigate, what data they would need to collect, and how they could turn that information into an investigable question. This micro-scaffold ultimately leads to helping students “know how to think, not simply what to think” (Hammond & Gibbons, 2005, p. 12). Although the expression of student ideas is central to sense-making, many students are hesitant to express initial ideas and questions. Sometimes, and not only for MLs, this hesitancy stems from beliefs about who should or should not speak, fear of not knowing the best words, or anxiety that they may speak too slowly or too unclearly and that others will not have the patience to wait for them to clarify their ideas. When educators allow sufficient thinking time after an idea has been expressed, and practice and model strategies to help students express and clarify their ideas (see Teacher and Student Discourse Moves, below), students learn that everyone’s ideas are necessary, and they learn how to negotiate meaning across multiple languages—an important skill in an increasingly global society. Additionally, an interaction style that never corrects students’ word choices or grammar, but seeks first to clarify student meaning and then offer additional or alternate wordings as needed, makes it clear that students’ full range of language use—everyday vocabulary, imperfect English, translanguaging—is acceptable.

Additional Resources https://wida.wisc.edu/resources/stem-discourse Teacher and Student Discourse Moves, open-access resources to support sense-making discourse http://stemteachingtools.org/brief/6 Encouraging productive student dialogue

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https://wida.wisc.edu/resources/translanguaging Understanding and leveraging translanguaging

Assurance of Equity, Design Principles 7 and 8 Macro-scaffolding As noted above, leveraging MLs’ linguistic and cultural assets supports their engagement in science and enriches the science community. As a macro-scaffold, an educator can commit to using students’ everyday language, mix of languages, and nonverbal communication as a foundation for sense-making. School and classroom practices that overtly celebrate the multitude of languages used by students support their pride in using their languages as they engage with one another and with their peers. Educators can leverage cultural assets by having students interview their parents or community elders about their knowledge and experience of issues under investigation. They can also invite guests from local multilingual, immigrant, or tribal communities to speak about their sciencerelated careers or to share their concerns and knowledge. This establishes for the benefit of the entire class that everyone has a stake in science and that science is not done only by or for mainstream white communities. It also establishes that issues affect different groups in different ways, and that the ways science is used to frame questions, study issues, and influence decisions have an important social aspect. Incorporating documented examples of the benefits of leveraging local knowledge, even or perhaps especially when it seems contrary to accepted fact, emphasizes the importance of engaging diverse communities.

Additional Resources Integrating family knowledge https://www.nsta.org/connected-science-learning/connected-sciencelearning-october-december-2020/families-are-essential Working with indigenous students and families http://stemteachingtools.org/brief/10 http://stemteachingtools.org/brief/11

Micro-scaffolding The expansion of scientific knowledge and of linguistic repertoires occurs through interactional scaffolds when educators work to comprehend students’ ideas and language, and then offer the ideal, student-specific next step along the trajectory of learning. Respectful probing of students’ science reasoning (What do you think would happen if…? How do you see that relating to what we observed yesterday?) helps move student thinking toward deeper understanding.

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Similarly, carefully selected and appropriately timed re-castings of student language choices can model ways to state an idea more clearly, concisely, or precisely. Focused conversations about the relative benefits of different ways of wording or presenting ideas increase students’ metalinguistic awareness, expanding their ability to choose among options to best serve their goals.

Additional Resources http://stem4els.wceruw.org/index.html See the Resource page to download classroom tools for both Teacher Discourse Moves and Student Discourse Moves, or print the final two pages of this research brief https://wida.wisc.edu/ resources/stem-discourse

Conclusion We have offered guidance in using MSM’s Design Principles to scaffold equitable engagement in science, using Hammond and Gibbons’ conceptualization of macro- and micro-scaffolding (2005). Improving equity in science engagement for MLs is critical to our shared future and to the expansion of scientific understanding. The intentional and serious consideration of ideas and concerns from diverse or previously marginalized groups can raise questions that might not have been asked before. The result is science that is grounded in the realities and concerns of students’ lives and in our multicultural, multilingual world—science in which more students have a stake in the outcome, and the hope of participating in a just solution. This is our robust understanding of equity.

References Creative Commons (2016). Using phenomena in NGSS-designed lessons and units. https://www.nextgenscience.org/resources/phenomena Daniels, J., & Westerlund, R. (2018). Scaffolding learning for multilingual students in math. WIDA focus bulletin. Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. https://wida.wisc.edu/sites/default/files/resource/FocusOn-Scaffolding.pdf de Oliveira, L. C., & Athanases, S. (2017). A framework to re-envision instructional scaffolding for linguistically diverse learners. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 61(2), 123–129. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.663 de Oliveira, L. C., Jones, L., & Smith, S. L. (2021). A language-based approach to content instruction (LACI) for multilingual learners: Six Cs of scaffolding in first grade. Journal of Language, Identity & Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/15348458.2021.1885409 Echevarria, J., Vogt, M., & Short, D. (2008). Making content comprehensible for English learners: The SIOP model. Pearson Education. Gibbons, P. (2015). Scaffolding language, scaffolding learning: Teaching English language learners in the mainstream classroom (2nd ed.). Heinemann. Hammond, J., & Gibbons, P. (2005). Putting scaffolding to work: The contribution of scaffolding in articulating ESL education. Prospect, 20(1), 6–30.

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Heritage, M., Walqui, A., & Linquanti, R. (2015). English language learners and the new standards. Harvard Education Press. Kibler, A. K., & Valdés, G. (2016). Conceptualizing language learners: Socioinstitutional mechanisms and their consequences. The Modern Language Journal, 100(S1), 96–116. https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12310 MacDonald, R., Crowther, D., Braaten, M., Binder, W., Chien, J., Dassler, T., Shelton, T., & Wilfrid, J. (2020). Design principles for engaging multilingual learners in three-dimensional science (Working Paper 2020–1). Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. http://www.wcer.wisc.edu/publications/working-papers Martinez, D., Morales, P., & Aldana, U. (2017). Leveraging students’ communicative repertoires as a tool for equitable learning. Review of Research in Education, 41(1), 477–499. https://doi.org/10.3102/0091732x17691741 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2018). English learners in STEM subjects: Transforming classrooms, schools, and lives. The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/25182 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2021). Call to action for science education: Building opportunity for the future. The National Academies Press. https:// doi.org/10.17226/26152 National Research Council (2012). A framework for K-12 science education: Practices, crosscutting concepts, and core ideas. The National Academies Press. https://doi. org/10.17226/13165 National Research Council (2013). Next generation science standards: For states, by states. The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/18290 Paris, D. (2012). Culturally sustaining pedagogy: A needed change in stance, terminology, and practice. Educational Researcher, 41(3), 93–97. https://doi.org/10.3102/ 0013189x12441244 Vacca, R. (2002). From efficient decoders to strategic readers. Educational Leadership, 60(3), 6–11. Van de Pol, J., Volman, M., & Beishuizen, J. (2012). Scaffolding in teacher-student interaction: A decade of research. Educational Psychology Review, 22(3), 271–296. https:// doi.org/10.1007/s10648-010-9127-6

SECTION 2

Examples and Case Studies of Scaffolding

6 SCAFFOLDING IN DLBE SECONDARY SOCIAL STUDIES CLASSROOM Re-envisioning Equitable Teaching Practices Katherine Barko-Alva, Stephen Masyada, and Claudia Norez

Social studies and civics encourage students to think of the future by learning about the past, to learn from the successes and failures of those who came before and to imagine what might be possible if they are given the opportunity to act as agents of change (Busey & Russell, 2016; Byrd & Varga, 2018; Mathé & Elstad, 2018; Ross, 2006). Dual language bilingual education (i.e., DLBE) instruction provides students with ample opportunities to learn complex academic topics while using all their linguistic resources. These programs afford students with the opportunities to make cross-linguistic, cross-academic, and cross-cultural connections during instruction (Christian, 1996). The lesson plan featured in this chapter integrates aspects of the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework and scaffolding for multilingual learners in a secondary DLBE classroom, using the Inquiry Design Model (IDM) (Grant et  al., 2017). We are ultimately considering the following: Why do social studies, and especially inquiry, matter in secondary DLBE contexts, and what might scaffolded instruction look like? Our approach to inquiry within this context reflects best practice as seen in the National Council for the Social Studies’ College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies (2013). In reflecting on this approach, however, we must also recognize the importance of appropriate scaffolding to ensure equity in our instruction and opportunity in our content and language learning outcomes (Fitzgerald & Graves, 2004; Gibbons, 2015; Hammond & Gibbons, 2005a; Mahan, 2020; Pacheco et al., 2017; Saye & Brush, 2004; Walqui, 2006). Scaffolding through the IDM—within the context of DLBE instruction—allows students to access both the pedagogical language knowledge of instruction (Bunch, 2013) and academic content.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003196228-8

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The Importance of the Social Studies and Civic Education Within the Context of Dual Language Bilingual Classrooms DLBE teachers are tasked with identifying multilingual resources designed to meet the linguistic, academic, cognitive, and sociocultural needs of their students as well as promoting bilingualism, biliteracy, and cross-cultural communication (see Christian, 1996; Herrera et al., 2015). The number of dual language bilingual education programs has significantly grown in the United States (Mercuri, 2015). In DLBE programs (i.e., two-way immersion, dual language immersion programs), academic disciplines (i.e., social studies, science, language arts, math, resources) are taught using 50% of instructional time in English and 50% in the LOTE (i.e., language other than English). Student demographic composition tends to be 50% English speakers and 50% multilingual counterparts (i.e., Spanish, French, Mandarin, Portuguese). Some programs adopt a 90–10% and 80–20% model (i.e., PK-2), moving into 50–50% for grades 3, 4, and 5 (Lindholm-Leary, 2007). Multilingual students and their families bring into the classroom an array of cultural/linguistic resources and ways of knowing, which our educational system often fails to recognize and affirm. While teachers and administrators are tasked with providing multilingual learners with opportunities to engage in the broader civic culture of their communities, they often have limited access to resources and research. Social studies and civic education, within the context of DLBE programs, provide an optimal learning environment not only to explore and analyze language use during instruction, but also to address sociocultural issues by equipping students with meaningful tools to become responsible citizens. To grasp and use these tools, students should possess an understanding of the instructional language within the context of social studies necessary to civic life. This language, as in other content areas, often relies on a shared consensus and contextualization to help convey certain concepts and ideas. For example, the use of nominalizations allows for the educator, the author, and even the student to ascribe judgment, place events and concepts within a particular time and place, or provide perspectives or information, among other more abstract concepts (Fang & Schleppegrell, 2010). In addition, de Oliveira (2010) identifies the following functions of nouns in history discourse: packaging information, expanding explanations, and structuring reasoning. According to de Oliveira (2010), nominalizations allow history texts to “package information into a single noun, expand information by presenting nouns as a starting point of a clause, structure reasoning by condensing the meaning presented in previous clauses” (p. 193). With this in mind, it is important that concept development be approached in-context. The very existence of some concept words within social studies and civics, such as freedom, liberty, engagement, or constitutional republic, could ask for teachers to rethink effective content instruction within the context of DLBE

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classrooms (Zhang, 2017); it allows students to explore the informational density (Fillmore & Fillmore, 2012) featured in social studies and civics texts. As academic disciplines, social studies and civics allow for a meaningful integration of language and content instruction (see Barko-Alva & Masyada, 2018; Masyada & Barko-Alva, 2018; de Oliveira, 2011). In Table 6.1, Westheimer and Kahne (2004) provide us a framework to begin to tackle some of these conceptual elements in their description of the types of citizens public education tends to create. For example, DLBE teachers could make the strategic decision of exploring each type of citizen using a particular language. Table 6.1 provides an overview of these types. TABLE 6.1  Types of Citizens

Type of Citizen

Personally Responsible Citizen Spanish

Description

Focus on personal responsibility within the community, good character as the core components of citizenship (paying taxes, working, obeying laws, volunteering) Ways of Contributes to charity Engagement or public event to improve community

What Matters? Character matters: social problems cannot be solved unless people have good character

(Adapted from Westheimer & Kahne, 2004)

Participatory Citizen English

Justice-Oriented Citizen Bridging (Both Languages)

Actively engages in Looks beyond surface community efforts to explore systemic at improvement as factors behind an organizer, leader social problems with an awareness of role of government and community

Organizes charity Seeks to address root or public event to cause rather than improve community the symptom of social problem (i.e., why are people hungry and in need of a food drive?) Leadership matters: Change matters: social problems social problems cannot be solved cannot be solved unless people take unless social an active and leading systems that role within the caused problems system as it is. are challenged and, if necessary, changed

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Using the Inquiry Design Model with Multilingual Students Learning in DLBE Settings Research is limited as far as using the C3 Framework and the Inquiry Design Model with students who are learning in multilingual settings, particularly in DLBE/ESL secondary contexts. Kanner (2020) presents strong evidence that using inquiry can have a positive consequence for multilingual learners, emergent bilinguals, and English learners (ELs). As Kanner persuasively suggests, an approach that allows for demonstrable, hands-on, authentic, and relevant summative performance tasks in relation to the inquiry can also provide these students with opportunities to acquire and use language within a particular context. At the same time, collaborating with students with different language proficiency levels and providing multiple opportunities to engage with visual and linguistic growth efforts (i.e., contextualized language supports to increase student language exploration, interaction, and production) contextualized within a particular academic discipline contribute to successful outcomes for multilingual learners. Consider, for example, the use of sentence frames (Grapin et al., 2020). According to Grapin and his colleagues, the traditional approach to this tool is too often “disconnected from disciplinary ways of knowing and communicating” (Grapin et al., 2020, p. 7) and too limiting on the ability of these students to express themselves and convey ideas. Rather, they suggest that teachers avoid the use of sentence frames with younger students or in initial learning as students are still developing their ideas around the content. According to Hammond and Gibbons’ (2005a) contingent scaffolding occurs in response to the interactions between teachers and students as instruction takes place in the classroom. If DLBE teachers’ sense of metalinguistic awareness has been both equally developed and supported to promote and foster contingent scaffolding, they should be equipped to use student-driven, contextualized, non-fixed, linguistic growth efforts to co-construct along with students dynamic multilingual learning spaces by identifying language goals within the context of social studies. We suggest that in a DLBE classroom when used appropriately and effectively, student-driven, contextualized, non-fixed linguistic growth efforts (i.e., sentence frames) could provide ample opportunities for language exploration and language production for students (see Alva, 2016); however, these linguistic growths should not be considered as the only instructional support system in the classroom.

The C3 Framework and the Inquiry Design Model The College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework is an approach to social studies education that is driven by an inquiry arc. Within this arc, there are four key dimensions:

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Dimension One: Developing Questions and Planning Inquiries This dimension of the framework engages students in understanding and using two types of questions: compelling and supporting. A compelling question is one that cannot be answered with a simple yes or no; it should not be a question that is “googleable.” Rather, it asks students to think broadly about issues that have multiple solutions or perspectives. Supporting questions, as one might expect, are intended to help students answer the compelling question. These form the basis of research and can connect to the compelling questions in multiple ways and are generally not debatable (unlike the compelling question) (Grant et al., 2017; NCSS, 2013). In our sample lesson, the compelling question centers around issues of public policy, asking plainly, “Can I impact public policy?” While at first glance this may seem to be a very basic yes or no question, it is one that requires some level of deeper thinking and, depending on what is learned from the supporting questions, can be answered multiple ways. This type of questioning affords multilingual learners ample opportunities for language use in Spanish and English. More often than not, linguistic growth efforts take place in the LOTE since students are tasked with negotiating content using a language with which they may or may not be familiar. Writing questions allows students to use language for academic and social purposes (i.e., brainstorming and inquiry). Student discussions about participation in civic life and could be conducted translinguistically to better facilitate scaffolding in DLBE classrooms (Garza & Arreguín-Anderson, 2018; NCSS, 2013).

Dimension Two: Applying Disciplinary Concepts and Tools The second dimension of the C3 Framework encourages students to draw on various concepts and tools relevant to four core individual social studies disciplines: civics, economics, geography, and history. Consider, for example, the lesson provided in this chapter. Table 6.2 highlights some of the various disciplinary concepts and tools that appear in this lesson. As we implement this lesson in a DLBE setting, the teacher could choose to address the first two questions in the LOTE and the last two questions in English. We argue that addressing the first two questions in Spanish (i.e., LOTE) creates ample opportunities for students to engage with Spanish literacy since they are going to use Spanish to tackle civics, economics, geography, and history concepts in Spanish. According to the table, questions 3 and 4 provide fewer opportunities to produce language. When planning across both languages, teachers should strive to afford increased opportunities of language production (i.e., reading, listening, speaking, and writing) in the LOTE (i.e., Spanish).

Dimension Three: Evaluating Sources and Using Evidence This dimension emphasizes the importance of identifying credible sources for research and using those sources to gather evidence that can help answer the

88  Katherine Barko-Alva et al. TABLE 6.2 Dimension 2: Applying Disciplinary Concepts and Skills Sample Lesson

Examples (NCSS, 2013) Supporting Question

Civics Concept Example

Economics Concept Example

Geography History Concept Concept Example Example

What is public policy?

Civic and Political Institutions

Economic Decision Making

Historical Sources Human– and Evidence Environment Interaction: Place, Regions, Culture Human– Change, Environment Continuity, and Interaction: Context Place, Regions, Culture

Spanish

What are Participation Economic some ways and Decision that people Deliberation: Making can make a Applying difference Civic Virtues, in their Democratic communities? Principles

Spanish Who has the Processes, power to make Rules, and decisions in Laws my particular community?

Perspectives

English What are public Participation National issues in my and Economy community? Deliberation: Applying English Civic Virtues, Democratic Principles

Causation and Argumentation

supporting questions in pursuit of that answer to the compelling question. Ultimately, we want students to be able to make evidence-based claims that support the argument they are choosing to make at the end of the inquiry. In a DLBE classroom, dimension three lends itself to rich opportunities to explore sources and resources in different languages and addressing multiple contexts. At the same time, they should understand that not every source may be relevant and that they should consider the credibility and reliability of sources when seeking evidence for their claims (Berson & Berson, 2003; Manfra & Holmes, 2018; Orlowski, 2014).

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Dimension Four: Communicating Conclusions and Taking Informed Action The final dimension of the inquiry arc as laid out in the C3 Framework provides students with the opportunity to share what they have learned. This gets to the very point of the inquiry arc: providing students with learning that is relevant to their own experience and allows them to engage with civic life (Swan et al., 2019). Research suggests that connecting student learning and practice to their own lived experience is key to ensuring engagement within the classroom and with the broader concepts that form the core of instruction (Bennett, 2007; Bennett et al., 2009; Blevins et al., 2016; Payne et al., 2020). For students engaging in inquiry, voice and choice are most expressed when it comes to this last dimension. Within the sample lesson, students first engage with the argument they wish to make around the compelling question, “Can I impact public policy?” and are encouraged to use whatever evidence will best support the position they take. At the same time, the lesson does not dictate the format of the argument; rather, students may choose an approach that works for the argument that they wish to make. It is in the “Taking Informed Action” component, however, where this idea of deeper civic engagement comes into play. Dimension four allows students to explore in depth “drawing conclusions” as a language function as well as applying their understanding to “taking informed actions.” As teachers scaffold drawing conclusions as a skill, they can create spaces for bridging and contrastive linguistic analysis. Thus, identifying one language feature students should have access to (i.e., packaging information, expanding explanation, and structuring reasoning (de Oliveira, 2010)) to engage with the content of the lesson. It is here where the teacher can use these linguistic features to identify how Spanish and English are similar or different. Hence, as students are engaging with the content, they are also learning about the linguistic practices (i.e., Spanish and English) used in that content (Figure 6.1).

Strategies and Procedures Conceptual Development Within Context (English/Spanish) The language of instruction will be in Spanish and English, with an emphasis in English due to the quantity and quality of resources for this topic. Teachers should begin by identifying key concepts (i.e., policy, solution, problem, issue, government, policymaking, process, law, regulation, leverage change, enforce, adopt) essential to the content addressed, contextualizing both content and concepts. It should be noted here that instruction in these concepts is contextually oriented. Rather than a list of teacher-provided definitions, students should be exposed to the conceptual terms in the context of the broader content and generalizations in which they are embedded, with multiple opportunities for use and

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practice and within a lens that is student created and modeled, connecting to relevant cognates where possible (Hovey et al., 2019). Here we also must consider the impact of what Hammond and Gibbons (2005b) refer to as “message abundance.” Within the framework of this lesson, students are consistently exposed to and engaged with key conceptual vocabulary again and again. This consistent engagement with relevant concepts obviates the need for anything more than an introduction to terms that will play a role throughout the lesson. Context is key. But what might this introduction to this conceptual vocabulary look like? Lesson Plan Public Policy Title Grade/Subje Grade 7; Social Studies, Civics Language of Instruction: Spanish & English ct Area Duration

10-14 days

Social Studies Standards and Practices

SS.7.C.2.3: Experience the responsibilities of citizens at the local, state, or federal levels. Also Assesses: SS.7.C.2.14: Conduct a service project to further the public good. LAFS.68.RH.1.2 Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary of the source distinct from prior knowledge or opinions. CC.68.RH.1.2 Determinar la idea o la información más importante que se encuentra en una fuente primaria o secundaria. Hacer un resumen exacto de la fuente, sin tomar en cuenta conocimientos previos y distinguiéndose de opiniones. LAFS.68.RH.3.7: Integrate visual information (e.g., in charts, graphs, photographs, videos, or maps) with other information in print and digital texts. CC.68.RH.3.7 Integrar información visual (Por ejemplo: diagramas, tablas, gráficas, fotografías, videos o mapas) con otra información impresa y textos digitales. LAFS.68. WHST.3.7: Conduct short research projects to answer a question (including a self-generated question), drawing on several sources and generating additional related, focused questions that allow for multiple avenues of exploration. CC.6.8. WHST.3.7 Llevar a cabo proyectos breves de investigación con el propósito de responder a una pregunta (incluyendo una pregunta hecha por uno-mismo). Utilizar diversas fuentes de información y generar preguntas específicas que permitan vías múltiples de exploración e investigación.

Content Objectives, Language Goals, and Cultural Objectives

Content Objectives Students will be able to Research what is public policy at the local, state, and national level. Describe various ways citizens can make a difference in their communities. Summarize how decisions are made that impact a community. Identify public policies that affect the local community. Determine how they would approach a public policy issue and advocate for change. Present the approach to the issue and take action to implement the approach. Language Goals (WIDA, 2020) ELD-SS.6-8. Explain. Interpretive Multilingual learners will interpret social studies explanations by: Determining multiple points of view in sources for answering compelling and supporting questions about events Analyzing sources for logical relationships among contributing factors or causes Evaluating experts’ points of agreement along with strengths and weakness of explanations ELD-SS.6-8. Argue. Expressive Multilingual learners will construct social studies arguments that Introduce and contextualize topic through generalized nouns and a descriptive title to introduce topic Select relevant information to support claims with evidence gathered from multiple sources through a variety of verb forms to express agency in doing, thinking, saying, feeling actions Establish perspective through objective or emotive language to appeal to logic or feelings Show relationships between claims and counterclaims, differences in perspectives, and evidence and reasoning through connectors to link claims with evidence and reasoning Language Functions and Sample Language Features Introduce and contextualize topic through generalized nouns and a descriptive title to introduce topic through (English) o Different verbs tenses (i.e., present tense)

FIGURE 6.1 

Lesson Plan

Scaffolding in DLBE Secondary Social Studies Classroom  91 o o

Cohesion to reference ideas (i.e., synonyms/antonyms) Connections to structures paragraphs (i.e., predictable organizational patterns for argument text) Select relevant information to support claims with evidence gathered from multiple sources through variety of verb forms to express agency in doing, thinking, saying, feeling actions through (español) o Uso de oraciones subordinadas o coordinadas para expresar ideas concretas o abstractas (Use of sentences) o Verbos y oraciones para citar un autor y crear un argumento (i.e., plantear, referir, declarar, indicar, sugerir, expresar, afirmar, contradecir) (Use of verbs and sentences to cite and craft an argument) Establish perspective through objective or emotive language to appeal to logic or feelings through (español) o Uso del tiempo condicional (i.e., podría/poder) (verb tenses) o Uso de pronombres personales y adjetivos posesivos (pronouns and adjectives) o Uso de vocabulario abstracto (i.e., poder, deseo) (abstract vocabulary) o Uso de nominalizaciones (i.e., Analizar las políticas públicas cuidadosamente...) (Use of nominalizations) Cultural Objectives Students will be able to · Discuss what cultural perspectives and practices impact public policy. · Compare the perspectives of the cultural groups that enforce the policy and who are affected by the policy. Policy/política, solution/solución, problem/problema, issue/problema, government/gobierno, policymaking/políticas, process/proceso, law/ley, regulation/regulación, leverage change/influenciar cambio, enforce/imponer, adopt/adoptar

Key Concepts (Word/phra se/ precision of language) Compelling How can I impact public policy? ¿Cómo puedo afectar las políticas/leyes públicas? Question Sources

I. English How to change the world: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4z7gDsSKUmU&t=145s https://www.civiced.org/project-citizen/what-is-public-policy https://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-public-policy.html https://crfcap.org/images/pdf/CAPToolkit_LinktoPublicPolicy.pdf Language Policy: https://www.cal.org/areas-of-impact/language-planning-policy/u.s.-educational-language-policy https://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Constitution#:~:text=(a)%20English%20is%20the%20official,of%20the%20State %20of%20Florida https://www.linguisticsociety.org/public-policy II. English/Spanish Citizen Kids: https://tinyurl.com/yyceotwo https://ctb.ku.edu/es/tabla-de-contenidos/valoracion/promocion-estrategias/vision-general/principal Historical examples/ejemplos históricos: https://tinyurl.com/y2sxm9hq https://tinyurl.com/ya3jv5zd https://www.unitedexplanations.org/2013/12/31/los-13-personajes-de-2013/ https://www.biografiasyvidas.com/ III. Spanish La organización comunitaria: https://ctb.ku.edu/es/tabla-de-contenidos/vision-general/modelo-de-cambio-y-mejora-comunitaria/leccionesaprendidas/principal https://www.usa.gov/espanol/funcionarios-elegidos IV. English/Spanish Your local and state government websites will also list different people with the power to impact you! Review local news sources; interview parents, other students, teachers, community members; draw on your own experience

Outcomes

Students will identify a public policy issue/problem relevant to them (understand). Determine ways in which they might approach the public policy issue to make an impact and/or advocate for change (assess). Present the approach to the problem andtake action to implement the approach (act).

Materials

Chart paper Markers Bilingual dictionaries Laptop with internet access Frayer Model templates Summary Frames Graphic organizer of Problema de política pública Question cards

FIGURE 6.1 

(Continued)

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Teachers can use the three-tiered model of vocabulary development (Beck et al., 2013) to identify the words most essential to the content learning and language development of multilingual learners. The conceptual vocabulary words selected should include content-specific key concepts and polysemous words (Calderón, 2011) across content areas. Teachers should introduce vocabulary words on a large chart paper. Teachers could take a quick survey and ask students if they have heard of each word and note how many students have heard of it. Of course, the teacher should confirm understanding, but the simple use of a survey can determine what concepts might require deeper instruction throughout the lesson. At the same time, in bilingual pairs (i.e., Englishdominant/Spanish-dominant students), students are asked to identify concept words that may be cognates (e.g., solución/solution) and to discuss why they believe the word is a cognate. They should be able to point out how these cognates are similar or different. To facilitate cross-linguistic connections, students are encouraged to carry these conversaciones linguísticas (i.e., teachers and students using their metalinguistic awareness to have exploratory conversations about the language) using all their linguistic repertoires and bilingual dictionaries as resources. Students should be able to share which words are cognates, confirm with their partner, and write it down. Use two different colors to create a distinction between English and Spanish (i.e., red for Spanish/blue for English). Provide students with the translation of the words they were unable to identify as cognates. Conduct a quick contrastive analysis by underlining spelling differences. Since this lesson will be a bilingual lesson, students will be introduced to these key concepts in English and Spanish to give dual language learners a tool to build cohesion and reference the ideas presented in this unit of study. Add visual aids to provide more context. Ask students to provide a student-friendly definition (Table 6.3). Introduce the lesson by staging the compelling question. Explore with students the responsibilities of citizens and those involved with civic life. Show the video “How to change the world” and list some examples shown. Add more examples of responsibilities that citizens can contribute to. “What are the ways in which responsibilities align with our passions?”

TABLE 6.3  Key Concepts Development

Word

Cognate or Translation

Visual Aid

Student-friendly Definition

Solution

La solución (s/f )

Visual representation

Identificar un problema y descubrir cómo resolverlo (Identify a problem and explore a possible solution)

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Supporting Question 1: What Is Public Policy? (English) This part of the lesson will continue using English as the language of instruction. However, students may use native language with peers as they see fit. Introduce multilingualism in schools as an example of a public policy and discuss and explain how it impacts their education. A quick bilingual think-pair-share, tell me what your partner said could be implemented encouraging students to use Spanish and English. Demonstrate how this public policy is depicted at the local, state, and national levels. Present organizations that advocate and work to inform policymakers and leaders to benefit the public. Inform students that the language policies are examples of public policy. Provide students with featured sources on public policy. In small groups, they will use the Frayer Model (1969), a graphic organizer that uses a foursquare model, to define public policy, provide characteristics of public policy, and identify examples and non-examples. This graphic support serves as a scaffold to negotiate the informational density presented in the feature sources. The students will read the text, watch brief videos, and discuss how to complete the Frayer Model together. Once students have solidified their understanding of what public policy is, teachers should ask, “What are some public policy issues or problems relevant to you?” Students should create a three-column chart listing examples of public policy at the local, state, and national levels. Group students in trios and allow them to research public policies at the three levels. Display the students’ charts on larger chart paper and spread them around the classroom or on flat surfaces that can be written on. Conduct a Gallery Walk to write observations and questions. Students will take 15 minutes to read the 3-column chart from their other classmates. They will write on a sticky note or on the margins of the chart paper questions about the public policy, seek for clarification about a detail, or may note down an observation they have made. Next, students will rotate to the next chart paper and continue the same process until they have seen every group’s 3-column chart. The teacher should circulate to ask higher-order questions and check for understanding.

Supporting Question 2: What Are Some Ways That People Can Make a Difference in Their Communities? (English/Spanish) The language of instruction for this inquiry may be conducted in English or Spanish; note that it is important to maintain the language of instruction chosen throughout the lesson. Here, teachers should evaluate resources since one of the main issues while teaching social studies in DLBE secondary contexts is the lack of resources in Spanish. Determine which are best to use for instruction in English and which would be more effective in Spanish. Ask students to investigate the various ways people can make a difference in their communities

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and how they can enact change; model this conversation first by providing some examples from history, the news, and your local community. On top of including well-known historical figures, it is pivotal to also include Hispanic/Latino/ Latinx figures for multilingual learners such as Rigoberta Menchú, Jose Martí, José Celso Barbosa, Roberto Clemente, Dolores Huerta, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and Micaela Bastidas. This question creates learning spaces to address any sociocultural issues and how citizens in our communities and society are affected. Discuss the perspectives of the cultural groups that enforce the policy and who are affected by the policy. Ask students, “¿Qué problemas observas en tu comunidad? /What problems or issues do you see in your community?” “¿Puedes identificar los sistemas que existen para solucionar estos problemas? /What systems do we have in place to help solve these issues?” Create a table to list the problems that students give. Next, students should be able to create questions about problems, that is, “What causes this problem?” “Why does this problem exist?” Consider cultural ideas impacting the issue. Emphasize any perspectives, attitudes, or beliefs that represent a culture’s view of the world (National Standards for Foreign Language Education Project, 1999) that enforce the policy and identify those affected by the policy. Then, discuss what systems are in place to help solve the issues presented. Present on various organizations that have impacted change within a community. 1. ¿Qué problemas observas en tu comunidad? What problems do you see in your community? a. La falta de traducciones multilingües a nivel distrital, estatal y federal para apoyar a miembros que hablan distintos idiomas. 2. Tus preguntas sobre el problema Questions about the problem a. ¿Por qué nuestras escuelas no ofrecen educación bilingüe? 3. ¿Puedes identificar los sistemas que existen para solucionar estos problemas? What systems do we have in place to help solve these issues? a. Tener maestros bilingües/Having bilingual teachers b. Tener programas bilingües/Having bilingual programs The performance task should be completed in Spanish. Students’ presentations will be bilingual due to the sources used in the inquiry. This will serve as an important task for students to demonstrate cross-linguistic connections by bridging content and language. With a partner, students will create a PowerPoint presentation of 5–10 slides that summarizes at least four examples of people making a difference in their communities. This should include images, a description of what was done, and the impact of what was done. Another option would be to allow students to do a poster presentation or a different type of digital presentation. Allow students to present their presentations in small groups. They may choose to present in the language that their resources were in. Translanguaging

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spaces are beneficial opportunities that engage students and permit students to negotiate with language.

Supporting Question 3: Who Has the Power to Make Decisions in My Particular Community? (Spanish) The instruction and learning should be conducted in Spanish for this supporting question. Provide students with local and state government websites that list different people with the power to make decisions in the community. Create a 3-column chart to list different people in power at the local, state, and national levels. Discuss students’ positions and the power they have to implement change. Students will summarize how different people of power make decisions that impact life in a community. Students should list their positions and what powers they have, as well as the ways in which they can use their power. There are multiple paths to approach this aspect. A traditional approach might be the use of sentence frames to support emerging bilingual learners in their writing. However, traditional sentence frames are not necessarily the most adequate means of supporting learning within this framework. Differentiation here is key. What do our students need to really grasp and respond to this supporting question? Hammond and Gibbons (2005b), in discussing an interactional scaffolding approach to instruction within a conceptually driven content area, suggest a broad variety of approaches that encompass multiple methods of language learning; among others, this includes modeling conceptual language within context; reframing and rephrasing student thinking to better clarify and develop understanding; and encouraging students to expand and elaborate on their responses to the question, the concepts, and the content. This builds a foundation as they continue to work through the lesson and respond to the prompts that require a deep conceptual understanding to answer adequately. As Hammond and Gibbons suggest, however, this interactional micro-scaffolding approach must sit within a broader framework that encourages cumulative understanding to be most effective.

Supporting Question 4: What Are Public Policy Issues in My Community? (Spanish) The language of instruction for this supporting question should be Spanish. Explain to students how to identify public policy issues in their community by providing resources such as local news sources and interviewing parents, other students, teachers, and community members. Students may also draw on their own experiences. Students must determine which sources will be the most effective to use for their inquiry. In partners, students will identify at least three public policy issues that affect their local community. The local community may be considered as their school, neighborhood, town, or state. Students must describe the issue, the cause of the issue, and who is working to address the issue by

96  Katherine Barko-Alva et al. TABLE 6.4  Graphic Organizer

Example

Problema de política pública #1

Describir el problema/Describe the La falta de gente problem multilingüe Causa del problema/Cause of the Políticas del idioma problem que solo se enfocan en enseñar inglés ¿Quién está trabajando para Maestros (as) bilingües solucionar el problema?/Who is working to solve this problem Fuentes/Sources Mi distrito escolar

Public Policy Issues We need more multilingual individuals Language policies focusing only on teaching English Bilingual teachers

My school district

TABLE 6.5 Questions

Questions 1.  What is one public policy issue that you discovered in your community? 2.  Who does your public policy issue impact? 3.  How did you choose your public policies? 4.  Why did you decide on that source to gain information about your public policy? 5.  Which public policy do you think you can impact change in the community?

Preguntas 1. ¿Cuál es un problema de política pública que descubriste en tu comunidad? 2. ¿A quién afecta este problema de política pública? 3. ¿Cómo elegiste las políticas públicas? 4. ¿Por qué decidiste elegir a tu fuente de información acerca de tu política pública? ¿Cuál de las políticas públicas cree que puede afectar al cambio comunitario?

completing a graphic organizer. Evidence must be provided from their sources as they complete the graphic organizer (Table 6.4). Allow for oral language production and have students share the public policies issues they identified by conducting a collaborative structure. Teachers should provide students with question cards as a cognitive and linguistic scaffold. Students pair up and take turns asking each other questions. Students should switch partners at least three times to give ample opportunity to refine ideas verbally (Table 6.5).

Summative Performance Task Argument (Spanish) The argument of the summative performance task will be conducted in Spanish. As a class discussion, students will address the compelling question ¿Cómo puedo

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influenciar las políticas/leyes públicas? /Can I impact public policy?” Teachers should ensure that all anchor charts created are posted and visible to students. Students should also have access to any other work or graphic organizers so they may refer to them throughout the discussion. They will draw on the research identified through the supporting questions and draw conclusions about whether they can impact public policy. If they believe they can, they must identify the ways in which they can impact public policy. List the ways that students mention.

Taking Informed Action (Language: Students’ Choice) Finally, students will also take informed action. For this process, they must first identify a public policy issue relevant to them. Determine ways in which they might approach the public policy issue to make an impact and/or advocate for change. Lastly, they will present the approach to the problem and take action to implement the approach. Students may choose a variety of ways to develop their final presentation such as developing a website, poster presentation, podcast, and writing a letter. Students have an opportunity for voice and choice with the language in which to conduct their presentation by considering their audience and context of sources. They may choose to conduct it entirely in Spanish, English, or to engage with translanguaging.

Reflection: Building Civic Action Spaces for All Students This lesson plan reflects careful consideration of the importance of inquiry within the broader framework of both civic education and dual language classrooms. At its heart, this lesson presents us with an overarching goal of involving students in civic life and is an extension of the approach to citizenship education postulated by Westheimer and Kahne (2004). Multilingual learners in DLBE classrooms, working across different languages, are no less entitled to participation in civic life and entitled to the support necessary to think of themselves as civic actors within the space of their own community (Busey & Russell, 2016; Byrd & Varga, 2018; Ross, 2006). When implemented in meaningful ways, DLBE programs create learning spaces wherein students can explore their linguistic repertoires as well as analyze, evaluate, and synthesize information across different academic content areas. In this lesson, we use the Inquiry Design Model approach to the C3 Framework (Swan et al., 2019) to lay out a relevant and enticing inquiry topic: the ways in which we can or cannot impact public policy. In doing so, we guide students through each phase of the inquiry effort with clear expectations and opportunities for learning and reflection and integrate approaches to learning that draw on necessary tools for growth in a DLBE classroom. It is important to recognize that multilingual resources to design meaning instruction in secondary content area DLBE classrooms are limited; hence, through this lesson, we seek to provide teachers with different resources

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and perspectives. We encourage DLBE teachers to see the content area of social studies and civics as a meaningful learning space where language acquisition and content instruction could come together to provide students with ample and significant learning opportunities. In a lesson this extensive and rich in exploration, we have sought to use these multiple tools in ways that make sense within the framework of the lesson. Instructions for the lesson may occur in English or Spanish. Inquiry—questions—is crafted in both English and Spanish; note that we see a movement from English in the first supporting question to Spanish in the final question, thus, providing students with multiple opportunities to use all their linguistic repertoires. At the same time, we see the importance of developing student conceptual understanding within a contextual framework that embeds message abundance, using an approach that provides visual and linguistic growth efforts to better scaffold the learning. Traditional sentence frames are used sparingly, integrated in such a way as to avoid what Daniel et al. (2016) refer to as the pitfall of “inadvertently limit[ing] students’ opportunities for collaborative meaning-making” (Daniel et al., 2016, p. 404). At the same time, the breadth of the activities students engage in within Dimension 4 is done in such a way as to encourage student choice in the language that they use. And it is this idea of student voice and choice within a framework that encourages the investigation of issues relevant to them and supports the notion of encouraging our students to act as agents of change within their communities.

References Alva, K. (2016). A dual language teacher’s understanding of academic language in a 5th grade language arts classroom[Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation]. University of Florida. Barko-Alva, K., & Masyada, S. (2018). Dimensions of success integrating the C3 framework and ESL instruction: In elementary social studies classrooms. In N. Guler (Ed.), Optimizing elementary education for English language learners (pp. 250–269). IGI-Global Editorial Discovery. Beck, I., McKeown, M., & Kucan, L. (2013). Bringing words to life: Robust vocabulary instruction, second edition. Retrieved from https://www.guilford.com/excerpts/ beck8_ch2.pdf?t Bennett, W. L. (2007). Civic learning in changing democracies: Challenges for citizenship and civic education. In P. Dahlgren (Ed.), Young citizens and new media: Learning democratic engagement (pp. 59–77). Routledge. Bennett, W. L., Wells, C., & Rank, A. (2009). Young citizens and civic learning: Two paradigms citizenship in the digital age. Citizenship Studies, 13(2), 105–120. Berson, I. R., & Berson, M. J. (2003). Digital literacy for effective citizenship (Advancing technology). Social Education, 67(3), 164–168. Blevins, B., LeCompte, K., & Wells, S. (2016). Innovations in civic education: Developing civic agency through action civics. Theory & Research in Social Education, 44(3), 344–384.

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Bunch, G. C. (2013). Pedagogical language knowledge: Preparing mainstream teachers for English learners in the new standards era. Review of Research in Education, 37(1), 298–341. Busey, C. L., & Russell III, W. B. (2016). “We want to learn”: Middle school Latino/a students discuss social studies curriculum and pedagogy. RMLE Online, 39(4), 1–20. Byrd, M., & Varga, B. A. (2018). The manifestation of Campbell’s Law: Consequences of eliminating social studies from the curriculum. The Social Studies, 109(1), 27–33. Calderón, M. (2011). Teaching reading and comprehension to English learners, K-5. Solution Tree Press. Christian, D. (1996). Two-way immersion education: Students learning through two languages. The Modern Language Journal, 80(1), 66–76. Daniel, S. M., Martin-Beltrán, M., Peercy, M. M., & Silverman, R. (2016). Moving beyond Yes or No: Shifting from over-scaffolding to contingent scaffolding in literacy instruction with emergent bilingual students. TESOL Journal, 7, 393–420. doi: 10.1002/tesj.213 de Oliveira, L. C. (2010). Nouns in history: Packing information, expanding explanations, and structuring reasoning. The History Teacher, 43(2), 191–203. de Oliveira, L. C. (2011). Knowing and writing school history: The language of students’ expository writing and teachers’ expectations. Information Age Publishing. Fang, Z., & Schleppegrell (2010). Disciplinary literacies across content areas: Supporting secondary reading through functional language analysis. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 53(7), 587–597. Fillmore, L. W., & Fillmore, C. J. (2012). What does text complexity mean for English learners and language minority students? In Understanding language: Language, literacy, and learning in the content areas (pp. 1–11). Standards Institutes. Retrieved from https:// www.standardsinstitutes.org/sites/default/files/material/06-lwf_cjf_text_complexity_final_0_2.pdf. Fitzgerald, J., & Graves, F. (2004). Scaffolded reading experiences help English language learners master both reading and content. Educational Leadership, 62(4), 68–71. Frayer, D., Frederick, W. C., and Klausmeier, H. J. (1969). A schema for testing the level of cognitive mastery. Wisconsin Center for Education Research. Garza, E., & Arreguín-Anderson, M. G. (2018). Translanguaging: Developing scientific inquiry in a dual language classroom. Bilingual Research Journal, 41(2), 101–116. Gibbons, P. (2015). Scaffolding language, scaffolding learning: Teaching English language learners in the mainstream classroom (2nd ed.). Heinemann. Grant, S. G., Swan, K., & Lee, J. (2017). Inquiry-based practice in social studies education: Understanding the inquiry design model. Taylor & Francis. Grapin, S. E., Llosa, L., Haas, A., & Lee O. (2020). Rethinking instructional strategies with English learners in the content areas. TESOL Journal. https://doi.org/10.1002/ tesj.557. Hammond, J., & Gibbons, P. (2005a). What is scaffolding. In A. Burns, & H. de Silva Joyce (Eds.), Teachers’ voices, 8 (pp. 8–16). National Centre for English Language Teaching and Research. Hammond, J., & Gibbons, P. (2005b). Putting scaffolding to work: The contribution of scaffolding in articulating ESL education. Prospect, 20(1), 6–30. Herrera, Perez, Perez, D. R., & Escamilla, K. (2015). Teaching reading to English language learners: Differentiating literacies. Pearson. Hovey, K. A., Miller, R. D., Kiru, E. W., Gerzel-Short, L., Wei, Y., & Kelly, J. (2019). What’s a middle school teacher to do? Five evidence-based practices to support English

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learners and students with learning disabilities. Preventing School Failure: Alternative Education for Children and Youth, 63(3), 220–226. Kanner, J. (2020). How will inquiry-based instruction increase academic language for English language learners (Publication No. 2416324282) [Master’s thesis, Hofstra University]. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing. Lindholm-Leary, K. (2007). Current research on dual language programs. Dual language conference for administrators. Retrieved from http://www.lindholmleary.com/ present&handout/CurrentResTWI_TexasDL2007_4web.pdf Mahan, K. R. (2020). The comprehending teacher: Scaffolding in content and language integrated learning (CLIL). The Language Learning Journal, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1 080/09571736.2019.1705879 Manfra, M. M., & Holmes, C. (2018). Media literacy and fake news in the social studies. Social Education, 82(2), 91–95. Masyada, S., & Barko-Alva, K. (2018). Language instruction and civic learning through contingent scaffolding and the C3 Framework. In H. Hansen-Thomas, & K. Lindahl (Eds.), Transforming practices for the middle school classroom (pp. 67–82). TESOL Press. Mathé, N. E. H., & Elstad, E. (2018). Students’ perceptions of citizenship preparation in social studies: The role of instruction and students’ interests. JSSE-Journal of Social Science Education, 17(3), 75–87. Mercuri, S. (2015). Teachers’ understanding of practice: Planning and implementing preview/view/review in the dual language classroom. In Y. Freeman, & D. Freeman (Eds.), Research on preparing in-service teachers to work effectively with emergent bilinguals (pp. 81–106). Emerald Group Publishing. National Council for the Social Studies (2013). The College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for social studies state standards: Guidance for enhancing the rigor of K–12 civics, economics, geography, and history. National Standards for Foreign Language Education Project. (1999). Standards for foreign language learning in the 21st century. Retrieved from https://carla.umn.edu/cobaltt/ modules/curriculum/textanalysis/Practices_Products_Perspectives_Examples.pdf Orlowski, P. (2014). Critical media literacy and social studies: Paying heed to Orwell and Huxley. In E. W. Ross (Ed.), The social studies curriculum: Purposes, problems, and possibilities (4th ed., pp. 335–352). State University of New York Press. Pacheco, M. B., Daniel, S. M., & Pray, L. C. (2017). Scaffolding practice: Supporting emerging bilinguals’ academic language use in two classroom communities. Language Arts, 95(2), 63–76. Payne, K. A., Adair, J. K., Colegrove, K. S. S., Lee, S., Falkner, A., McManus, M., & Sachdeva, S. (2020). Reconceptualizing civic education for young children: Recognizing embodied civic action. Education, Citizenship and Social Justice, 15(1), 35–46. Ross, E. W. (2006). The struggle for the social studies curriculum. In E. W. Ross (Ed.), The social studies curriculum: Purposes, problems, and possibilities (3rd ed., pp. 17–37). State University of New York Press. Saye, J. W., & Brush, T. (2004). Scaffolding problem-based teaching in a traditional social studies classroom. Theory & Research in Social Education, 32(3), 349–378. Swan, K., Grant, S. G., & Lee, J. (2019). Blueprinting an inquiry-based curriculum: Planning with the inquiry design model. National Council for the Social Studies and C3 Teachers. Walqui, A. (2006). Scaffolding instruction for English language learners: A conceptual framework. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 9(2), 159–180.

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Westheimer, J., & Kahne, J. (2004). What kind of citizen? The politics of educating for democracy. American Educational Research Journal, 41(2), 237–269. WIDA. (2020). WIDA English language development standards framework, 2020 edition: Kindergarten–grade 12. Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. Zhang, Y. (2017). Supporting English language learners in social studies: Language focused strategies. The Social Studies, 108(5), 204–209.

7 “OH, I WAS SCAFFOLDING!” Novice Teachers’ Use of Scaffolding as Humanizing Practice with Multilingual Students Megan Madigan Peercy and John K. Chi

In this chapter, we argue that scaffolding is fundamental to teachers’ humanizing practice because both previously planned scaffolds and spontaneous scaffolds can support student access to curriculum and validate students as worthy contributors who draw upon a host of resources—including their home languages, family, community, prior experience, and interests—to inform their learning and contribute to the classroom community (Hammond & Gibbons, 2005; Many, et al., 2009). However, spontaneous scaffolding is challenging to enact and can be especially demanding for teachers new to the classroom because it requires a deep knowledge of students and an ability to quickly reassess instruction and the supports accompanying it (Many et al., 2009; Schall-Leckrone, 2018). While all scaffolding is intended to be responsive to learners, here we distinguish between previously planned scaffolding and spontaneous scaffolding that responds to learners in the moment (the latter is also called contingent, interactional, and improvised in the literature on scaffolding; see de Oliveira et al., 2020, for a recently extended framework on spontaneous scaffolding). We often teach scaffolding as a construct in teacher education programs, but recent scholarship has found that we have a limited understanding of how novice teachers (NTs) learn to scaffold instruction for multilingual students, and that NTs benefit from added support and experience with how to enact scaffolding (Peercy et al., 2018; Peercy & Troyan, 2017; Schall-Leckrone, 2018). In this chapter, we situate scaffolding within one of our recently identified six core practices for teaching multilingual students that can support teachers’ enactment of and reflection on humanizing pedagogy (Kidwell et al., 2021; Peercy et al., 2019, 2020). Specifically, we shed light on challenges that NTs can experience with understanding and enacting scaffolding, despite their awareness of its importance DOI: 10.4324/9781003196228-9

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for equitable and humanizing instruction. We also share examples of NT successes with and growth toward spontaneous scaffolding in their early years of teaching.

Why Scaffolding Matters We define scaffolding as both planned and spontaneous temporary support provided by a more experienced other (in classroom settings, often the teacher, but this can also include peers; e.g., Daniel et al., 2016) necessary to help a learner more readily accomplish a task, and move toward greater capacity and independence in this activity (Gibbons, 2003; Schall-Leckrone, 2018). Ramirez, Faltis, and de Jong (2017) have noted that scaffolding supports multilingual students’ access to the core curriculum, and that it is key to the academic and linguistic well-being of multilingual students. Lucas and Villegas (2013) add that multilingual students may need “particular types of language-related scaffolding that their fluent English-speaking peers may not need” (p. 105). Thus, when teachers are able to scaffold effectively, they can also bolster equity in the classroom. Scaffolding can support multilingual students’ deeper understanding of content knowledge and discourse styles that can help them navigate the mainstream classroom (Bartolomé, 1994; Salazar, 2013). Addressing and decreasing academic and linguistic gaps between English-dominant students and multilingual students, especially those who have been marginalized, can challenge inequity within the educational system (Reyes, 2017; Salazar, 2013). Because scaffolding is a practice that can promote humanization of pedagogy for multilingual students through its focus on equitable access to content and its attention to learners’ existing resources, it is fundamental to support both NTs’ conceptual understanding of scaffolding and their ability to enact it in practice. Drawing from several theoretical models in the literature, we define humanizing pedagogy as practice that aims for justice, relies on mutually respectful relationships and dialogue, responds to the particulars of each context, and values all involved both as individuals and as community members (Bartolomé, 1994; Ladson-Billings, 1995; Moll & González, 1994; San Pedro & Kinloch, 2017). We argue that teachers’ humanizing pedagogy takes the form of caring, demanding, trusting relationships characterized by active discovery of students’ sociocultural resources and the purposeful integration of those resources in the classroom. When teachers can scaffold well, they draw on students’ existing resources and repertoires, and contribute to their students’ equitable access to curriculum (Athanases & de Oliveira, 2014). However, NTs find scaffolding challenging to break down into enactable parts and to recognize when it occurs in practice (e.g., Peercy et al., 2018; Peercy & Troyan, 2017). In our longitudinal collaborative work that has sought to identify “core practices” (CPs) for teaching multilingual students (e.g., Fredricks & Peercy, 2020; Kidwell et al., 2021; Peercy et al., 2019, 2020, 2022; Tigert et al., 2021), NTs articulated that they were

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prepared to define scaffolding and explain its theoretical grounding, but that they did not know how to distinguish it in practice from other sometimes related, but distinct, theoretical constructs, such as comprehensible input and differentiation (e.g., Peercy & Troyan, 2017). Prior empirical research illustrates that NTs of multilingual students are able to use several types of planned scaffolds that are critical for students’ access to content, including visuals, vocabulary instruction, graphic organizers, supplementing/modifying texts, note-taking supports, and task sequencing (Athanases & de Oliveira, 2014; Schall-Leckrone, 2018). However, as SchallLeckrone (2018) illustrates, some NTs struggle with spontaneous scaffolding practices, which hold humanizing potential through being responsive to student contributions, highlighting their ideas, drawing them in to the conversation, and centering them as important co-contributors to making meaning from classroom content. Based on the challenges experienced by the teachers in her study, Schall-Leckrone (2018) noted that “student and novice teachers may benefit from opportunities to rehearse, practice, and receive feedback on oral scaffolding techniques, such as providing wait time, prompting students to say more, and recasting responses, to develop facility with them (Gibbons, 2003; Grossman et al., 2009)” (p. 48). It is precisely the need for opportunities to enact and reflect upon practice raised by Schall-Leckrone (2018) that we respond to here. The findings we share in this chapter are part of a longitudinal qualitative project in which NTs and teacher educators (TEs) collaboratively engaged around what the enactment of practice looks like when teaching multilingual students in humanizing ways, focusing on six CPs.

Methods Since 2015, Megan (the first author) has worked collaboratively with a collective of 13 ESOL (English to speakers of other languages) novice teachers (NTs) and 8 teacher educators (TEs; who worked with the NTs as course instructors and university supervisors) to explore the challenges NTs of multilingual students experience in their early years of teaching and the practices they find fundamental to engaging in responsive pedagogy. These NTs were enrolled in a university MEd in TESOL program and varied in terms of their experience in the classroom (see Table 7.1 for a list of NTs mentioned in this study; all names are pseudonyms). Our collaboration was sparked by the relatively recent body of work on practice-based teacher education and related scholarship on both general core practices (CPs) and CPs in a variety of content areas (e.g., Ball & Forzani, 2009; Fogo, 2014; Hlas & Hlas, 2012; Kloser, 2014), as well as the noted absence of CPs for teaching multilingual students (e.g., McDonald et al., 2013; Peercy et

“Oh, I Was Scaffolding!”  105 TABLE 7.1  Study Participants

Name

Years Enrolled in MEd Program

First Year Teaching as Instructor of Record

Kendra Catherine Matthew Christina Wesley Shannon Breanne Jenna

2013–2015 2014–2015 2014–2017 2014–2016 2014–2016 2015–2017 2015–2017 2016–2018

2015–2016 2015–2016 2012–2013 2016–2017 2016–2017 2017–2018 2017–2018 2018–2019

al., 2020). We define CPs as a limited number of practices that are ­central to planning, instruction, and assessment, and possible for NTs to learn to enact (e.g., Grossman et al., 2009). For much greater detail on our processes of identifying CPs, explanation of the CPs we have identified, and discussion of the contributions CPs may make to the humanizing practice of TEs and NTs in the context of teaching multilingual students, we refer readers to Fredricks and Peercy (2020); Kidwell et al. (2021); Peercy et al. (2019, 2020, 2022); Peercy et  al., (forthcoming); and Tigert et al., (2021). We are also responding to findings that our field does not have a strong and agreed-upon empirical base that underpins what teachers and TEs should be doing as they engage in the teaching of multilingual students (Faltis & Valdés, 2016). Our work thus far has focused on identifying and refining what our collective of NTs and TEs has come to define as CPs for teaching multilingual students (see Figure 7.1). We emphasize that these CPs should be understood as context-dependent and used to support dialogue, reflection, and NT development, rather than being top-down or evaluative (Peercy et al., 2020; Peercy & Troyan, 2020). Our work has involved observation in NTs’ classrooms, post-observation debriefs, responses to a shared discussion board where NTs and TEs reflected on teaching and shared resources, focus group meetings of the whole team (NTs and TEs), collection of artifacts related to teachers’ classroom practice, and interviews with multilingual students in NTs’ classes. Because our focus in this chapter is on NTs’ understanding and use of scaffolding, we share examples from the data that represent teachers’ voices and experiences to gain insight regarding NTs’ scaffolding when working with multilingual students (examples from eight teachers are highlighted in this chapter). We note that our data set contains over 400 instances of data excerpts coded for scaffolding, first using scaffolding as an a priori code, and subsequently using the constant comparative method (Corbin & Strauss, 2015) to thematically group instances of

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FIGURE 7.1 

Core Practices for Multilingual Students

scaffolding. We share excerpts that are representative of the data set as a whole and which help illuminate NTs’ understanding and use of scaffolding in their early years of teaching.

Findings NTs in this study struggled with how the construct of scaffolding looked when enacted in practice. However, alongside teachers’ struggle was their recognition of the importance of scaffolding for equitable access to the curriculum and some

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evidence of NTs’ growth toward spontaneous scaffolding. We highlight three themes that arose in our examination of the excerpts from our data set coded as scaffolding: NTs’ recognition of the important connections between scaffolding and equity; NTs’ need for scaffolding to be grounded in practice; and NTs’ variable ability to spontaneously scaffold.

Scaffolding and Equity Although the NTs noted that they found scaffolding challenging to identify and enact at times, they also recognized that it was crucial for providing equitable instruction. For instance, Wesley noted how critical scaffolding was to making content accessible to multilingual students, and felt that knowing his students well was an important part of designing effective scaffolding: Instructionally, I think that when you understand where students are linguistically and conceptually, then you can design appropriate scaffolding to support their linguistic and conceptual development … the ESOL teacher’s role is to help students develop linguistically in order to access the content at their grade level, and not to reduce the difficulty … so they can engage with what the other kids are doing. (Interview, 12-14-15) Wesley’s comment illustrates that an important reason to scaffold was to ensure that his multilingual students could engage in the same content as their Englishdominant peers, a perspective echoed by many of the NTs. Matthew noted connections between equity and scaffolding as well, highlighting the importance of building from the rich resources that multilingual students bring to the classroom: At the root of [scaffolding] is understanding that students bring a lot to the table and part of it is accessing what they know and then building on top of it, as opposed to just seeing the student as an ever-blank canvas. Scaffolding is especially important for ELLs because it’s allowing them the opportunity to share some of what they already know about something. To look at a concept and break it down so that it’s more accessible to them as opposed to thinking that “Okay, I need to start from zero simply because they aren’t able to express something quite as well as a native speaker.” (Interview, 12-14-15) Matthew knew that his multilingual students come to the classroom with funds of knowledge (Moll & González, 1994), and that building upon their

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background knowledge would both value students’ existing resources and advance his instructional efforts. Christina shared how her initial perspective was that all students should be challenged in the same way, and that she should provide the highest linguistic demand for each student. After working with multilingual students during her internship she recognized that she had to provide different scaffolds for different students, and that holding rigorous expectations sometimes meant providing significantly more scaffolding: Each student needs different levels of scaffolding.… For a while at my internship I was like, “All these students need to be able to write these full sentences and complete ideas and spell these words and be able to sound out and all these things” and some of them were already there, but a lot of them were not. And … I struggled with giving them that task and pushing them to try and complete it, as opposed to meeting them where they actually are.… Having those high standard means you’ve got to scaffold it and meet them where they are in order to get them where they need to be. (Interview, 12-14-15) Christina’s recognition that scaffolding needs to be differentiated was an important step in her understanding of how scaffolding can support equitable instruction; it is not always the most difficult task that provides the appropriate demand for each student. Thus, NTs recognized that multilingual students brought important linguistic, cultural, and content-related resources to school with them. They also realized that appropriate scaffolding has potential to create equitable learning opportunities and humanizing instruction because it allows multilingual students to more quickly understand grade-appropriate content that their peers are learning while drawing on their valuable contributions.

Grounding Scaffolding in Practice Although they recognized how important scaffolding was for providing meaningful and responsive instruction, NTs on our team articulated that they did not necessarily know how to break it down into actionable parts, and, at times, did not even realize that something they were doing instructionally was scaffolding. For instance, Catherine remarked that her university supervisor asked her about a lesson she taught as a student teacher, and with prompting she realized, “Oh, I was scaffolding!” (Team Meeting, 05-18-15). That she had been engaged in the kinds of instructional moves that comprised scaffolding was news to Catherine. Subsequently, in her first year as a teacher in her own secondary ESOL science

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classroom, she was still grappling with what the enactment of scaffolding should look like in her practice: I felt like [scaffolding] was just being thrown around [when I did my coursework]. I’m still struggling with that, because I don’t know when to let go, I don’t know how much [support] should I give [my students], how should my questions be worded, how do I do it? [Laughs]. I feel like all these words were given to me, and yet I never got that breakdown [of concepts into instructional actions]. (Team Meeting, 10-26-15) Catherine felt that she had been given a lot of “words,” or key terms for teaching, but found it difficult to know how to transform those words to actionable moves in her classroom. Kendra, a student teacher at the time, agreed that the abstractness of constructs often introduced in teacher education courses (including scaffolding) was a challenge for her. She noted that once she had classroom experiences in her internship, she was able to start grounding these “floating” concepts in practice: I felt a little bit confused about [scaffolding and other concepts] at the time [that I was a preservice teacher] because I don’t think I really had like a schema, like a framework on which to hang them. I didn’t know really kind of where to put them mentally so they were just kind of floating out there. And now that I’ve had some internship experience, I feel like I kind of know where they go, where they fit, how they relate to other things. (Team Meeting, 05-18-15) Kendra was better able to understand scaffolding when she could anchor it in examples of scaffolding in action. Christina also noted that she had eventually been able to start distinguishing certain key aspects of teaching from one another, and how important it had become for her to see scaffolding as more than just “good teaching” (see also Harper & de Jong, 2004): My first semester [in the program] … I knew terms like scaffolding and differentiation but I didn’t really view them as fundamental and distinct and not just like all around good teaching … we have to think about each one and be purposeful about each one and not just lump them all together. (Debrief Interview, 10-13-15) Like Catherine and Kendra, without examples of scaffolding in practice, Christina also did not have a strong grasp on what scaffolding was, and how it was different

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from other practices she might use. In these excerpts, NTs expressed a need for more explicit understanding of different teaching concepts, including scaffolding, and how to distinguish them from one another. NTs also noted how important it was for them to have opportunities to see what scaffolding looked like in action. For instance, in response to a discussion board prompt about what helped them to understand how to engage in the work of teaching, Christina and Matthew each noted how critical it was to see examples of someone else modeling practice. In regard to scaffolding through attention to key vocabulary, Christina emphasized the difference between being told how to do it and seeing a teacher explicitly model how to it: Even though introducing key vocabulary is a necessary part of scaffolding, how do you effectively SCAFFOLD the introduction of vocabulary? Seeing an example of how this is effectively done (and being able to practice this one isolated skill) aids in teacher development much more than knowing to include an introduction to key vocabulary in your lesson plan. The way a teacher talks, the visuals presented, and the activities included in a vocabulary introduction are all necessary scaffolding components. (Discussion Board Posting, 09-21-15) Matthew similarly commented on the importance of modeling and observation for his understanding of how to implement practice, stating, “it helps build a bridge between theory and practice because I get to see how to implement particular practices in an authentic setting” (Discussion Board Posting, 09-21-15). Thus, while the NTs understood that scaffolding was essential for students’ access to the curriculum, they also felt that it was crucial to see what it looked like in practice so that they could better understand how to do it themselves. Furthermore, their instructional experience strengthened their understanding of what scaffolding involved. These examples illustrate the need for NTs to have opportunities to view models of and practice scaffolding if they are to engage in the humanizing practice themselves.

Scaffolding in Action Despite the struggles that NTs articulated regarding scaffolding, our data showed instances of their scaffolding practices, even early in their work as teachers. For instance, in her secondary field placement in an English Language Arts (ELA) class for multilingual students, Jenna illustrated that she could spontaneously scaffold when she decided to remove some scaffolding that did not seem needed in her lesson. She was teaching students to match quotations from To Kill a Mockingbird with the character who said them, based on what they knew about

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the character traits of each character in the book. She began her lesson by modeling some of the examples with the class: So for these five quotes, they’re all from five different people. They’re from Scout, Dill, Calpurnia, Jem, and Atticus.… We have five quotes, and you have to match who said what based on their character traits.… First we’re going to do this together so you can see what I expect, okay? I want you to do this same thing with the four other characters. First you will list out some character traits with me, and then you will match the quotes. (Classroom Observation, 03-15-18) After doing a couple of examples with the whole class, however, Jenna discovered that students seemed to readily understand what to do, and she decided not to model more examples together: We were all going to do it together, but you guys seem to have a really good understanding of this, so instead I’m going to speed up the process. We’re going to get into groups, and you’re going to do the remaining three characters.… Can someone tell me what we’re doing, so that I know you understand? (Classroom Observation, 03-15-18) In her debriefing conversation with her university supervisor after the lesson, Jenna explained that she was using her in-the-moment assessment of student understanding to determine how to adjust her instruction: I was going to do a list of all the character traits with them and then have them figure out the quotes, but they seemed to be understanding the concept of character traits, and how that matches with the quotes. So then I changed and broke them into groups, and had them continue on their own.… I was reading the crowd and seeing what they would best benefit from. It was just me thinking on my feet. (Debrief Interview, 03-15-18) In this example, Jenna spontaneously decided to withdraw scaffolding that students did not seem to need, and moved forward with the next part of the lesson. Shannon, a first-year teacher, also demonstrated her ability to spontaneously scaffold, this time by adding more scaffolding to a pullout lesson on opinions with six third-grade multilingual students. Shannon began her lesson by asking students to think about the question, “What is an opinion?”, building toward writing their opinion about two characters in a story they had read in their third-grade classroom. She had planned for students to share their response to the question with partners as a way to launch the lesson. However, noticing her

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students’ hesitation, she asked if they wanted to discuss the question as a whole class rather than in pairs. Students quickly agreed, and Shannon shifted gears to provide more scaffolding to define an opinion by supporting whole group conversation. (Lesson Observation, 04-27-18) Later, Shannon explained her decision to scaffold students’ understanding of opinion, because she wanted them to feel confident when doing some challenging writing about their opinion on two characters in the story: They’re about to write an essay with [their third grade teacher] about their opinions, on the main character and their opinions on [one other character] … [so] giving them the vocabulary and sentence starters so they have that vocabulary to use [with their third grade teacher] was the goal. (Debrief Interview, 04-27-18) Shannon’s decision to responsively add scaffolding demonstrates a humanizing approach and connection to her students, assuring that her multilingual students are able to grasp fundamental concepts before they entered the next, more challenging stage of the lesson—essay writing. While Jenna and Shannon demonstrated ability in these examples to spontaneously scaffold in ways that positioned students as capable and valued learners (whether they were fading or adding scaffolding), not all instances of NTs’ scaffolding were so straightforward. There were also numerous instances in the data that we identified as growth toward scaffolding capability. Sometimes NTs did not recognize opportunities for spontaneous scaffolding until their university supervisor pointed them out. For instance, in one lesson during her internship, Breanne was teaching ninth-grade ESOL students about using imagery in descriptive writing. Her goal was to scaffold students’ understanding of the five senses by using visuals, examples, and a graphic organizer. After sharing and discussing images based on the five senses to introduce the topic, she instructed students to use a chart to write down imagery words from her reading of a description of her favorite place. In that same organizer, she asked them to contribute imagery words of their own favorite place. However, despite her efforts to scaffold the lesson, students were reluctant to share their imagery words, and Breanne decided to continue the lesson without student responses, missing an opportunity to humanize her practice by involving student perspectives. Later, she and her university supervisor debriefed about her lesson: SUPERVISOR:  The

students were pretty quiet. It seemed like nobody wanted to share, so maybe you could have had them share with a partner. BREANNE:  I didn’t think of that, I couldn’t think on my toes. S:  Maybe it was the pressure of sharing in front of the class, so maybe even a think-pair-share would have pushed them to share with the whole class if they had shared with a partner first.

“Oh, I Was Scaffolding!”  113 B:  That’s

a good idea. And then maybe two or three volunteers….

S:  … You

could have also said ‘We’re going to each write about imagery and you’ll be sharing with a partner, and then also sharing with the class.’ So as someone is writing they’re also already thinking ‘I’m going to be sharing this with the class.’ Just so it’s clear where the activity is heading. (Debrief Interview, 02-22-17)

Unlike our examples of Jenna’s and Shannon’s spontaneous scaffolding, Breanne had a harder time making an adjustment in the midst of instruction during this particular lesson. She had a number of planned scaffolds at the start of the lesson but did not consider how to build on her scaffolding by providing students with opportunities to share their own experiences, and she was unable to spontaneously elicit student participation. However, during the debriefing she was able to recognize this challenge and reflected on different ways to scaffold student participation, drawing on her supervisor’s suggestion of a think-pair-share to suggest that students might then be more willing to volunteer to share their imagery words with the whole class. Several months later, when Breanne was in her first year teaching her own class of ninth- and tenth-grade multilingual students at a new ESOL high school, it was clear that her capacities to humanize her pedagogy through scaffolding were continuing to mature. During a unit on poetry, we observed a challenging lesson in which students struggled to understand the poems they were reading and discussing in their small groups. Breanne went from group to group, asking them about the meaning of the poem, figurative language, and tone, and students had a difficult time answering these questions. After the lesson, she described how the English faculty at her high school were trying to navigate students’ English proficiency in order to identify appropriate scaffolding to help students access and connect with content: We started with this poetry unit, but we quickly realized everything we planned doesn’t align very well [with their English proficiency], and it’s over their heads.… We decided to shift [gears and so now] we’ve been teaching a lot of grammar. The kids really responded really well to that, so half our class [time] has been touching on finishing this [poetry] unit, and then we’ve been teaching [parts of speech].… For the next unit on narrative writing, we’re going to make it more … scaffolded instruction on “This is how to make a sentence, this is how to talk about a sentence.” (Debrief Interview, 12-01-17) Thus, while the poetry unit Breanne and her colleagues had planned was not appropriate for the English proficiency of most of their students, Breanne had ideas for how to adjust her instruction to meet students where they were. She

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also articulated that she knew instruction needed to change because students were reacting and responding positively to a deeper focus on grammar: Kids have responded, they’re super into the [grammar focus], and they ask a lot of questions.… It’s all about knowing the students and [listening to] their feedback. And then noticing what to do, and giving them [the necessary] scaffolding. (Debrief Interview, 12-01-17) Although Breanne did not make significant adjustments in the midst of this particular lesson, she had modified the unit to include more foundational aspects of language, and she had ideas about what she wanted to do differently when she taught the same unit again. She also emphasized that knowing her students’ English proficiency levels, responding to their feedback, and paying attention to their interest in understanding English grammar gave her solid grounding in how she would alter and scaffold instruction to better support foundational skills that would help students write and interpret poetry. By supporting her students’ interests and responding to their needs, Breanne was humanizing her practice, allowing students to engage and learn as active participants. Thus, while it was clear to the NTs that knowing students well and listening to their feedback was fundamental to engaging them in meaningful, humanizing instruction, they did not understand how to scaffold until they had more experience seeing it and doing it themselves. Additionally, they had varying ability to provide well-scaffolded instruction early in their careers as teachers, and their contexts also played an important role in this. As shown in these examples, NTs can improve their scaffolding capabilities through collaborating on teaching the curriculum with teacher colleagues, gauging and reassessing the needs of students, and receiving additional support from university supervisors and colleagues. Such collegial support is crucial to NTs’ ability to plan and respond to multilingual students’ contributions and prior knowledge, and consequently, to NTs’ development of humanizing pedagogy.

Discussion Through our longitudinal qualitative work with NTs preparing to teach multilingual students, we found that there was much uncertainty around the theories taught in their pre-service coursework, and their confidence in knowing what those theories might look like enacted in humanizing ways. Reyes (2017) notes that “developing one’s pedagogy is a matter of shaping, whittling away the fuzziness and fogginess of theory and ideas on pages, the misconceptions and misinterpretations of not only what constitutes good teaching, but how humanizing that pedagogy is” (p. 118). He asserts that NTs face the daunting task of

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turning an understanding of educational theory into not only good teaching but pedagogy that is humanizing. As we have illustrated here, scaffolding was one example of a crucially important but “foggy” concept that we discovered among NTs in our study. Given research findings regarding the time that it takes NTs to become self-aware of their own teaching, Catherine’s reaction that “Oh! I was scaffolding!” is not surprising, nor are the challenges that she and her NT colleagues faced in understanding and enacting scaffolding (Daley, 1999; Feldon, 2007). However, Catherine’s comment does indicate the importance of making transparent what the enactment of scaffolding can look like in different classroom interactions, as well as intentionally practicing and reflecting on opportunities to scaffold in systematic ways. Opportunities for reflection on lived realities are crucial for developing the praxis needed for humanizing pedagogy (e.g., Reyes, 2017). The learning cycles that are part of current practice-based pedagogies in teacher education provide important opportunities to unpack, attempt, and reflect on practice (e.g., Lampert et al., 2013; McDonald et al., 2013; Peercy & Troyan, 2017), and hold potential for supporting teachers’ learning of humanizing pedagogies (Peercy et al., 2020, 2022, forthcoming; Peercy & Troyan, 2020). The NTs in our group found scaffolding centrally important to humanizing practice because using scaffolding well meant they were able to draw upon students’ background knowledge and experiences to provide equitable access to the curriculum. Furthermore, although NTs reported that they found it challenging to connect their conceptual understanding of scaffolding to the enactment of scaffolding, this difficulty was mediated by opportunities to connect the construct of scaffolding to specific classroom examples. Our observational data also demonstrate this potential for better understanding scaffolding: through reflection with an observer, NTs could identify parts of their lessons that would benefit from spontaneous scaffolding and what they would consider the next time they taught a lesson. Furthermore, our observational data also revealed some evidence that pre-service and first-year NTs could spontaneously scaffold even when they were quite early in their careers, demonstrating ability to purposefully adapt their scaffolds by fading or adding support according to their students’ abilities, interests, and needs (see also de Oliveira & Athanases, 2017).

Implications and Conclusion Scaffolding, in this work, represents many important theoretical constructs that we do not sufficiently unpack in teacher education to help NTs fully recognize their humanizing potential. To respond to this challenge, we need to offer NTs opportunities to see constructs like scaffolding in action through: • •

modeling; exploration of what scaffolding looks like in different contexts (for instance, with students in elementary or secondary school; with students of varying

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proficiency levels, educational backgrounds, or linguistic backgrounds; in different academic subjects; or with students who have experienced trauma); • consideration of how and in what ways scaffolding can be leveraged as humanizing practice to engage each student as a valued member of a classroom community; • ample opportunities to recognize, experience, and practice scaffolding, with someone to help them to see “Oh, that was scaffolding!” CPs are intended to represent a small number of foundational practices that are examined in an iterative cycle of inquiry and practice in teacher preparation settings. Scaffolding, if examined and practiced in this way, could ground NTs in what it looks like in action, so that they feel better prepared to scaffold for their multilingual students, rather than simply understanding it as a “floating” concept and then trying to figure out how to enact it once they are on their own in classrooms. As Athanases and de Oliveira (2014) have articulated, “the field needs rich scaffolding examples and analyses of teachers who construct their learners as capable” (p. 239; see also de Oliveira et al., 2020). As our findings demonstrate, it is critical that we provide opportunities for NTs to connect a conceptual understanding of scaffolding to what it looks like in practice. Some ways of making those connections in teacher education settings include: • •

providing learner profiles and role-playing scaffolding for those learners; watching videos or reading cases of learners to observe for learner comprehension and (written and spoken) production and deciding how to scaffold for them; • working with individuals, small groups, or whole classes of multilingual learners to practice enacting both planned and spontaneous scaffolds; • receiving feedback from observers regarding NTs’ use of scaffolding to mediate what it means to scaffold (e.g., Peercy et al., 2018), and collectively watching and debriefing on NTs’ enactment of practice afterward can also be informative (e.g., Lampert et al., 2013; Peercy & Troyan, 2020). All of these pedagogical implications hold promise to support NTs in learning how to enact the practices that we have identified as central to teaching multilingual students in humanizing ways. Our work thus far has identified and refined CPs for humanizing pedagogy with multilingual students and provides examples of these practices enacted by NTs (e.g., Kidwell et al., 2021; Peercy et al., 2019, 2020, 2022; forthcoming; Tigert et al., 2021). Future research must also examine the impact that using particular CPs has on NT practice and on student learning (e.g., Reisman et al., 2019). Given the challenges that NTs face in their early years in classrooms, the valuable resources that multilingual students bring to their learning, the inestimable damage that can come from dehumanizing students, and the urgent need to retain teachers committed to sustaining strong relationships with their learners, we

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believe that a deeper focus on and understanding of how to humanize practice is crucial for teacher education, teacher practice, and the success and growth of multilingual students. We hope that our illumination of scaffolding provides a deeper look into what our field’s development and use of humanizing CPs might contribute to teacher educators, teachers, and multilingual students. A summary of the themes, findings, and implications from this work can be found in Table 7.2.

Acknowledgments We gratefully acknowledge the contributions of the many colleagues who have worked alongside us on this larger project. Special thanks to Johanna Tigert, Daisy Fredricks, Tabitha Kidwell, Wyatt Hall, Karen Feagin, and the teachers, administrators, and students who have all been an integral part of this work. Without your contributions, this would not have been possible. TABLE 7.2  Supporting Novice Teacher Scaffolding as Humanizing Practice

Theme

Findings

NTs recognize • Scaffolding supports that scaffolding student access to gradeis crucial for level content equitable • Scaffolding allows students instruction to keep up with peers • Scaffolding recognizes students’ existing resources and builds on them • Scaffolding should be differentiated NTs need • Transform scaffolding into scaffolding to actionable parts be grounded in • Identify how scaffolding practice is different from other (related) practices and from “just good teaching” • Show examples of practice NTs have varying ability to enact scaffolding

• NTs can spontaneously remove scaffolds • NTs can spontaneously add scaffolds • NTs grow toward spontaneous scaffolding with support of supervisor, colleagues

Implications for Teacher Education • Consider how scaffolding can be leveraged as humanizing practice

• Model scaffolding • Examine scaffolding in different contexts • Role-play scaffolding with learner profiles • Use videos and written cases of learners and consider how to scaffold for them • Provide opportunities to recognize, experience, practice scaffolding • Provide feedback from observers • Collectively watch and debrief practice

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Reyes, R. (2017). Humanization through presence, proximity, and problematizing Latino/a ELLs in teacher education. In P. C. Ramírez, C. J. Faltis, & E. J. de Jong (Eds.), Learning from emergent bilingual Latinx learners in K–12 (pp. 103–121). Routledge. Salazar, M. del C. (2013). A humanizing pedagogy: reinventing the principles and practice of education as a journey toward liberation. Review of Research in Education, 37(1), 121–148. doi:10.3102/0091732X12464032 San Pedro, T., & Kinloch, V. (2017). Toward projects in humanization: Research on cocreating and sustaining dialogic relationships. American Educational Research Journal, 54(1S), 373S–394S. doi:10.3102/0002831216671210 Schall-Leckrone, L. (2018). Coursework to classroom: Learning to scaffold instruction for bilingual learners. Teacher Education Quarterly, 45(1), 31–56. doi:10.2307/90018182 Tigert, J., Peercy, M. M., Fredricks, D., & Kidwell, T. (2021). Humanizing classroom management as a core practice for teachers of multilingual students. TESOL Quarterly. doi:10.1002/tesq.3093

8 SUSTAINING QUALITY INTERACTIONS FOR ENGLISH LEARNERS IN VIRTUAL LEARNING FORMATS Aída Walqui

The nature of education has been dramatically transformed by Covid-19, with classes shifting from face-to-face to virtual and hybrid environments. Overnight teachers had to plan their lessons for a different medium with which many were unfamiliar, mustering their best talents and energies to teach online. Educators moved from frustration to learning, from being more mechanical in the exclusive use of digital tools to becoming increasingly more adept and creative. As we assess the impact these changes have had on the education of English Learners, two important concerns emerge. What on the surface seemed to be transformational has, in fact, meant to a large extent a continuation of classes focused on language as syntax and vocabulary as if that constituted the curriculum (Valdés, 2015). Additionally, there has been a prevalence of busy, mindless, isolated work focused on mechanical drilling, the opposite of what students need, deep learning (Chow, 2017). Furthermore, instructional preoccupation centered on the technological apps, not on their productive use with English Learners. It as a given that the role education plays in the twenty-first century is very different from what it was at the beginning and middle of the twentieth century. Seismic societal changes have taken place, and the factory model of education is no longer valid in an (rather improperly called) “age of information.”1 Our role as educators today is to develop all students’ potential, their ZPDs (for an extended discussion of the construct, see Walqui & Schmida, this volume) —and central in this endeavor, English Learners’ potential—to apprentice them as they become knowledgeable, thoughtful, and critical users and producers of multimodal texts in English and in their family languages. Our society needs citizens who are mindful and self-directed, who know how to engage in productive interactions, and contribute to the democratic development of their DOI: 10.4324/9781003196228-10

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communities and the country. For that task, it is essential to model for them and engage them in quality interactions, to draw on students’ vast knowledge about their communities; after all, our students have successfully learned to read the world (not always welcoming, see, for example, Glick & Walqui, 2021). We now need to assist them to read the word, to use Freire’s famous phrase (Freire, 2000), and realize their immense potential. In spite of prior suggestions that the increasingly technology-rich environment would not easily permeate the language education field where change is slow (Facer & Sanford, 2010), change is here, and we need to navigate it wisely for the benefit of our English Learners. After all, they are “digital natives” (Prensky, 2013), it is almost impossible to find an American classroom where students have not experienced digital technology from an early age. In this evolving context, what teachers require to extend their expertise to more concerted use of digital tools is neither punishment nor replacement, but new perspectives and ideas that work in a future hybrid environment. With that in mind, I first discuss three essential misunderstandings which need to be cleared in the new digital environment to succeed in the instruction of English Learners; then I briefly characterize the nature of quality interactions, to offer a series of parameters to enhance the substantive interactivity required to provide English Learners quality opportunities to learn. 1.

What is the “content” English Learners need to learn? The field of teaching English in schools to youngsters whose families speak a different primary language evolved from the field of teaching foreign languages. These are two widely differing endeavors (for a longer discussion of this issue, see Walqui, 2021). In the first case, students are responsible for accomplishing subject matter curricular goals mostly in English, and to develop the communicative skills needed to interact in all spheres of life. In the learning of foreign languages, students do not necessarily need to use the language for academic or social purposes. Given these divergent goals, in working with English Learners it is essential to prioritize good thinking and reading (understood extensively to include, for example “reading” video advertisement), and the ability to make decisions and articulate in logical and compelling ways ideas and responses to others in a variety of ways. In this case, “linguistic correctness” is not as important as coherence, clarity, and fluency in the communication of important ideas. By contrast, in a foreign language, the emphasis—rightly or wrongly—is typically placed on the accurate use of isolated instances of use of the target language (sentences at best, sometimes the focus is on words and pronunciation of isolated bits). To summarize this important contrast, in the K-12 education of English Learners, if students are not invited to engage with substantive discipline-specific ideas and analytic processes, and with texts and others as they use English, they are not being offered quality opportunities to learn.

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How do English Learners learn in English? Students apprentice into the use of a new language when they are invited to stretch their current abilities, and supported—through deliberate scaffolding—to work interacting with others at the edge of their competence, always stretching it, to approximate models offered. Carefully scaffolded interaction, which offers students the opportunity to push their development, is indispensable, since it engages English Learners in interpersonal processes that over time become appropriated, becoming intrapersonal. Along the way, expressions or writing that is not “correct” but understood is accepted. If, however, the error impedes understanding of essential constructs, this is a time for students to receive an explanation of the problematic language expression and move on. The situation should not become an opportunity to teach grammar, but just to focus on the problematic issue, a reaction Mike Long (1991), three decades ago called “focus on form”, not “focus on forms.” What is learning? A broader issue, which is important in any context, but especially relevant in distal or hybrid environments, is that a major conceptual shift needs to take place in the minds and actions of educators. Our work is not teaching, understood as the “delivery” of information that goes from a knower to the head of a passive recipient who then becomes knowledgeable. Rather, it is providing our English Learners opportunities to learn, and inviting them to work arduously and with our support through those engagements. These opportunities build on what students take to the classroom, their interests, dreams, needs, concerns, surroundings. They need to engage English in sustained interactions about topics that are important and, once understood well, will generate new learnings in the future. Invitations to interact need to be perceived by students as valuable, relevant, enticing, robust, and consequential (Mehta & Fine, 2017; Wells, 2002 among many others).

Quality Interactions Quality interactions are sustained exchanges, focused on a theme, that explore the theme through different perspectives in dialogic interaction (Walqui & van Lier, 2010). Each interlocutor carefully listens to the partner(s) to respond, corroborate, or present an alternative explanation. Unlike the common IRF (initiation, response, feedback) (Sinclair and Coulthard (1975) where a teacher poses a question to one student, who responds in one sentence, and is evaluated by the teacher, a quality interaction develops over a few exchanges as new understandings by all participants are accomplished. More importantly, all students in a class are simultaneously engaged in quality interactions, since teacher’s invitation is issued to all, and supported for all. Having briefly established the centrality of interaction in learning, especially for English Learners, and the importance of every opportunity offered students

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to engage in activity constituting an opportunity to grow their competences, I now offer seven parameters to guide the construction of hybrid opportunities to learn.

Parameters for Hybrid Lesson Design for English Learners 1.

Make sure your overall lesson promotes academic rigor. The term “rigor” is here used to indicate three key features: a clear focus on central ideas, work on the interconnections that link ideas to each other, thus forming the structures of disciplines, and students’ use of analytic thinking. Two situations lead to a lack of rigor in lessons: when ideas are treated in isolation, this work leads to superficial, inert knowledge. Additionally, when teachers think that working with a complex text is beyond students’ ability and choose simplified lessons or texts, their attitude contradicts what we know about learning. Learning constitutes engagement that builds competence beyond what students already know. Students ought to be invited to engage in tasks that are interconnected, where an idea appears several times in different, linked situations. That interwoven engagement will lead students to deeper conceptual understandings and to the gradual growth of their competence. Work on isolated ideas leads to superficial, inert understandings. Work on interconnected ideas leads to complex understandings and generativity. Let us consider an example. A group of students are going to start a lesson on pandemics, a topic all of them have experienced. Their knowledge can be activated to begin to build new understanding of a couple of other pandemics that have affected society. In our example the teacher will begin with a study of the Black Death, she may ask students to watch at home, and with a focus, a segment from the 1979 Herzog film, Nosferatu, which takes place in the Middle Ages. Concretely, students will watch the beginning of the movie, where a ship arrives in Venice with no live passengers. When curious Venetians board the vessel, they are horrified to find only dead men and thousands of rats, which escape and invade the city. Students are given three questions as a lens for their viewing, and are asked to take notes on their responses: (1) What do they see in the clip? (2) Why do they think all people aboard are dead? and (3) What could possibly happen as a result of the rats invading Venice? This is, of course, a well-known use of technology for classes: selecting a clip from a longer video and showing it to students in class. However, notice that here there is a focus established for the viewing, so that the connections students make are all related to their evolving understanding of epidemics. It is also recommended that the viewing with a focus be done outside of class. Students take their notes to class the next day, and during interactive reading they will be directed to connect their viewing experience to contextualize and deepen their understanding of the bubonic plague.

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The activity we have just described prepares learners (see diagram below and Chapter 3) to get started on new conceptual developments. Next day in class, working in dyads, students exchange their responses and anticipate what the lesson will be about. Prioritize student-to-others interactions, and ideally, propose a series of interactions that lead to an individual or group demonstration. Given that students learn by interacting with each other, teachers should invite students to talk with peers, to share information, to problematize ideas, to apply what they learned in one context to another context. Four types of interactions support student development: • Interactions with others who know more about the theme under discussion, or about the practices (description, for example) students are asked to carry out. In this case, the more knowledgeable peer or teacher supports the development of the more novice student. • Work with others who are at approximately the same level of development. In this case, peers use their current knowledge to together launch into areas they have not yet developed expertise at. If appropriate scaffolding is offered, students should advance supporting each other. • Interactions with others who know less about the theme or practice at hand afford English Learners the opportunity to articulate what they know, and by having to explain, teach, or model for the other, gain more comfort and clarity. • Interactions where learners mentally talk to themselves, articulating ways of solving problems, procedures learned, concepts understood, concepts that need to be cleared, etc. Students work with themselves audibly or silently, gaining awareness of processes and status of learning, and deliberately using appropriate learning strategies (van Lier, 2004; see adapted Figure 3.2 on page 36, this volume). Be purposeful: everything you add to your lessons must have a reason for being, must take students a step ahead on the road to accomplishing important goals. Before teachers start considering texts and tasks, they need to determine what conceptual and analytic practices they are aiming for, to then determine the language needed, all of which will be practiced using interactive, dialogic tasks. In this article language refers to the communicative practices students will be developing, to overarching constructs, i.e., how texts are organized, what phrases signal that organization, what the constituent parts of a type of text are. For example, if English Learners are learning how to describe pictures (analytic practice) in the context of the pandemic unit (conceptual understanding), they are first—though modeling—guided through key constituent elements in visual literacy: distance, salience, and angle (language practices). Through a brief reading, conducted in dyads or groups of four, students take turns reading and annotating in a chart how these elements are used. For example, distance refers to how close characters or

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particular parts of an image are presented. Distance is used to establish a relationship between the viewer and the person, object, or particular part of the image that is being depicted. This makes pictures be close-up, midshot, or long shot. Some formulaic expressions (Ellis, 2007)2 that may be offered students include: In the foreground I can clearly see…; I think the most important character in this painting is … because…; In the background there are many different things going on. To the right, there is … In this class students further learn about salience refers to the most eye-catching element of a picture (and here there may be diverse choices of salience, depending on the viewer) and finally they learn about angle, the perspective from which pictures are captured. The teacher can model these elements—an important part of language competence—and the ways in which they are expressed, by recording the description of two paintings that depict scenes of the impact of the bubonic pest. The teacher offers a description of Peter Brueghel the Elder’s Triumph of Death, probably the most iconic painting about the topic. The painting depicts the idea that death does not spare anybody, that there is no escaping death whether you are rich or poor, handsome or ugly, good or bad. While epidemics are part of the picture, as is war, greed, and other evils; only death makes all human beings end at the same point. The other painting, equally harrowing, painted by Domenico Gargiulo’s The Pest in Naples at the Mercatello Square, shows the devastation caused by the pest in the island of Naples. Students—in dyads—are asked to listen to one description outside of class and become familiar with the painting, its distance, salience, and angle. Students are given a compare and contrast matrix to outline their answers (Table 8.1). Once in class, the teacher decides how much practice and scaffolding— how much deliberately constructed interaction—students need to increase their ability to apply ideas and skills (and English, of course!) in their future TABLE 8.1 Compare/Contrast Matrix for Home Note-Taking in Preparation for Class

Interaction Picture 1: Brueghel’s Triumph of Death Reasons for my choice. How does the artist use distance? What effect does that choice create? What is the most salient element in the picture?

How is salience accomplished? What would I like to find out about the time the painting refers to?

Picture 2: Gargiulo’s Pest at Mercatello Piazza

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lives. If students need more scaffolding, a group of four, with two having annotated responses to the Brueghel and two Gargiulo’s, first work on comparing and summarizing notes on the picture they share. Then they agree on who will report what part of the information to their peers in the group of four. Or, if students need less scaffolding, they work in dyads, sharing their notes on each of the paintings. After that, the teacher gives students a new painting showing another aspect of the Black Death, this time related to noble and rich people, and how they thought they could escape the plague if they only secluded themselves in their castles. The painter, John William Waterhouse, shows a group of young people happily telling each other stories to pass the time during their seclusion. This time, students do not only describe the picture, but add details derived from the reading on the pandemic to elaborate on its consequences (Will noble people be able to protect themselves from the pest?). In this activity class time is prioritized for interactions, while homework, virtual, is focused and intended to deepen students’ understanding of key themes, analytic and language practices. This technique is called the “flipped lesson” (Sams & Bergman, 2013) because it flips the time that the teacher talks in class—using it in podcasts, recorded mini-lectures, or presentations from the internet—with a purpose that has been deliberately set beforehand and that will be used productively in class during the next lesson. Canvas discussion boards can be used for students to interact virtually once face-toface effective interaction has been established. It is important to underscore the setting up of a purpose for what students will accomplish away from class, and to always incorporate their work into class work. A teacher wrote a blog called Why Flipped Lessons Flop? She discusses her face-to-face classes, where students compete with each other for the floor. Now, nobody does the flipped assignment. First, it is a matter of equity to provide all learners in a class with quality opportunities to talk simultaneously in well-structured groups. And then, purpose and use of notes taken during flipped lessons are essential to communicate their relevance and importance. Whatever students are invited to do, and supported to successfully engage in the doing of it, each activity, whether face-to-face, or virtual, needs to fit within a harmonious pedagogical road to the development of learner agency and autonomy. The following chart illustrates the building of this instructional coherence. Build metacognitive skills. An autonomous learner is one who knows what to do, how to do it, and how well he is doing it. These learners have awareness of their own development; they have strategies, or plans of attack, for times when they get stuck. They can monitor their own learning to accomplish goals. To develop such a learner, teachers need to be explicit about the purpose of tasks, their unfolding, and how they can be used in other situations. Use of rubrics created specifically for a class is encouraged, since they will

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help students track their own development over time. Above all, teachers have to be encouraging and say to students that the building of their academic stamina is necessary now and useful throughout life. Student self-monitoring can take place in conversations with others, and in conversations with themselves. Over time, these conversations are appropriated, and once students own practices, they will be using them appropriately, and almost unconsciously and creatively in novel situations. Build learner agency and voice. Agency is the feeling of ownership and sense of control that students have over their learning (Larsen-Freeman, 2021). When students have agency they own the ability to learn and improve, they can take initiative, seize, and create opportunities to learn. More importantly, they can learn from their mistakes, and as they do so, they learn to take risks. Voice refers to students’ feeling that they have the right to speak and are heard, that others value their ideas and listen to them. Teachers create the circumstances for the development of agency and voice. They do not penalize students when they make mistakes; instead, they provide feedback that illuminates ways in which students can become aware of their limitations and improve. These teachers also provide a safe environment where mutual respect and support for English Learners are the rule (Figure 8.1). How can digital technologies assist in developing student voice and agency? Imagine the following situation.3 The teacher who is responding to a student essay. The teacher video-records his response to the student's writing, and when the student receives the feedback, he can listen to the teacher’s voice, as well as follow along with the comments as he moves through his essay. The teacher has previously highlighted in blue the points he will address, and in yellow spelling or grammatical mistakes, which he will not address. It will be up to Tomás to incorporate those changes. Among the comments we hear in the voice notes: “Hey Tomás, I am going to give you some voice notes that I have made on your paper. I am going to start with the introduction here. I am happy you decided to write essay number 2, typically students choose number 3”… “I also love this move you make here, I see you are picking up a new term used in the reading, ‘satisfice’” … “You need to bring that concept in and unpack it.”… “Bringing up the example of what your father, who came from Chile, would not have done makes the essay very personal”. “This is a really nice paper, now meeting a B, B+ range, but you can do better, so if you enter these revisions,…” Student can play the video and voice notes several times to reinforce his sense of where he has done well, and where the essay may be improved. Granted, how many voice notes can a teacher produce, especially if he teaches 5 classes a day with about 30 students each? However, as students develop expertise in working collaboratively in class, the teacher can sit at

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FIGURE 8.1 

6.

Some Considerations for Embedding Virtual Components in WellDesigned Lessons (Adapted from Walqui, 2017)

his desk and record a couple of essays before observing how students are doing in order to contingently determine where to support them next. In this case, the teacher rotates who he responds to this way. If he responds to ten students in a class a week, he will have replied to all students in three weeks, or less, with work outside of class. Provide choices in tasks you offer your students. Students need choices, but their choices must all lead to the same goal. We saw under parameter 3 that students choose between two paintings which one they want to comment on. The number of choices will vary by the availability of parallel texts that can serve the same purposes in a class. For example, during the pandemic unit, students read Edgar Allan Poe’s Masque of the Red Death over three class periods. This is not an easy story, but one that is definitely relevant to the situation then, and to the pandemic now. The teacher can engage students in the reading of the text if she engineers it, dividing the text into episodes, writing headings for the text that highlights in abstract what happens, but not revealing important details that are fun to find out as a reader. To support the interactive reading, the teacher provides a homework assignment

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7.

where students opt to follow one of four versions of the story available on the internet. There is a wonderful animation of the story created by Raúl García, a play by students at the Sidney Institute of Technology (UTS), and audio including recordings by Basil Rathbone (in a British accent), Gabriel Byrne, and several others). Students decide which version they will follow throughout the interactive reading of the story, and then, working in groups of four, they compare the versions they chose and relate it to the larger theme of pandemics, gaining increase depth of understanding on the topic. Open the walls of your classes to include the community as part of the work. There is a great advantage to having digital technologies, as long as we connect apps to the goals of classes. The ability to use, for example, Google Maps and link a chosen area of the world (which could be the place students’ families come from) to statistical information about how Covid-19 is impacting the area. There are some excellent devices on the internet for this purpose; for example, The New York Times publishes daily maps and statistics related to the virus in the United States and around the world. Then students could video themselves doing oral and visual 5-minute presentations, and, using a rubric, assess their performance. These activities are called “place-based narratives” in the foreign language literature. Students could record themselves a second time, focusing on areas they decided needed improvement in their first version. Then they could write an observation of growth from recording 1 to recording 2, indicating what made that growth possible. This activity links community work with metacognitive awareness and socioacademic growth.I share now an excellent example of how during the worst part of the pandemic, some students in Los Angeles Unified School District conducted a research project instigated by their principal. It consisted of investigating the schooling experience of students, families, and community during the pandemic (Aguilar et al., 2021). In students’ words (Figure 8.2): This project meets all the requirements needed for optimal interactive use of internet resources, it was compelling for students, it developed their voice and agency, and it contributed to community engagement at a time when face to face interactions were not safe.

A similar project is being conducted at the Middlebury Institute at Monterey Bay. It connects Spanish and English Learners in Monterey County through the Team Tandem project (recicle.org). Having preceded these virtual engagements with face-to-face connections (Guillén & Sawin, 2017), the transition to a virtual format became less challenging. They used WhatsApp and traditional phone calls were used to smooth out problems. During the service learning project, faculty and students work with community members and community organizations with an eye toward social change, integrating reflection, course content,

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FIGURE 8.2 

Example from Los Angeles Unified School District

and service experiences along the way (Avineri, 2019; Mitchell, 2008). The possibilities are endless, but at the heart of it all, the recommendation will always be: Aim for technological simplicity and interactive complexity (Driver, 2021). To prepare for the writing of this chapter I reviewed an astonishing number of publications, books, conference proceedings, and blogs about the use of technology in language teaching. The great majority of them came from a foreign language context in which students learn a language that is not spoken in their immediate community, and where precision (accuracy, fluency, and complexity) in use remains as the primary focus of instruction, not meaning making (Blake & Gillén, 2020; Wilkinson, 2016 for an example). English Learners in the United States, by contrast, need relevant, generative, coherent, compelling, sustained work which assists them in making a difference for themselves and their communities. While there are a number of platforms available for teachers, some more useful than others, there is no algorithm that will address the specific needs of classes of English Learners—oftentimes with students for whom English is their only language. Unless learning is built on teachers’ knowledge of students and how to support them, English Learners will not be prepared for an everchanging world, and we will have sorely wasted the great potential and interest our students take to school.

Notes 1 In the last few years, the polarization of American society has led to many reading only one version of the story, “canceling” ideas that do not support it. A good education has at its aim the civic discussion of competing ideas, with interlocutors being open to revise their interpretations in the face of evidence.

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2 Ellis calls the typical phrases that mark movement in a text “formulaic expressions.” Practicing these phrases, such as “In the foreground we see…,” helps English Learners appropriate them, and, eventually, vary them as they see fit. 3 I thank my colleague Mary Schmida for having shared the voice notes her son Tomás Chuaqui received from his teacher, Mr. Harrington.

References Aguilar, G., Alejo, A., Carranza, G., Juco, J., López, N., & Ríos-Cruz, A. (2021). Finding our voices and our research skills during the pandemic. San Francisco, CA: EdSource. https://edsource. org/2021/finding-our-voices-and-our-research-skills-during-the-pandemic/654552 Avineri, N. (2019). Nested interculturality: Dispositions and practices for navigating tensions in immersion experiences. In D. Martin & E. Smolcic (Eds.), Redefining teaching competence through immersive programs (pp. 37–74). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Blake, R. & Gillén, G. (2020). Brave new digital classroom. Technology and foreign language teaching. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Chow, B. (2017). Foreword. In R. Heller, R.E. Wolfe, & A. Steinberg (Eds.), Rethinking readiness: Deeper learning for college, work, and life (pp. v–vii). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Driver, P. (2021). Designing for agency in online learning spaces. Webinar, April 28, 2021, Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= 4f3Gqjthcgo Ellis, R. (2007). Instructed second language acquisition. A literature review. Wellington, NZ: Ministry of Education. https://todoele.net/sites/default/files/bibliografia/rod_ellis_ instructed-second-language.pdf Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed (50th Anniversary edition, translated by M. Bergman Ramos). New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Glick, Y. & Walqui, A. (2021). Affordances in the development of student voice and agency. The case of bureaucratically labeled Long-term English Learners. In A. Kibler, G. Valdés, and A. Walqui (Eds.), Reconceptualizing the role of critical dialogue in American classrooms. Promoting equity through dialogic education. New York City: Routledge. Guillén, G. & Sawin, T. (2017). Low-tech for the autonomous learner: The use of recordings in face-to-face intercultural exchanges. Paper presented at CALICO Conference, Flagstaff, AR. Retrieved from https://docs.google.com/presentation/ d/1L6XGi4pzO_cTIy9Mom5uTRev6vgL3Yo21po6eACdPq8/edit#slide=id. g21aec71e12_0_0 Guillén, G., Sawin, T., & Avineri, N. (2020). Zooming out of the crisis: Language and human collaboration. Foreign Language Annals, 53, 320–328. https://doi.org/10.1111/ flan.12459 Larsen-Freeman, D. (2021). An introduction to learner agency. Webinar, Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://elt.oup.com/events/global/an-introdution-to-learner-agenc y?cc=ch&selLanguage=en&mode=hub Long, M. (1991). Focus on form: A design feature in language teaching methodology. In de Bot, K, Ginsberg, R., & C. Kramsch (Eds.), Foreign language research in cross-cultural perspective. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Mehta, J. & Fine, S. (2017). How we got here: The imperative for deeper learning. In R. Heller, R.E. Wolfe, & A. Steinberg (Eds.), Rethinking readiness: Deeper learning for college, work, and life pp. v–vii). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Mitchell, T.D. (2008). Traditional vs. critical service-learning: Engaging the literature to differentiate two models. Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, 14(2), 50–65. Prensky, M. (2013). From digital natives to digital wisdom: Hopeful essays for 21st century learning. Sinclair, J. & Coulthard, M. (1975). Towards an analysis of discourse. The English used by teachers and pupils. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Singh, C. (January 20, 2021). Why flipped classes often flop. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved from: https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2021/01/20/ lessons-learned-during-pandemic-about-how-teach-flipped-classes-most-effectively Stockwell, G. & Hubbard, P. (2015). Reflecting on the impact of learner training in mobile language learning. In Proceedings from EUROCALL 2015, Padova, Italy: Centro Linguistico di Ateneo. Valdés, G. (2015). Latin@s and intergenerational community: The challenges of curricularizing language. International Multilingual Research Journal, 9, 253–273. https://doi. org/10.1080/19313152.2015.1086625 Walqui, A. (2021a). Module 2, The language we use to talk about English Learners and our work: A focus on the conversation with Guadalupe Valdés. San Francisco, CA: National Research & Development Center to Improve Education for Secondary English Learners, WestEd. https://www.elrdcenter.wested.org/resources-module-1-introduction Walqui, A. (2021b). Supporting adolescent English Learners in distance learning. What can teachers do? San Francisco, CA: National Research & Development Center to Improve Education for Secondary English Learners, WestEd. https://www.elrdcenter.wested. org/resources-what-can-teachers-do Walqui, A. & van Lier, L. (2010). Scaffolding the academic success of adolescent English Learners. A pedagogy of promise. San Francisco, CA: WestEd. Wells, G. (2002). Learning and teaching for understanding: the key role of collaborative knowledge building. In J. Brophy (Ed.), Social constructivist teaching: Affordances and constraints. The Netherlands, Amsterdam: Elsevier. Wilkinson, M. (2016). Language Learning with ICT. In Renandya & Widodo (Eds.), English language teaching today. Linking theory and practice (pp. 257–276). Switzerland: Springer International.

9 MULTIMODALITY AND TRANSLANGUAGING AS SCAFFOLDING Sense-Making in a Bilingual Kindergarten Laura Schall-Leckrone

Kindergarten classrooms are inherently multimodal spaces (Lotherington, 2017). Indeed, young multilingual learners (MLs) use named languages, gestures, objects, and drawings to communicate, make relationships, learn, and represent learning (Schall-Leckrone, 2022). While there is a long tradition of linking multisensory activities to preliteracy development in early childhood (Lotherington, 2017), rich scholarship on the use of scaffolding to support learners (Wood, Bruner, & Ross, 1976) and MLs (Gibbons, 2009, 2015; Hammond, 2006; Walquí, 2006; Zwiers, 2006) as evidenced by the commitments in this book, and a strong and growing body of research on the role of translanguaging in learning for MLs (García & Kleyn, 2016; Hamman-Ortiz & Palmer, in press; Khote & Tian, 2019), few studies examine multimodality and translanguaging as scaffolding for school newcomers (Hansen-Thomas et al., 2020). Accordingly, this chapter explores how an early childhood educator, tasked with introducing MLs to school and providing a language-rich environment for literacy development, employed multimodal translanguaging: flexible use of named languages and other semiotic systems to scaffold sense-making. Through a case study in a dual immersion (Spanish/English) kindergarten, I build on translanguaging research (e.g., García & Kleyn, 2016) to consider how a bilingual teacher employed multimodal ensembles (Kress, 2011) to scaffold instruction: that is, to establish learning expectations in the classroom community and to support literacy development.

Literature Review Several related bodies of scholarship contribute to understandings of how young MLs make sense of early schooling experiences and engage in literacy DOI: 10.4324/9781003196228-11

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development, including research on translanguaging (Baker & Wright, 2017, García, 2017; García & Kleyn, 2016); multimodal communication (Kress, 2011; Lotherington, 2017; Wohlwend, 2011), and scaffolding (Derewianka & Jones, 2016; Gibbons, 2009, 2015).

Translanguaging Translanguaging scholarship illustrates how multilingual individuals draw on a full repertoire of semiotic resources in flexible, holistic, and strategic ways to make meaning (Baker & Wright, 2017; García, 2017; García & Kleyn, 2016). Earlier influential second language acquisition (SLA) research popularized use of terms like “first language” (L1) and “second language” (L2) and considered transfer of literacy skills from L1 to L2, suggesting interdependence between separate linguistic systems (Cummins, 1979). Current thinking (see García & Kleyn, 2016, pp. 11–15) recognizes the complexities and affordances of multilingual individuals, who engage with multiple languages simultaneously as “one integrated linguistic ecosystem” rather than “separate linguistic brains” (Kim & Song, 2019, p. 268). Along related lines, while bilingual programs may impose strict language separation policies with percentages or days allocated to named languages to maximize SLA, in practice multilingual teachers and students use languages more fluidly, interchangeably, and dynamically (Hamman-Ortiz & Palmer, in press). In fact, a growing body of research demonstrates that translanguaging pedagogies—which welcome and build on communication resources of MLs in an integrated and holistic fashion—improve critical literacy development and academic achievement (García & Kleyn, 2016; Khote & Tian, 2019).

Multiple Modalities Further, recent studies in multilingual school communities demonstrate benefits of expanding the notion of translanguaging beyond named languages to also include multiple communicative modes (Kim & Song, 2019; Schall-Leckrone, 2022. Research on multimodality and second language acquisition has common themes. Some conceptualizations of multimodal learning examine diachronic changes, such as translation or transposition from one semiotic system or communicative mode to another (McCormick, 2011). Similar to notions of language/literacy transfer between L1 and L2 (Cummins, 1979), research based on transmediation suggests that students benefit from transforming meanings from one semiotic system to another (McCormick, 2011; Siegel, 1995). For instance, as sixth graders translate poems to other art forms, such as pictures or performances, they construct knowledge and expand their meaning-making potential (McCormick, 2011). Along similar lines, Gibbons (2012) describes how teachers can mediate student language development along a mode continuum. Instruction is carefully sequenced, for example, from a small group science experiment with

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referential oral language to scaffolded whole group interactions, to journal writing, to reading a science text. The teacher scaffolds from everyday referential oral language to abstract academic language through staged experiences engaging different communicative modes over time. Other work inspired by the New London group (i.e. Cazden et al., 1996) suggests the importance of synchronous use of multiple modalities to support literacy learning (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009; Kim & Song, 2019; Schall-Leckrone, 2022). Along these lines, Cope and Kalantzis (2009) argue literacy pedagogy should be based on design principles that interweave texts, images, sound, and movement. For example, Kim and Song (2019) describe a literacy project which engaged families in the “collaborative use of multiple modes” to create family storybooks (p. 268). Given the pervasiveness of digital technologies, Accurso and her colleagues (2019) examine the importance of visual interpretation as part of language and multiliteracies development. Building on these ideas, in a companion study I found a bilingual kindergarten teacher and students engaged in multimodal storytelling episodes using Spanish, English, drawings, gestures, and material objects to retell familiar stories and create original compositions (Schall-Leckrone, 2022). Overall, multimodal translanguaging practices have the potential to empower minoritized students, families, and school communities to draw on their wealth of linguistic resources to make meaning in ways that are consonant with the multicultural, multilingual, and multimodal literacies of the twenty-first century (Accurso, Muzeta &Perez-Battles, 2019; Cazden et al., 1996).1 The question explored in this chapter is how multimodal translanguaging can be used as scaffolding. There is a rich and growing body of scaffolding research aimed at improving teaching and learning opportunities for multilingual students as illustrated by the collection of scholarship in this book. In this chapter, scaffolding connotes systematic multistep or multicomponent structures intended to promote learner independence over time (Gibbons, 2015). Derewianka and Jones (2016) characterize two distinct types of scaffolds: designed scaffolds, which are planned in advance, and interactional scaffolds, spontaneous and contingent teacher decisions that enable students to say and do more during learning events (see also Gibbons, 2009). Ideally, both types of scaffolds are used. However, novice teachers more readily incorporate designed scaffolds into their repertoire, because they can be planned in advance (Schall-Leckrone, 2018); Interactional scaffolds seem more prevalent in experienced teachers’ practice since their execution requires in-the-moment decision-making. For instance, de Oliveira et al. (2020) studied how a 12-year veteran implemented specific interactional scaffolds with first graders through the Teaching Learning Cycle—carefully sequenced instructional phases that apprentice students into discussing, reading, and writing academic texts (Derewianka & Jones, 2016). In an earlier study, Schall-Leckrone (2018) found pre-service and novice teachers used artwork as designed scaffolds to activate prior knowledge and develop MLs’ critical thinking and content literacy skills. Overall, Athanases and de Oliveira (2014) recommend researchers,

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teacher educators, and teachers consider scaffolding “for whom and for what purposes and how” (p. 265). Accordingly, this study builds on prior work on scaffolding to consider how a bilingual kindergarten teacher used multimodal ensembles, including translanguaging, to acclimate students to schooling and support literacy development in a multilingual school in a gateway community.

Classroom Community Arborway school,2 where the study took place, is a neighborhood K-6 elementary school in a large New England city with a long history as an immigrant destination and a more recent one as a refugee resettlement location (Barnes, 2015). At Arborway, about 80% of students spoke a home language other than English, including Spanish, Vietnamese, Portuguese, Nepali, Arabic, Albanian, and Akan (Twi). All children in the school were considered economically disadvantaged. Unlike two-way dual immersion (DI) programs in more affluent parts of the city, which also enrolled white monolingual English speakers, the kindergarten DI program was designed to serve the interests of children from Spanishspeaking Latinx families. The bilingual teacher, Mrs. Semilla, had migrated from Puerto Rico as an adult. She had significant early childhood experience, having run a family daycare and later worked for Headstart. The longtime principal of the school, Mrs. Puente, was also a Spanish speaker who lived in the city. Mrs. Puente, a former student, had invited me to teach an educational linguistics class on-site in the school attended by all faculty, including Mrs. Semilla, in the spring of 2019. She selected Mrs. Semilla, who had been an ESL teacher at Arborway for several years, to launch the new DI kindergarten that summer. Since it was the first year of the program, I was frequently consulted on instructional decisions. Overall, I aimed to support, rather than distract from, the learning process with my research presence. The study reported in this chapter took place while I was conducting a larger linguistic ethnography at Arborway during a year-long sabbatical. In mid-August of 2019, I began shadowing Mrs. Semilla during kindergarten orientation and screening, during which the teacher used informal assessments to determine Spanish dominance. I spent two to three days a week in the kindergarten until the school closed in March of 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The following research question emerged during classroom observations. 1. How did a bilingual kindergarten teacher use multiple modes to scaffold instruction for kindergarten children? a) to introduce students to schooling? b) to support language and literacy development? In this investigation, schooling signifies learning how to learn in formal settings and also learning how to “do school.” As noted, this case study builds

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on translanguaging research that considers holistic ways bilingual teachers and students exercise their full linguistic repertoire during classroom activities (e.g., García & Kleyn, 2016). In addition, multimodal discourse analysis (Kress, 2011; Wohlwend, 2011) was used to interpret how multiple semiotic systems function in learning interactions. Discourse analysis in education is concerned with how schools as social institutions socialize participants into expected roles and associated practices through communication patterns (Cazden, 2001; Rogers, 2011). The concept of multimodality recognizes “material resources beyond speech and writing” such as gestures, images, and drawings that are engaged in sensemaking (Kress, 2011, p. 208). I used a multistep process to identify and then analyze episodes of multimodal scaffolding: first combing through field notes and then creating a table to catalog communication modes: languages (Spanish/ English), oral language, written language, material objects, movement/gestures, and pictures/illustrations/drawing used in them. Next, I viewed corresponding videotapes and transcribed relevant portions of them. To make sense of these data, I used a combination of inductive and deductive reasoning. Because it was an exploratory study, I coded with some established constructs, such as “designed and interactional scaffolds,” and “multimodal ensembles,” from relevant research (see Derewianka & Jones, 2016 and Kress, 2011, respectively). Other codes emerged during the analysis (Glaser & Strauss, 1967): for instance, “meta-linguistic moments” that occurred when the teacher and students were translanguaging. The episodes showcased in the findings were selected because they represented routine classroom activities in the first few months of the school year that epitomized how the bilingual teacher used multimodal ensembles to scaffold learning and the ways in which students responded.

Findings The teacher used simultaneous semiotic systems to scaffold instruction whether introducing young bilingual learners to how to “do school,” or providing literacy instruction. Adapted from Wohlwend (2011), who conducted multimodal analysis of children’s play, Figure 9.1 demonstrates how the bilingual kindergarten teacher engaged multimodal ensembles as scaffolding (Figure 9.1). Multimodal ensembles consisted of oral and written languages including linguistic subcomponents (phonemes, morphemes, words), drawings/images, material objects, and kinesthetics (movement/gestures) employed by the teacher and taken up by the children to make meaning in the classroom. These ensembles were used as designed scaffolds to establish learning expectations and support language and literacy development. In addition, Mrs. Semilla employed multimodal ensembles and translanguaging as interactional scaffolds to facilitate comprehension and develop early metalinguistic awareness in young MLs. From the beginning of the school year, the kindergarten teacher employed multimodal scaffolds to establish the classroom community and help young

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Oral Languages Drawing/Pictures

Scaffolding

Wrien Languages

Movement/Gestures Material Objects

FIGURE 9.1 

Multimodal Ensembles as Scaffolding

learners navigate within it (Many et al., 2009). For instance, learning routines were scaffolded with color-coded tables, bins for school supplies, and much-coveted satin capes in matching colors for table leaders, who were tasked with leading their group between transitions, for instance, from the carpet back to their seats or between learning centers. Caped table leaders also ensured classmates understood directions and were on-task during independent activities. Pictures, pantomimes, music, and oral and written instructions were also used in tandem to scaffold multistep directions. For instance, the students were shown a series of pictures, which demonstrated how to sit with crossed legs on the carpet during whole class instruction, encouraged to take time to think before responding with another picture of a child with a thought cloud, and the final illustration in the sequence, showed a child raising her hand to contribute. Multimodal, multistep instructions were used to apprentice young learners into school roles as participants in discussions, illustrators, and authors and associated behaviors. A range of semiotic resources also promoted sense-making during early literacy activities. Books, illustrations, and the act of drawing were used as both planned and interactional scaffolds to help children interpret narratives. For instance, after rereading a story in Spanish about a mouse who hid a strawberry from a bear, Mrs. Semilla engaged the class in a brief discussion of authors’ and illustrators’ roles to prepare for an activity in which the children would illustrate, caption, and discuss plot elements with a partner and then, the whole group:

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does the illustrator of the book do?3 ELENA:  Draws the book. MRS. SEMILLA:  Draws the illustrations in the book. And, what does the author do? YASMIN:  The author draws the book. MRS. SEMILLA REPEATS:  What does the author do? NAOMI:  Writes the book. MRS. SEMILLA:  Writes

the words of the book.

In this excerpt of classroom dialogue, Mrs. Semilla recasts student contributions, extending “draws the book” to “draws the illustrations of the book.” When Yasmin says, “The author draws the book,” Mrs. Semilla repeats the question rather than correcting the child, and then similarly elaborates on Naomi’s contribution about authors. Next, the children are told they will be illustrators of a scene from the book; volunteers are asked what they will draw, and when someone says, “the bear,” Mrs. Semilla carefully demonstrates with circles how to draw bear parts, a small circle for the head, a larger circle for its body, and elongated ovals for its legs. Then, she elicits from students how to write the word “bear” in Spanish, under her illustration, O-s-o, a familiar word from a Spanish alphabet song on vowels, frequently sung in the class. The teacher emphasizes, “Scribbles are not kindergarten illustrations.” After children draw and caption pictures, they are paired to discuss their drawings and then asked to report what their partner drew. As they do, Mrs. Semilla prompts them to elaborate with interactional scaffolds, asking for additional details like colors and reminding them that when they work with someone they must listen and pay close attention. A book, illustrations, drawing, writing, and carefully sequenced oral interactions (whole group/teacher led, individual, partner, and whole group/teacher led) form the multimodal ensemble that scaffolded this preliteracy activity, which took place in early September. The scaffolded learning scenario implies the children can embody the roles of authors and illustrators, recreating images with words from texts and sharing their work with peers. Mrs. Semilla also used multimodal ensembles as planned and interactional scaffolds during a Spanish literacy lesson featuring a read-aloud of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. The lesson was designed to teach the students to identify the characters’ emotions. Multimodal ensembles included oral and written language, drawings, hand puppets of each character, an oversized book with illustrations, singing, movement/gestures, and translanguaging by the teacher and students. The lesson started with a familiar classroom routine, naming the instructional objective, which was done through a multimodal interaction. Mrs. Semilla indicated that they would read the objective together, saying in Spanish, “Look at Mr. Objective here.” She pointed to chart paper on the easel. “Say it with me,” she told them. “I can,” they repeat, “I can,” and she shakes her pointer

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finger as she says, “identify,” and they repeat, “identify,” and when she says how the characters feel, she turns her hands upside down and shrugs her shoulders. Elena, who is sitting at the front, mirrors the teacher’s motions with her body. The children also match the rise and fall of Mrs. Semilla’s voice. First, she asks them to identify feelings. As they do, she draws faces on the chart paper and with the children’s help, labels them. For instance, when Carmen offers, “Feliz,” the teacher repeats in a louder voice, “Feliz,” and says, “Here we’re going to make a happy face,” then draws it. She continues, “This word starts with the,” she pauses and makes an f sound and simultaneously raises her palms, so they are vertical and pushes to mirror the expulsion of air from her mouth, “Ffff,” and she says, “efe.” The children match her actions, make the sound, and say its name, which is how they have been taught to engage with letters of the alphabet. After naming, drawing, and labeling faces for sad, angry, and scared, they review these terms by standing up and singing a Spanish rendition of, “If you’re happy and you know it,” acting out each named emotion with sounds and gestures as the teacher points to the appropriate labeled picture. For instance, for sad, they wiggle two fists in front of their eyes as they make crying sounds. Next, Mrs. Semilla introduces hand puppets to prompt students to name the characters, which she displays on the tray of the white board. Since it is a familiar story, Mrs. Semilla invites the children to read along with her. She points out the title and reminds them that good readers identify the author and illustrator of the book. Instead of voicing the words “author” and “illustrator,” she pauses and uses her arm to indicate that she is writing and then painting. The children, accustomed to routine use of these kinesthetic scaffolds, supply the words. As she reads about the bears, their bowls of porridge, chairs, and beds, she and the children make gestures to indicate big, medium, and small as they say the words. She pauses frequently and the children complete the sentence chorally by supplying words like “grande” or “mediano,” to describe the bears. However, when she says, “El bebe oso era” (the baby bear was), the children respond, “Chiquito.” She says, “Y chiquito, podemos decir …pe-que-ño” (For small, we can say little). She pauses, then enunciates each syllable of the word carefully and the children repeat it after her. A child raises her hand and says in a high-pitched voice, “Tiny!” and Mrs. Semilla says, “Y tiny en ingles!” (and tiny in English). In this brief metalinguistic moment, the children offer a conversational Spanish word, chiquito, for small during the shared reading. Mrs. Semilla teaches the more formal word, pequeño, used in the book, and a child says an English variation of the concept with the teacher’s affirmation. As they continue reading, a child uses an ingenious codeswitch to describe an illustration, “Mira como el bebe oso tiene (pause) googly eyes” (Look how the baby bear has googly eyes). Mrs. Semilla, smiles, and says, “Si, verdad” (Yes, true). It is not surprising that a student would interject a detail from the picture. Mrs. Semilla frequently models how to interpret visual information from illustrations. As they continue, she points to the picture, “Mira como el ilustrador hizo los arboles para decirnos que el cuento está en el bosque”

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(Look how the illustrator made the trees to tell us the story takes place in the woods). They complete the shared reading, interpreting pictures, using hand and body movements to characterize words and actions from the story, and discussing what happens. Afterward, she asks them to think about their favorite part of the story and shows with her face what it looks like to think. She closes her eyes and holds her hands up to her head with her fingers splayed. Angelito, in response, puts his pointer fingers on each of his temples and scrunches his eyes closed to indicate that he is thinking too. After the children have been assigned partners, she repeats the question: “Qué eventos de la historia les gusto más?” (What story events did you like most). Then, she claps her hands to indicate partners should start talking. As the children retell parts of the stories, unprompted, they use gestures in combination with oral language. Sarita cycles her arms and taps her feet rapidly as she tells Ayla in Spanish that she liked when Goldilocks ran out of the bear’s house. Ayla responds by saying that she liked when the bears found Goldilocks sleeping in the little bear’s bed. As she does so, she indicates, “sleeping,” with her hands pressed together, eyes closed and head tilted to the side on them. During this lesson, the teacher introduced multimodal ensembles and students echoed them, but students also initiated multimodal combinations in original communications. The lesson ends with instructions to proceed from the whole group activity to literacy centers, one of which will involve retelling the story with Mrs. Semilla, by sequencing pictures from the book. A combination of designed and interactional scaffolds were introduced by the teacher and taken up by students as sense-making strategies during literacy instruction. Multimodal translanguaging also prompted development of early metalinguistic awareness in young MLs. That is, Mrs. Semilla made in-the-moment decisions to discuss how multiple terms construe a concept across languages and language variations during the aforementioned lesson. Translanguaging included not only named languages, such as Spanish and English, but also recognition of language variation across Spanishes as the children, teacher (and teaching assistants) came from different Spanish-speaking locations. For instance, while reading Goldilocks and the Three Bears, in addition to considering different words for small, they discussed three possible terms for bedroom: the one in the book which Mrs. Semilla initially read aloud, “la recamera.” Because this is a less common word, she immediately said, “el dormitorio.” Then, she asked in Spanish, simultaneously pointing to the picture in the book, “How do they say it in El Salvador?” A couple of children responded, “Cuarto,” so she reread the passage from the book, and this time, inserted the word “el cuarto.” Another child exclaimed, “a room!” immediately afterward. As they read about the bears’ three chairs, Mrs. Semilla along with the children used hand motions to indicate sizes. When the teacher said the little bear’s chair broke, she recognized that in other countries they use the word “se quebró” instead of “se rompio” for it broke. Alejandra raised her hand and volunteered, “Yo digo se quebró” (I say it broke) and Nelson shouted, “Broken.” Mrs. Semilla acknowledged his response and said, “Si, en ingles” (Yes,

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in English). De Jong and her colleagues (in press) observe that translanguaging pedagogies can instill a sense of belonging for bilingual individuals within DI programs. Mrs. Semilla seemed to recognize this, accepting code-switching and contributions in English or Spanish during designated Spanish or English time as well as promoting discussion of variation in how concepts were labeled; all Spanish dialects were welcomed into the classroom.

Discussion This case study of multimodality and translanguaging in a bilingual kindergarten has teaching, teacher education, and learning implications. Teachers can use translanguaging and multimodal ensembles as both designed and interactional scaffolds. Figure 9.1, which depicts multimodal scaffolds, was adapted from Wohlwend (2011) as an analytical tool, but also could be used as a lesson or unit planning tool. In order to promote sense-making and eventual learner independence, bilingual teachers can employ multimodal scaffolds: drawings, pictures, movement/gestures, and material objects in addition to oral and written languages. Use of multimodal scaffolding ensembles, as Mrs. Semilla demonstrated, can facilitate healthy classroom routines that empower young school newcomers to negotiate roles as active learners, community members (helping a peer), conversation partners, authors, and illustrators (see Schall-Leckrone, 2022, for how drawing was used to apprentice young MLs into story genres). In addition, teachers can draw on multiple modalities and translanguaging to enhance their repertoire of interactional scaffolds. Mrs. Semilla made in-the-moment decisions to clarify concepts through gestures, drawings, and oral and written language. She also prompted consideration of how concepts are construed in different Spanish dialects and in English. These scaffolding practices might be rehearsed through pre-service and in-service teacher education to prepare novice and experienced teachers to enact them to improve learning opportunities and environments for multilingual children. Bilingual classrooms that encourage flexible options for meaning-making construct languages as resources, language-learners as resourceful, and send the message, “multilingualism is … normal and worth cultivating” (Durán & Palmer, 2014, p. 368). Therefore, they welcome the whole child.

Implications Even young children can develop and demonstrate a growing repertoire of semiotic tools and early metalinguistic awareness: language for talking about language. This was evident in Mrs. Semilla’s kindergarten classroom as she and four-, five-, and six-year-olds discussed varied names for concepts in Spanish and English. Strategic combinations of oral and written languages, pictures, material objects, singing, movement/gestures, and drawing were modeled by the teacher and taken up by the children to make meaning. This was evident as Sarita and

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Ayla used their bodies and words to retell favorite parts of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. The result of multimodal translanguaging is to create an affirming early childhood classroom environment of high challenge, high support, which places students at the center of learning (Gibbons, 2009; Hammond, 2006). The languages and other semiotic systems of multilingual individuals can be used as resources in active construction (rather than the transmission) of knowledge (Hammond, 2006). As Gibbons (2009) observes, for bilingual learners to be successful in school, classrooms must provide challenging opportunities to develop academic literacy through scaffolding and linguistic supports. This dual immersion bilingual classroom did so through the use of multimodal translanguaging ensembles. Although this case study was small-scale, located in a single classroom in the initial year of a new dual immersion program with bilingual learners in their first school experience, still it can be instructive. In addition to being multistep or multicomponent, scaffolding can and should be multimodal and multilingual to cultivate the entire linguistic ecosystem of MLs in the learning process. Bilingual early childhood teachers should integrate translanguaging with multiple modalities to scaffold instruction for young students as they acclimate to school, develop emerging metalinguistic awareness, and engage in language and literacy development. Further research should explore how multimodal translanguaging ensembles benefit older school newcomers.

Notes 1 For this potential to be realized, school systems must address the digital divide and access to technologies exacerbated by a pandemic and move to online schooling for minoritized youth. 2 Pseudonyms were assigned to the school, principal, teacher, and students to protect participant anonymity. 3 This activity took place in Spanish and is translated here. Pseudonyms were assigned to protect student identities.

References Accurso, K. Muzeta, B., & Pérez-Battles, S. (2019). Reflection multiliteracies: Teaching meaning making across the visual and language arts. SPELT Quarterly, 34(2), 2–16. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.17060.53121. Athanases, S. Z., & de Oliveira, L. C. (2014). Scaffolding versus routine support for Latina/o youth in an urban school: Tensions in building toward disciplinary literacy. Journal of Literacy Research, 46(2), 263–299. Baker, C., & Wright, W. E. (2017). Foundations of bilingual education and bilingualism (6th ed.). Blue Ridge Summit, PA: Multilingual Matters. Barnes, G. (2015). Worcester is state’s top destination for refugees. Worcester Telegram. https://www.telegram.com/article/20150312/NEWS/303129577 Cazden, C. (2001). Classroom discourse: The language of teaching and learning. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

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Cazden, C., Cope, B., Fairclough, N., Gee, J., Kalantzis, M., Kress, G., Luke, A., Luke, C., Michaels, S., & Nakata, M. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1), 60–92. Cope, W., & Kalantzis, M. (2009). “Multiliteracies”: New literacies, new learning. Pedagogies, 4(3), 164–195. Cummins, J. (1979). Linguistic interdependence and the educational development of bilingual children. Review of Educational Research, 49(2), 222–251. https://doi. org/10.3102/00346543049002222 De Jong, E. J., Coulter, Z., & Tsai, M-C (in press). Two-way bilingual education programs and sense of belonging: Perspectives from middle school students. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.202 0.1783635 de Oliveira, L.C., Jones, L. & Smith, S.L. (2020). Interactional scaffolding in a firstgrade classroom through the teaching-learning cycle. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. DOI:10.1080/13670050.2020.1798867 Derewianka, B., & Jones, P. (2016). Teaching language in context (2nd ed.). South Melbourne, Australia: Oxford University Press. Durán, L., & Palmer, D. (2014). Pluralist discourses of bilingualism and translanguaging talk in classrooms. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 14(3), 367–388. García, O. (2017). Bilingual education in the 21st century: A global perspective. (2nd ed.). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. García, O., & Kleyn, T. (Eds.) (2016). Translanguaging with multilingual students: Learning from classroom moments. New York: Routledge. Gibbons, P. (2009). English learners, academic literacy, and thinking: Learning in the challenge zone. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Gibbons, P. (2012). Mediating language learning: Teaching interactions with ESL students in a content-based classroom. TESOL Quarterly, 37(2), 247–273. Gibbons, P. (2015). Scaffolding language, scaffolding learning: Teaching English language learners in the mainstream classroom (2nd ed.). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Glaser, B., & Strauss, A. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategy for qualitative research. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine. Hamman-Ortiz, L., & Palmer, D. (in press). Identity and two-way bilingual education: Considering student perspectives. Introduction to special edition. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2020.1819 096 Hammond, J. (2006). High challenge, high support: Integrating language and content instruction for diverse learners in an English literature classroom. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 5, 269–283. Hansen-Thomas, H., Steward, M. A., Flint, P., & Dollar, T. (2020). Co-learning in the high school English class: Emergent bilingual newcomers and monolingual teachers. Journal of Language, Identity & Education, 1532–7701, DOI:10.1080/15348458.2020.1 726759. https://doi-org.ezproxyles.flo.org/10.2307/3588504 Khote, N., & Tian, Z. (2019). Translanguaging in culturally sustaining systemic functional linguistics: Developing a heteroglossic space with multilingual learners. Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts, 5(1), 5–28. https://doi.org/10.1075/ ttmc.00022.kho Kim, S., & Song, K. (2019). Designing a community translanguaging space within a family literacy project. The Reading Teacher, 73(3), 267–279.

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Kress, G. (2011). Discourse analysis and education: A multimodal social semiotic approach. In R. Rogers (Ed.), An introduction to critical discourse analysis in education (2nd ed., pp.205–226). New York: Routledge. Lotherington, H. (2017). Elementary language education in digital, multimodal, and multiliteracy contexts. In S. Thome, & S. May (Eds.), Language, education, and technology: Encyclopedia of language and education. Switzerland: Springer International Publishing. DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02328-1_7-1 Many, J. E., Dewberry, D., Taylor, D. L., & Coady, K. (2009). Profiles of three preservice ESOL teachers’ development of instructional scaffolding. Reading Psychology, 30, 148–174. McCormick, J. (2011). Transmediation in the language arts classroom: Creating contexts for analysis and ambiguity. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 54(8), 579–587. Rogers, R. (2011). An introduction to critical discourse analysis in education (2nd ed., pp. 242–266). New York: Routledge. Schall-Leckrone, L. (2018). Coursework to classroom: Learning to scaffold instruction for emerging bilingual learners. Teacher Education Quarterly, 45(1), 31–56. Winter edition. Schall-Leckrone, L. (2022). La Tortuga está tiptoeing: Storytelling in a bilingual kindergarten. In L. Hao, & S. Brown (Eds.). Multimodal literacies in young emergent bilinguals: Speaking back to print-centric practices. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Siegel, M. (1995). More than words: The generative power of transmediation for learning. Canadian Journal of Education, 20(4), 455–475. Walquí, A. (2006). Scaffolding instruction for English language learners: A conceptual framework. The International Journal of Bilingual Education, 9(2), 159–180. Wohlwend, K. E. (2011). Mapping modes in children’s play and design: An action-oriented approach to critical multimodal analysis. In R. Rogers (Ed.), An introduction to critical discourse analysis in education (2nd ed., pp. 242–266). New York: Routledge. Wood, D. J., Bruner, J., & Ross, G. (1976). The role of tutoring in problem solving. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 17(2), 89–100. Zwiers, J. (2006). Integrating academic language, thinking, and content: Learning scaffolds for non-native speakers in the middle grades. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 5, 317–333.

10 SCAFFOLDING IN ACTION How Exemplary Teachers Use Interactional Scaffolding to Generate and Sustain Emergent Bilinguals’ Engagement with Challenging English Text Erika Johnson

One of the greatest challenges that teachers of multilingual learners face is to provide rigorous instruction that includes adequate supports for both academic content and language development. By thoughtfully scaffolding students’ learning experiences, teachers can use temporary structures and collaborative work to help them access and use new language and skills that they might not be able to do alone (Walqui, 2006; Wood, Bruner & Ross, 1976). When deliberately introducing these structures and interactions, often called “scaffolds,” teachers can enable students to learn academic content while also developing language skills. Teachers rely on at least two types of scaffolds: planned and interactional. Planned scaffolds (cf. Hammond & Gibbons, 2005) include the preplanned use of materials, routines, and group structures meant to support students during instruction. For example, before beginning a reading lesson, teachers may decide whether to organize students into small groups, show visuals to preteach vocabulary, or provide sentence frames for discussion. In contrast, interactional scaffolds, the focus of this chapter, emerge through discourse and action as teachers tailor responses to students’ current understandings (Reynolds, 2017; Walqui, 2006). Teachers might use interactional scaffolds to orally model the use of academic language, explain a new concept in a student’s primary language, or provide wait time to encourage students to think. Unlike planned scaffolds, interactional scaffolds occur in the moment, requiring teachers to continuously assess and respond to students’ needs. In order to effectively scaffold instruction, teachers must select the appropriate type and level of support, which should be contingent on students’ current skills and needs (van de Pol, et al., 2010; Wood et al., 1976). For instance, a teacher who sees that several students are struggling to make sense of a challenging text might organize an impromptu small-group conversation with those DOI: 10.4324/9781003196228-12

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students to clarify a grammatical structure critical to their comprehension. If a teacher ignores contingency, students may well receive too much, too little, or the wrong kind of support, which can hinder their growth (Athanases & de Oliveira, 2014; Daniel et al., 2016). Students who receive planned and interactional supports that are appropriately contingent on their current knowledge and needs can gradually build the skills required to perform tasks independently. Once students show evidence of productive, independent work, scaffolds can be removed. How a teacher should scaffold students’ learning may seem straightforward: diagnose a student’s current need, choose the appropriate scaffold, and use it until it becomes unnecessary. Yet, in the context of dynamic classroom contexts marked by complex and unanticipated problems, effective scaffolding becomes a continuous balancing act that calls for the teacher to pay attention to many student-level and contextual factors (Johnson, 2019a, 2019b, 2021). In this chapter, I clarify and illustrate what interactional scaffolds are, how they work, and why they are not all equally effective both in being contingent and maintaining the challenge of the work. Specifically, I focus on how literacy and language arts teachers can scaffold instruction to generate and sustain multilingual learners’ engagement with challenging English texts. First, I explain why interactional scaffolds are arguably more complex and harder to use effectively than planned scaffolds. I then introduce different types of interactional scaffolds and, using examples from real classrooms, I explain some of the opportunities and limitations they present, depending on the teacher’s goals and current situation. In doing so, I illustrate the complex decisions teachers must make as they select scaffolds that are both contingent upon students’ strengths and needs and maintain the challenge of the language and literacy task.

Interactional Scaffolds Because interactional scaffolds are used in the midst of teaching, they require a teacher to pay close attention, engage in ongoing diagnosis, and respond appropriately. Notably, in the context of real classes, scaffolds must be contingent not only upon an individual student’s needs and responses, but also on the collective needs of the group, often 20–30 students. Finally, many teachers make these decisions within a class context where students speak multiple languages and demonstrate a range of development in language and literacy skills (Menken, 2013). Given this complexity, as teachers of multilingual learners make quick, thoughtful decisions about how best to scaffold students’ learning during reading instruction, they might be considering multiple options, such as “Would it be helpful to explain what this section of text means or pose that question to the class?”; or “When a student faces an unfamiliar word, should I quickly define it for him in English, prompt him to discuss it with peers in his home language, or model how to use context clues in the text to infer its meaning?” As Table 10.1

Scaffolding in Action  149 TABLE 10.1 Types of Interactional Scaffolds (Johnson, 2019b; based on van de Pol et al.’

(2010) framework) Feeding Back Explicitly evaluating Implicitly evaluating (repeating) Revoicing student comments in academic English Providing substantive feedback (not just evaluation) Explaining Explaining a topic Explaining text Explaining grammar Explaining a reading strategy Defining a word Providing L1/cognates Making connections to prior knowledge Making connections to personal experiences Providing commentary on text Hinting Noting, rereading, or repeating key text or information to answer question Recording key information to help answer question Highlighting Noting language use not already under discussion Noting text not already under discussion Noting or repeating text already under discussion Noting or repeating language use already under discussion Noting, repeating, or recording student comment Noting complexity or challenge of text/task Modeling Modeling procedure, process, strategy Modeling content, concept Modeling oral/written language Questioning Asking elicitation (known-answer) questions related to text Asking elicitation (known-answer) questions related to topic Asking elicitation (known-answer) questions related to vocabulary/language use Asking elicitation (known-answer) questions related to reading strategy Asking clarification or confirmation questions Asking other authentic questions Directing Prompting self-assessment Prompting inquiry or question-asking about text or language use Prompting decoding Prompting to take/use notes Prompting use of reading strategy Prompting language rehearsal or language play Prompting student to talk with partner or small group Prompting L1 use, translation or contrastive analysis Urging listening/speaking participation Inviting students to enter ongoing discussion

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illustrates, as they scaffold instruction, teachers can choose from a wide range of options to support students, such as providing feedback, explaining, hinting, highlighting, modeling, and questioning. Even though any of these might respond to students’ immediate needs, some might inadvertently limit opportunities for challenging work with text and language. It is not enough for interactional scaffolds to be contingent; they must also sustain the challenge of learning new or more difficult content. This creates conditions for what Gibbons (2009) calls “high challenge/high support” work in multilingual classrooms. Effective teachers select and adjust scaffolds in response to the learners’ responses and ideas in ways that create and maintain their engagement in ongoing, rigorous work, or “productive struggle” (Hiebert and Grouws, 2007). Too much well-intentioned, but heavy-handed, assistance provided in response to students’ apparent confusion can deprive them of the chance to struggle with text and language in productive ways. In an earlier study (Johnson, 2019b), I found that students responded with less talk and less engagement in ongoing rigorous work when the teacher over-scaffolded their learning.

Scaffolding for Language and Literacy Development In addition to selecting scaffolds that maintain challenge, teachers must also consider what they hope to achieve in using them, or, as de Oliveira and Athanases (2017) propose, “Scaffolding for what purpose(s)?” Teachers’ purposes have implications for how they teach and what their students learn. The selection of scaffolds presented in this chapter is based on two fundamental purposes for language and literacy instruction. First, because language is a social practice, developed through interaction with others (Hymes, 1974; van Lier, 2004), teachers should seek to embed instruction in social experiences. This requires providing ample opportunities for multilingual learners to collectively process, produce, and refine language, particularly as it relates to text. Considering language as social practice does not preclude a teacher from providing explicit instruction about language forms and functions, such as syntactic structures and vocabulary, but it prioritizes students’ authentic use of language in social, meaningful contexts. A second, related purpose comes from Aukerman’s (2008) theory of comprehension-as-sense-making. Grounded in principles of Bakhtinian dialogism (Bakhtin, 1981), Aukerman recommends conversations where students, regardless of language background, see themselves and their peers as active sense-makers, “contributors of new ideas that shape the subsequent course of discussion—and each other’s views about the text’s meaning” (p. 57). The teacher creates opportunities for students to deliberate about possible textual meaning(s), engaging with others to question, critique, and reconsider their ideas. These dialogic practices contribute to a rich classroom environment in which students are more likely to participate in extended and exploratory talk about text (Applebee, Langer, Nystrand, & Gamoran, 2003). Aukerman asserts that teachers who seek

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to promote students’ sense-making should limit their own talk, follow students’ ideas, ask students to share their reasoning, and highlight ambiguity and differences of opinion. In the following section, I provide examples of contingent and challengesustaining scaffolding by teachers who are working toward the goals of language as social practice and reading comprehension as sense-making. These are interactional scaffolds that teachers use to provide contingent support, based on what a student appears to need in the moment, and to sustain, rather than diminish, the challenge of the language or literacy task. Some of these examples illustrate the use of a single scaffold, while others highlight the potential benefit of combining scaffolds. Drawing upon my study of six exemplary urban middle school teachers’ instruction (Johnson, 2019a), I provide illustrations of interactional scaffolding, including: feeding back, explaining, highlighting, modeling, and questioning.

Highlight, Don't Hint One productive interactional scaffold used by these teachers was highlighting, or drawing students’ attention to another student’s comment, textual assertion, language use or to a section of text under discussion. Teachers used highlighting to make comments or text accessible to everyone who might not have heard the speaker or been paying close attention to the classroom conversation. This included repeating aloud a student’s comment, or using the class Smartboard, whiteboard, or document camera to physically point to key terms, type and display a student’s comment or question, or make visible a section of text that was being discussed. Essential to effective highlighting was contingency: Teachers who used it well focused on elements of language or literacy that had been raised by a student and were being discussed by the class. The following example illustrates how some teachers scaffolded instruction by highlighting students’ ideas and made them central to learning (Appendix A includes an explanation of transcript conventions). In this case, one teacher asked students to read the first paragraphs of an expository article, “Why the Most Competitive High School Might Not Be Right for Your Teens” (Lloyd, 2015). She then prompted students to point out sentences in the text that confused them. In response, one student asked for help in understanding the sentence, “There was little room for exploration at her high school.” In the following excerpt, we see how the teacher highlighted the question by repeating it aloud and typing it on her computer so that it was visible on the class Smartboard. She then redirected the student’s question (now available orally and in writing) back to the class for discussion: now. Her question then is why. Melissa’s question is why. ((Types “Why?”)) Why is there so little room and space for her to explore different things? Is it because, her question, is it because of-. ((Types “It is because….”)) What was the other word that you highlighted, Melissa?

TEACHER:  So,

152  Erika Johnson STUDENT:  Um,

resource was limited, and these multi-talented, achievement-oriented kids all wanted to do everything. TEACHER:  Ok, so she highlighted… She was wondering about this question … at the bottom of the paragraph. ((Types)) Is it because of limited resources? Limited resources meaning, [enough STUDENT:  [Not enough] TEACHER:  or not enough?] STUDENT:  Not enough. TEACHER:  Not

enough. So, that’s her question. Thank you. ((Turns to rest of class)) What do you think?

In this example, the teacher not only centers on a student’s question, but she uses it to prompt further analysis of the text. Rather than simply answering the student’s question, she redirects it back to the class, asking “What do you think.” In this way, she is providing opportunities for all of her students to make sense of challenging text. Highlighting stands in contrast to hinting, which occurred when teachers directed students’ attention to content and language that held the “right answer.” They often asked questions for which they already had a correct response in mind, often called known-answer questions (“Who is the main character of this story?”). When a student’s response to this question was deemed incorrect or insufficient, teachers often hinted at the answer by drawing attention to sections of text where students might find the right answer. Therefore, hinting didn’t serve as a fully contingent response to a student’s thinking but as a conduit to a particular interpretation of text or use of language that the teacher had in mind. While this might still be considered by some to be contingent teaching, in that teachers were responding to a student’s prior comment, it was not challenge-sustaining. It failed to prompt further opportunities for challenging language and literacy work and, therefore, was not effective scaffolding. Hinting is evident in one teacher’s lesson where students were reading a challenging chapter from Freakonomics (Levitt & Dubner, 2010). After reading the text aloud, the teacher asked them to identify the leaders of a gang. The answer he was waiting for was “Board of Directors.” In this excerpt he hints at key parts of text that will lead students to the correct answer: TEACHER:  If

you guys look back in the reading—look back on page 96—there’s a name for this thing, the big one. For McDonald’s we can call it the corporate headquarters or the main company. But they gave us a nickname for this, for the gang. Look for it on page 96. If you think you’ve found it, raise your hand. Everyone should be looking. Your book probably should be opened to page 96. One of those middle paragraphs that we just read. ((Points to page on document camera)) Raise your hand when you think

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you’ve found it. So we’re looking for the name of the big group, in the middle. Bayani’s found it. Good job, Bayani. Some of you are looking very carefully, good job, some of you are not. You need to be looking, page 96… STUDENT:  Board of directors?

says the Board of Director. Board of Directors, right here ((points to word on document camera)) Good.

TEACHER:  Guowei

The teacher’s use of hinting where students could find “correct” answers, rather than highlighting a particular student’s comment, question, or section of text for further inquiry, ultimately limited opportunities for extended interaction and textual sense-making and, therefore, was not challenge-sustaining.

Provide Feed Forward, Not Just Feed Back Discourse scholars have long established a dominant pattern of interaction in classrooms, in which the teacher initiates (I) a question, a student responds (R), and the teacher either evaluates (E) that response or provides feedback (F) (Bellack et al., 1966; Mehan, 1979). Both the IRE and IRF patterns can inhibit student talk and opportunities for authentic meaning-making. Yet, teachers’ contingent use of a certain type of feedback was often productive. Relying on what Hattie and Timperley (2007) call “feed forward,” teachers addressed the challenging skills of language and literacy that a student was grappling with and then provided substantive suggestions for how to improve the quality of their work. This stands in contrast to “feed back” which only addresses how the student has performed so far, without clear steps for improvement. A teacher’s contingent use of substantive feedback that includes next steps for improvement is evident in the following exchange from a reading conference. When the teacher heard a student confront an unfamiliar word, she provided feedback by defining the word, but then went on to suggest how he could approach future words that contain familiar word parts. hair was dis-obed– What’s that? TEACHER:  Oh, disobedient. So, something … I’m noticing is there’s a little chunk of vocabulary that’s a little challenging. STUDENT:  Yeah. TEACHER:  What are you doing to support yourself? I know you’re really interested in the topic. Sometimes I would say to a student maybe you need to switch books because the book is hard. But I know you’re interested in this book, so what are you doing to help yourself with the vocabulary? STUDENT:  I don’t know. TEACHER:  All right, I want to offer you something to use that might help. So for example you had the word here disobedient. What does it mean to be disobedient? … STUDENT:  His

154  Erika Johnson STUDENT:  Like…

(6) sure? Okay. Let’s see if I can do this. Okay, so I’m putting my fingers around two sides of this word ((covers up prefix and suffix)) and I’m trying to give you the short root of the word. What do you see? STUDENT:  (2) Obey. TEACHER:  What does it mean to obey something? STUDENT:  Obey, like to listen to something. TEACHER:  Right, to do what you’re supposed to do. So if you disobey something what are you doing? STUDENT:  Like not doing what you’re supposed to. TEACHER:  Right. So something that’s disobedient is where it’s not supposed to be or saying what it’s not supposed to. Now, we know hair doesn’t talk, but hair can be where it’s not supposed to be, right? It’s an interesting use of the word in the situation. Do you see how you can use your fingers to find the root of the word? STUDENT:  Yeah. TEACHER:  I want you to try that out when you come to an unfamiliar word. See if you can find any root words to help you out. TEACHER:  Not

In another example of effective scaffolding, students were reading aloud a nonfiction article and arrived at the sentence, “Women who enter careers in science and math are more likely to leave than men.” The teacher then prompted students to explain why this might be true. When a student suggested that math and science jobs might be “trouble” for some women, the teacher provided feedback, noting that the meaning of “trouble” was unclear and then prompted her to work with a partner to clarify her response: STUDENT:  One

reason why this may be true is because women need to take care of children. They don’t want to do the occupation that was trouble. TEACHER:  [Typing sentence on board] Can you explain a little… What do you mean when you say “trouble?” Can you explain a little more? STUDENT:  That sometimes women have some finding (3) of trouble. STUDENT:  Huh? TEACHER:  So,

Kelly and Jessica. I want to give you some time to work that one out and then I’m going to come back to you. When you say “trouble”… So ((points to sentence on board)) … you said that women need to take care of children. They don’t want to be in an occupation, a job, that… and then you said “trouble.” What do you mean? Do you mean that math and science jobs are more troublesome? If you mean that they’re more troublesome, how are they more troublesome? Can you explain a little bit more. Or do you mean that women have trouble staying in these careers? I’ll give you time to think about it. Work it out and then I’ll come back to you.

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Limiting discourse to evaluation and backward-facing feedback on how a student has performed thus far can be useful, but it does not necessarily provide ways for students to continue with a challenging task. In these last two examples, however, the teachers provided “feed forward,” based on what their students had just said or done. This approach to scaffolding was intended to help them engage in further language and literacy work, such as clarifying meaning and using morphological clues to predict the meaning of unfamiliar words.

Explain Information That Leads to Student Agency, Not Apathy As Lobato, Clark, and Ellis (2005) argue, there is a time for telling during classroom instruction. They contend that telling—what I call explaining—is an instructionally valuable move when it “does not take fundamental agency for making sense away from students” (p. 107). In contrast, ineffective and counterproductive explaining occurs when it funnels students toward correct answers and prescribed ways of doing literacy and language. In another example from the class reading the chapter from Freakonomics (Levitt & Dubner, 2010), the teacher assumes that the students did not fully understand the section of text he had just read aloud, including the definition of the term “fellows.” So he quickly defined the word and then summarized the paragraph that the class just read: TEACHER:  Okay,

could we stop there really quickly? (2) They are talking about Sudhir and kind of his work at a place. (3) What is the name of this place, or university? STUDENT:  Harvard Society of Fellows. TEACHER:  Harvard

Society of Fellows, okay. And a Fellow is just a person who kind of does research, okay, they do research work. So here, he meets another person.…That’s what happening in this part.

While this teacher’s brief explanations of vocabulary and plot development were well intended, they eliminated opportunities for idea generation and extended talk about that section of text. In contrast, more effective scaffolding with explanation occurs when it promotes students’ agency in meaning-making and authentic language use. The challenge is for teachers to determine, in the moment, whether students would benefit from learning some critical information to make sense of text and language or whether providing that information would shut down their knowledge construction and exploration. Again, this contingent decision-making requires that teachers listen carefully to students and be familiar with what is potentially tricky about the text or linguistic skill they are learning. In this example from another class, the teacher uses a student’s question as an opportunity to, again, clarify the sentence, “Women who enter careers in science and math are more likely to leave than men.” The teacher could tell that one student was not interpreting the sentence as a comparison between the

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actions of women and men, so she explained the meaning of the phrase “more likely.” The teacher then used the brief clarification to return to the central analytical question of why this statement might be true: TEACHER:  So,

we had a clarifying question. Sarafina’s clarifying question is: What do you mean by ‘leave’? (3)((walks to board)) That means … they come into a job, they come into a career that is in math and science, but then they will leave ((points)) it. They will not stay there. They are more likely ((points)) to do so than men. STUDENT:  Oh. TEACHER:  So, you’re writing, why might you think that’s true? (10) More likely means, what? STUDENTS:  Probably. TEACHER:  No… oh, this is good. Thank you! ((Walks to whiteboard and points to sentence)) When I say “more likely” and “than,” when you see these words, what does it tell you? STUDENT:  Compare. TEACHER:  We’re comparing and contrasting. We’re comparing and contrasting. That means sometimes men will come into careers in science and math and some will leave too. But women come into these careers and they leave more often. They’re more likely to leave than men. And the question is, why? Why do you think? A final example illustrates how a teacher explained to a student how to make sense of a novel by using knowledge of the narrative arc. As in the prior example, the teacher briefly explained the critical information and then immediately prompted the student to use this new knowledge to make predictions about the text, thereby sustaining the challenging literacy task. TEACHER:  Well,

you’re close to the end of the book so what do you think is going to be the resolution? STUDENT:  Like at the end? TEACHER:  Um-hum, because you’re close to the end and you’ve got kind of a situation. I was just talking to Elliot about this. I know that I’ve said it to the class but I’ll remind you. The way novels are written there’s often like something that starts the novel; some problem or situation, and then at about the one quarter mark something happens; kind of a big thing that shifts the book, that’s the inciting action. And then about at … three quarters point, and you’re kind of at the three quarters point with this book, we’re heading toward the resolution. You just said that two people just left this young woman, the main character, alone with a baby and she’s nervous. So my question is what are you thinking is going to happen? How is this story going to resolve?

Scaffolding in Action  157 STUDENT:  That

she’s going to learn how to take care of the baby. going to learn. On the job training? Interesting. Are there any other problems happening or difficulties in the story that need to be resolved or fixed at the end?

TEACHER:  She’s

In the last two examples, the teachers’ brief explanations provided “just-in-time” scaffolding with critical information that students could then use to make sense of not only this text but texts they would confront in the future.

Model Complex Processes, Not Just Forms When working with multilingual students, teachers often emphasize the forms of language that students are expected to produce orally or in writing. For instance, many teachers provide sentence starters (e.g., “I agree with you because….”) and sentence frames (e.g., “Some animals ___, but other animals ____.”) to introduce more complex language structures and ways of talking and writing about text. Yet, scholars warn that too much emphasis on forms can limit opportunities for language production and meaning making, which should result from effective scaffolding. For instance, Rodriguez-Mojica (2019) found that specific instructional supports (e.g. sentence starters and teacher questions) intended to scaffold emergent bilinguals’ oral production of explanations actually limited students’ attempts to provide reasons and descriptions, which was the central objective of the lesson. While there is an important place for explicit instruction and models of language production, too much emphasis on form can preclude attention to modeling language and literacy processes. In scaffolding students’ learning, a teacher might model a process to highlight and clarify the thinking and the ongoing work that goes into it. Examples of language processes include noticing, analyzing, and trying out language and, more generally, building metalinguistic awareness. In this example, a teacher demonstrates how she uses cognates to help her determine the meaning of an unfamiliar word: TEACHER:  Let’s

look at this sentence. ((Reads from whiteboard)) The scientist works in the laboratory. Hmm, I’m not sure what that word means. ((points at the word laboratory)) I’m not sure where the scientist works. Laboratory. Let me show you something that I do when I see a word I don’t know. Sometimes I see if that word reminds me of any words I know in my own language, in the language I speak at home or another language I know. I know Spanish, so I’m going to think ((points to her head to mimic thinking)) about whether this word reminds me of any Spanish words I know. Any cognates. Words that sounds similar and mean the same thing. Hmm. Laboratory. Lab—That reminds me of a word I know in Spanish, lab-or-[a-]

158  Erika Johnson STUDENT:  [Laboratorio!]

laboratorio! Laboratorio is a cognate of laboratory. In Spanish, is a laboratorio a place where scientists work? STUDENT:  ¡Sí! Donde trabajan los científicos. TEACHER:  Yes, it’s where scientists work. It makes sense in this sentence. Right? So, that’s something I do when I see a word that I don’t know but that reminds me of a word I know in my own language. That’s something you can do too. TEACHER:  Yes,

In contrast to language processes, teachers modeling literacy processes, particularly those related to reading, demonstrate practices such as how to annotate text, justify a text-based argument, or synthesize new information presented by the author. In this brief example of effective scaffolding, the teacher models how she might ask questions about a text: TEACHER:  Let’s

look at the title: When only the best backfires: Why the most competitive high school might not be the best for your teen. ((Looks up to see if a student has a questions)) ((10)) Hmm. Maybe a question I have is…. ((writes question on board)) Does it mean that the best students are not doing well? I don’t know. I’m not sure! That’s what I’m doing when I read. I’m thinking about these questions and asking myself what this sentence means. ((Students begin to silently reread and annotate their texts))

In both cases, the teachers’ modeling provided students with an example of how to engage in the complex processes, not just how to replicate a particular form of language or literacy.

Uptake, Not Evaluation Another productive scaffolding move used by the teachers in my study was uptake. Uptake occurs when a teacher “takes up” or follows up on something a student has said or done by asking the student to elaborate. Uptake is an excellent alternative to evaluation because it allows teachers to engage with student thinking or language use without communicating whether the student’s comment was right or wrong. While evaluation can curtail student talk, uptake can extend it. For instance, in an earlier example the teacher used uptake when she asked, “Can you explain a little bit? When you say ‘trouble.’ What do you mean? Explain it a little bit.” This prompted more elaboration and sense-making by the student. In the following example, the teacher used a combination of uptake and highlighting to bring a student’s confusion to the surface, before inviting other students to respond to it:

Scaffolding in Action  159 TEACHER:  What

are your questions about the article? in paragraph 2. Um, the, the third sentence. No, the second sentence. He write, While at the time I thought so too. So, did he, his brother change his mind, mind? TEACHER:  Can you clarify that a little bit, Qiaohui? When you say, “change his mind,” first of all, change his mind about what? STUDENT:  Who is his father? TEACHER:  So, your ((goes to board)), so Qiaohui, you are noticing sentence 2 here ((underlines)) Qiaohui is noticing the second sentence here. Well, at the time I thought so too. You’re trying to figure out…? QIAOHUI:  What does so mean? And did he change his mind? … QIAOHUI:  Um,

TEACHER:  Who

can help her? She’s confused by that part. By this sentence ((points)) ((turns to class)) Who thinks they understand this sentence?

In the transcript that follows, several students weighed in on Qiaohui’s question by sharing their interpretations of the sentence, specifically addressing who had changed his mind and how. A teacher’s use of uptake does not necessarily lead to challenge-sustaining instruction, but discourse moves intended to understand and follow a student’s thinking appear to encourage students to elaborate on their thinking, spark exploratory talk about ideas, and promote collaborative disagreement (Applebee, Langer, Nystrand, & Gamoran, 2003), all hallmarks of a rich and challenging learning environment.

Conclusion Multilingual learners need robust opportunities to engage in the social and sensemaking practices of language and literacy (Aukerman, 2008; Hymes, 1974; van Lier, 2004). They require ample opportunities to do language and do the work of reading and discussing challenging text. Teachers can choose from a wide range of interactional scaffolding moves that help multilingual students successfully engage in this work. No singular move is necessarily right or wrong all the time, but teachers who routinely rely on scaffolds intended to help students arrive at predetermined answers and prescribed linguistic forms may do their students a disservice. The challenge-sustaining moves of effective scaffolding that I have focused on here are more likely to create opportunities for higher-order skills, such as idea generation, analysis, and evaluation. They also are more likely to lead to frequent and elaborated talk, which is essential for language and literacy development. As these examples show, the power of interactional scaffolding is often not in a single move, but in a series of moves that collectively respond to students’ needs in the moment and then propel them toward more challenging work. As Aukerman, Johnson, and Chambers Schuldt (2017) argue, it is not a single

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scaffold or the individual form of a teacher utterance that matters per se, but rather how these forms coalesce into broader discourse practices that serve particular instructional goals. Immersed in such contingent and challenge-sustaining discourse practices over time, students are more likely to internalize them and use them independently. By definition, all interactional scaffolds are to some extent contingent; they are responsive to students’ words and actions presented in the moment. But the scaffolds that I’ve highlighted as being more productive are contingent upon students’ meaning making and language use, rather than their progress toward forms and functions preselected by the teacher. By using these scaffolding practices, the teacher can meet students where they are and better provide opportunities for student-centered comprehension-as-sense-making and authentic language interaction. The interactional scaffolds described here are not specific to language or literacy development—they can support both. Teachers can pose uptake questions about students’ understandings of a challenging language form or of an entire text. Teachers can explain critical information that relates to a grammatical rule or to a reading strategy. Scaffolding in this way can work well across a wide range of language and literacy classes, which may include both multilingual and monolingual students demonstrating a wide range of proficiency and skill development. Finally, these instructional excerpts illustrate the expertise that teachers must have to effectively scaffold multilingual students’ language and literacy development. The power is not in the scaffolds, themselves, but in the process of scaffolding, which calls for strong skills of observation and diagnosis of learning needs. Teachers also need the pedagogical content knowledge and pedagogical linguistic knowledge necessary to provide scaffolds that are appropriately contingent on students’ current needs and practices. Pre-service and in-service teachers can develop these skills by watching and analyzing effective scaffolding with guidance from teacher educators and instructional coaches, who can pause recordings to point out children’s subtle indications of confusion or insight. Through rehearsals, prospective and current teachers can also practice scaffolding by tailoring their support to address the immediate responses and actions of their students.

References Applebee, A. N., Langer, J. A., Nystrand, M., & Gamoran, A. (2003). Discussion-based approaches to developing understanding: Classroom instruction and student performance in middle and high school English. American Educational Research Journal, 40(3), 685–730. Athanases, S. Z., & de Oliveira, L. C. (2014). Scaffolding versus routine support for Latina/o youth in an urban school: Tensions in building toward disciplinary literacy. Journal of Literacy Research, 46(2), 263–299 Aukerman, M. (2008). In praise of wiggle room: Locating comprehension in unlikely places. Language Arts, 86(1), 52–60.

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Aukerman, M., Johnson, E. M., & Chambers Schuldt, L. (2017). Reciprocity of student and teacher discourse practices in monologically and dialogically organized text discussion. Journal of Language and Literacy Education, 13(2), 1–52. Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays (C. Emerson & M. Holquist, Trans.). University of Texas Press. Bellack, A. A., Kliebard, H. M., Hyman, R. T. & Smith, F. I. (1966). The language of the classroom. Teachers’ College Press. Daniel, S. M., Martin-Beltrán, M., Peercy, M. M., & Silverman, R. (2016). Moving beyond yes or no: Shifting from over-scaffolding to contingent scaffolding in literacy instruction with emergent bilingual students. TESOL Journal, 7(2), 393–420. de Oliveira, L. C., & Athanases, S. Z. (2017). A framework to reenvision instructional scaffolding for linguistically diverse learners. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 61(2), 123–129. Gibbons, P. (2009). English learners, academic literacy, and thinking: Learning in the challenge zone. Heinemann. Hammond, J., & Gibbons, P. (2005). Putting scaffolding to work: The contribution of scaffolding in articulating ESL education. Prospect, 20, 6–30. Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(1), 81–112. Hiebert, J., & Grouws, D. A. (2007). The effects of classroom mathematics teaching on students’ learning. In F. K. Lester (Ed.), Second handbook of research on mathematics teaching and learning (pp. 371–404). Information Age. Hymes, D. (1974). Foundations of sociolinguistics: An ethnographic approach. University of Pennsylvania Press. Johnson, E. M. (2019a). Exemplary reading teachers’ use of instructional scaffolds with emergent bilinguals and the factors that shape their choices. TESOL Quarterly, 53(1), 108–132. Johnson, E. M. (2019b). Choosing and using interactional scaffolds: How teachers’ moment-to-moment supports shape emergent bilinguals’ engagement with challenging texts. Research in the Teaching of English, 53(3), 245–269. Johnson, E. M. (2021). Contingency in context: A comparative case study of exemplary reading teachers’ use of planned scaffolds in secondary English classes with emergent bilinguals. Reading and Writing Quarterly, 37(3), 260–278 Levitt, S. D., & Dubner, S. J. (2010). Freakonomics: A rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything. Morrow. Lloyd, C. (2015). When “only the best” backfires: Why the most competitive high school may not be right for your teen. http://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/ when-the-best-high-school-isnt-the-best/ Lobato, J., Clarke, D., & Ellis, A. B. (2005). Initiating and eliciting in teaching: A reformulation of telling. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 36(2), 101–136. Mehan, H. (1979) Learning lessons. Harvard University Press. Menken, K. (2013). Emergent bilingual students in secondary school: Along the academic language and literacy continuum. Language Teaching, 46(4), 438. Reynolds, D. (2017). Interactional scaffolding for comprehension. Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice, 66, 135–156. Rodriguez-Mojica, C. (2019). Instructional supports: Facilitating or constraining emergent bilinguals’ production of oral explanations? International Multilingual Research Journal, 13(1), 51–66.

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van de Pol, J., Volman, M., & Beishuizen, J. (2010). Scaffolding in teacher-student interaction: A decade of research. Educational Psychology Review, 22, 271–296. Van Lier L. (2004). The ecology and semiotics of language learning: A sociocultural perspective. Springer Science & Business Media. Walqui, A. (2006). Scaffolding instruction for English language learners: A conceptual framework. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 9, 159–180. Wood, D., Bruner, J. S., & Ross, G. (1976). The role of tutoring in problem solving. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 17(2), 89–100.

Scaffolding in Action  163 APPENDIX A  Transcript Conventions

Convention

Signification

: … (6) Underlined text Bold Bold italics [] (( ))

Extension of sound Abrupt cut-off or unfinished word Trailing speech Pause for indicated number of seconds Emphasis Text read aloud Non-English language talk Overlapping talk Physical movements

SECTION 3

Professional Learning with Teachers

11 SCAFFOLDING LEARNING FOR TEACHERS OF MULTILINGUAL LEARNERS THROUGH AGENCY, LEADERSHIP, AND COLLABORATION Kara Mitchell Viesca, Cindy H. Linzell, Peiwen Wang, Molly Heeren, Jessica Mitchell-McCollough, and Alexa Yunes-Koch Grounded in findings from multiple disciplines (e.g., neuroscience, human, development, cognitive science, and social psychology), Lee, Meltzoff, and Kuhl (2020) propose a framework to understand human learning. Composed of multiple propositions, one aspect of this framework emphasizes the social nature of learning. Specifically, they argue, “A comprehensive theory of human development must take into account basic motivations for learning from, through, and in relationship with social others” [emphasis added] (p. 25). Education researchers and practitioners working with multilingual students and their teachers have extensively argued for attention to “learning from, through, and in relationships with social others” (Lee et al., 2020, p. 25) (e.g. Hawkins, 2019; Viesca & Teemant, 2019). In fact, Viesca and Teemant (2019) describe how this should occur through attention to three assumptions from sociocultural theory (Vygotsky, 1978): (1) learning is social, (2) teaching is assistance and situated performance, and (3) knowledge is cultural and competent participation. These perspectives on learning are often taken into account when designing learning opportunities for students in K-12 classrooms and we argue they should for teacher professional learning as well. Further, our work and the study described here suggest that such learning for teachers is best accomplished through teacher agency, leadership, and collaboration.

Quality Teacher Professional Learning Desimone, Porter, Garet, Yoon, and Birman (2002) engaged in a longitudinal study of teacher professional learning and found that the best learning opportunities for teachers are more than just sitting in a lecture, should last as long as possible, should include as many from the same school community as possible, DOI: 10.4324/9781003196228-14

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should focus on active learning, are meaningfully connected to teachers’ professional lives, and are more than just pedagogy. Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1999) also made impactful distinctions about teacher knowledge that should be considered in professional learning contexts. They noted that teachers need “knowledge-for-practice,” [emphasis in original] the knowledge generated from research and theory that is for teachers to improve their practice. Teachers also need “knowledge-in-practice,” which is the knowledge generated by teachers working and reflecting in their classrooms. Most importantly, Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1999) argue for teachers to develop “knowledge-of-practice” by “working within the contexts of inquiry communities to theorize and construct their work and connect it to larger social, cultural, and political issues” (p. 24). Across decades of research examining teacher professional learning, the need for teacher learning to occur “from, through, and in relationship with social others” (Lee et al., 2020, p. 25) is clear. In fact, it guided the professional learning examined in this chapter. One effective way to create these kinds of professional learning opportunities for teachers is through online professional development. School districts often prefer online professional development due to the reduced cost from eliminated expenses in transportation and class substitutes, as well as the lessened disruptions to workflow (Carr, 2010). Studies have also found that teachers tend to value online professional learning due to its inherent ability to be responsive to current needs, and the opportunities the online format can provide for engagement and collaboration with peers across greater distances and at more convenient times (Russell, Kleiman, Carey, & Douglas, 2009; Smith, 2014). Some researchers have found online professional learning to be at least as effective as face-to-face coursework (Carr, 2010; Fishman et al., 2013) and to have a positive effect on teachers’ instructional practices and content knowledge (Borko, 2004; Cady & Reardon, 2009; Cavanaugh & Dawson, 2010; Russell et al., 2009). Our team has spent the last decade developing, researching, and offering professional learning for teachers of multilingual students, grounded in these perspectives around online professional learning as well as the research on quality professional development for teachers and important teacher knowledge.

Agency, Leadership, and Collaboration in Professional Learning Teacher agency is a critical factor in translating successful professional development into classroom practice (Opfer & Pedder, 2011; Riveros, Newton, & Burgess, 2012). However, teacher agency is generally understudied and undertheorized (Biesta, Priestley, & Robinson, 2015; Priestley, Biesta, & Robinson, 2015; Riveros et al., 2012). In research on professional development, teacher agency is often set up as a binary: the teacher is either an autonomous actor in complete control—she “has” agency—or she is a total victim to her circumstances. However, recent research (e.g., Priestley et al., 2015) suggests a more

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complex and ecological definition of teacher agency. Teacher agency is not something the teacher has, but rather something she does (Biesta et al., 2015), and that doing is an emergent phenomenon of the teacher and her assemblage— that is, agency is not an individual phenomenon, but is collective and distributed, and encompasses both human and nonhuman elements (Strom & Viesca, 2020). As such, agency is closely linked to teacher leadership and collaboration in professional learning. For example, Teacher Practice Networks have been shown to provide important opportunities for teacher agency, leadership, and collaboration in professional learning (Gerdeman, Garrett, & Monahan, 2018). Teachers are often situated to help other teachers learn through formal and/or informal learning opportunities (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000) and teachers often learn well in collaboration, particularly when collaborating across disciplines and content areas (Babinski, Amendum, Knotek, Sánchez, & Malone, 2018; DelliCarpini & Alonso, 2014; Martin-Beltrán & Peercy, 2014; Russell, 2014, 2015; Vázquez, López, Segador, & Mohedano, 2015). That agency, leadership, and collaboration are important principles undergirding successful teacher learning initiatives is supported by existing research, but more research is necessary to understand their nuances, complexities, and impacts individually and in combination, both from teachers’ perspectives and in terms of impacts on teacher beliefs, attitudes, and classroom practice.

eWorkshops: Professional Learning for Teachers of Multilingual Students In 2011, a National Professional Development grant from the Office of English Language Acquisition1 was awarded to a group of faculty in Colorado who began developing teacher learning opportunities that were grounded in sociocultural perspectives as well as the research described above regarding quality professional learning for teachers. Specifically, eWorkshops were developed that created the context for meaningful learning from, through, and in relationship with other educators via the affordances of online professional learning (Viesca et al., 2016). Additionally, these eWorkshops offer multimedia resources for professional learning communities of educators to engage in collaborative inquiry (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009) and to grow their own culturally and linguistically responsive/sustaining practices with multilingual students (Lucas & Villegas, 2011; Paris, 2012). In the eWorkshops, learning opportunities focus on developing teachers’ “knowledge-of-practice” particularly in their work with multilingual students, informed by critical sociocultural theory and pedagogy (e.g., Teemant & Hausman, 2013), culturally sustaining pedagogies (e.g., Alim, Paris, & Wong, 2020; Paris, 2012; Paris & Alim, 2017) and linguistically responsive approaches (Lucas & Villegas, 2011). To accomplish this, the professional learning model of

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each eWorkshop allows for a great deal of flexibility, personal choice, opportunities for leadership, and the expectation of thoughtful collaboration from all participants. In other words, the eWorkshop model is grounded in the principles of agency, leadership, and collaboration. Teachers enact agency in selecting which content to engage with and how to put it into practice in their classroom, as well as how to share and discuss it with their eWorkshop colleagues. Teachers also collaborate throughout the eWorkshop via online discussions and by sharing their work and additional resources with each other. Because agency is built into the eWorkshop learning model, collaboration is also quite open and can be sculpted to meet the wishes and needs of the participants. Finally, the eWorkshops provide various opportunities for leadership as teachers can decide how to work with one another and even take leadership beyond the eWorkshop itself by sharing ideas with colleagues offline. The eWorkshops are where teachers lead one another to great ideas and push their practices and approaches. These professional learning opportunities are exciting spaces of shared learning through the collective application of agency, leadership, and collaboration. Once the eWorkshops had been developed, used, and studied for nearly a decade, we wanted to know more about teacher perspectives regarding agency, leadership, and collaboration. Specifically, we reached out to interview eWorkshop completers and asked them to share their perspectives on these elements of teacher professional learning both within and outside of the eWorkshop structure. Through the analysis of participants’ responses, we were able to expand our understandings of the value of these principles in teacher learning, specifically in relationship to the concept of scaffolding.

Scaffolding Learning for Teachers of Multilingual Learners Scaffolding is essentially the practices that create the learning conditions where learners can learn from, through, and in relationship with social others (Lee et al., 2020), particularly to reach a state of independent competence that would not have been possible without such assistance (Vygotsky, 1978). Much research on preparing teachers to work with multilingual learners has illustrated the value and power of teacher learning in collaboration for strong learning outcomes (e.g., Brancard & Quinnwilliams, 2012; Jimenez-Silva & Olson, 2012; MartinBeltrán & Peercy, 2014; Peercy & Martin-Beltrán, 2012; Peercy, Martin-Beltrán, Silverman, & Nunn, 2015; Russell, 2014). This research guided much of the work we did in creating collaborative learning possibilities for teachers through our eWorkshops. As we examined and learned from our experiences providing collaborative professional learning for teachers in varied contexts across varied geographies and spaces, we began to understand collaboration as intricately linked to agency and leadership in scaffolding transformative learning experiences for teachers of multilingual learners. Therefore, in our work providing eWorkshops to teachers

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of multilingual learners, we have sought to create the context for teachers to accomplish in collaboration what they would not have been able to achieve on their own. We have also aimed to support teacher learning which leads to the independent state of competence by creating professional learning opportunities grounded in the principles of teacher agency, leadership, and collaboration. This study is an examination of some of our eWorkshop completers’ perspectives to see whether our objectives have been met. The research question that guided our inquiry was, “What roles and relationships do the principles of agency, leadership, and collaboration have and/or play in scaffolding learning for teachers of multilingual learners?”

Methods This qualitative interview study examined teacher perspectives regarding the principles of agency, leadership, and collaboration in their professional learning experiences (our eWorkshops and other forms of professional learning).

Participants We selected participants purposively rather than randomly because we chose to recruit those who were deemed as interesting and important for the current study, thus more likely to help fulfill the research purposes (Henry, 2009). Specifically, participants were recruited for this study because they had all taken one or more professional learning eWorkshops previously and indicated their willingness to participate in further interviews in the exit survey of the eWorkshops. Recruitment information was sent to them via email and 26 of them consented to participate in the study. For various reasons, including the Covid19 pandemic, attrition occurred and interviews of 15 of the 26 consented participants were successfully completed. The 15 participants were either in-service teachers of multilingual learners (60%, n=9) or coaches, specialists, coordinators, or leaders who had previously taught in multilingual contexts (40%, n=6). They had diverse backgrounds in terms of age, education background, geography, race, and so on, and differed from each other regarding the specific content or subject area and grade level they taught, as well as years of teaching experiences, ranging from 3 years to 27 years.

Data Collection Semi-structured interviews were chosen as the data-collection method for this study due largely to the flexibility that they allow for, creating the space for interview modifications depending on participants’ individual responses. As a result, both the participants and the interviewers were engaged in dialogue, and the latter were also able to more closely explore themes that emerged from the

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participants’ responses (McIntosh & Morse, 2015). The interviews were conducted during the 2019 to 2020 academic year, each lasting 30 to 60 minutes. The interviews were transcribed and de-identified for analysis.

Data Analysis The transcripts were analyzed through various rounds of re-examination and coding. Attention was intentionally given to identifying unique perspectives between interviews as opposed to looking only for similarities. This qualitative descriptive data analysis led to the emergence of four salient themes across the 15 interviews.

Findings Throughout the interview process, participants consistently described how agency, leadership, and collaboration worked together to scaffold their learning and improvement of their pedagogy. They also frequently repeated the frustration they felt with “one size fits all” professional development and how their leadership, agency, and collaboration were not components of top-down professional development. In fact, participants often described feeling disempowered with those forms of traditional professional development. To further understand these findings, we explore four themes that emerged from our data analysis: leadership as role versus action, self-directed learning, meaningful learning impacting meaningful teaching, and adapting and applying learning so that all learners can thrive.

Leadership as Role Versus Action When asked to describe leadership, participant perceptions resided within a dichotomy of leadership as a role or leadership as an action. Our analysis revealed that leadership is difficult to disentangle from agency and collaboration and may, in fact, be most poignant when both agency and collaboration coalesced. However, there was a vast difference between the two perceptions of leadership as a role and leadership as an action. The majority of participants sharing the perspective of leadership as a role used descriptions of top-down leadership. Leadership roles ranged from state, district, and school levels, and included mentions of superintendents, principals, instructional coaches, and team leaders. The professional learning led by people in these roles were often described as highly standardized experiences centered around checking all the right boxes as opposed to creating meaningful learning opportunities. Participants conceptualizing leadership as a role described their professional learning experiences as something “given” to them (P23) or something they were “trained in” (P25) so they could teach others. Thus, leadership as a role

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lacked the agentive qualities to nurture the actualization process for teachers. One participant lamented this approach saying, “there’s a lot of like human capital that I think doesn’t really get leveraged when you don’t have agency to work with each other and so a district determines what (is) valuable and imposes it” (P08). Some participants (P22, P14, P16) also described leaders as those with the passion and the motivation to achieve the goal, seeming to imply a lack of inherent value and voice for the rest of the participants in the experience. In fact, the only way some participants felt they could have agency within the described dynamics would be through the act of “becoming leaders” themselves. They went on to explain that this would mean abandoning their roles as a teacher, which they phrased as “jumping ship,” and/or “stepping up” into administrator roles, illustrating and highlighting the lack of avenues for lateral leadership as teachers (P08). Some participants noted the role of leadership as responsive and proactive, focusing on top-down leadership initiatives addressing teacher and student need. Such perspectives reflected more agentive qualities in leadership roles that provide tools and supports to address the unique needs and strengths of teachers and students specific to their learning communities. These kinds of learning experiences from those in leadership roles also appeared to provide choice to teachers and originated from existing professional learning communities and teacher feedback. While these accounts of leadership as a role did illustrate some responsive qualities in designing and implementing teacher professional learning, the overall content and delivery were still imposed on teachers from those in leadership roles. In contrast, some participants understood leadership as an action that wasn’t restricted only to those in official leadership roles, providing descriptions of collegiality, growth, and support. One participant described leadership as “shared responsibility” (P03). Leadership as action requires everyone bringing their ideas to the table with the common goal of helping more expansive ideas emerge from the collective consciousness. Participants noted how this can occur through dialogue and conversations, providing good feedback and questioning one another. Another participant (P25) named leadership as action as, “Leadership would be like taking the things that you’ve learned in my classes and being able to show them to my teammates.” As this quote illustrates, when leadership was described as action versus a role, the principles of agency and collaboration were also present. In these instances, meaningful learning was described as including new skill development and discovering assets in themselves and others. It appears that great learning assets surfaced when they might have otherwise gone unrealized without leadership being enacted with the principles of agency and collaboration as well. In the context of the eWorkshop, one participant (P22) noted how teachers were able to emerge as leaders through their actions and engagements within the eWorkshop: interestingly enough, there were a lot of people who emerged who weren’t typically leaders in other areas, but they were during that workshop for a

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host of reasons. One is, interestingly enough, we have a lot of teachers at our school who themselves were second language learners…. And so sometimes their own leadership as second language learners came out during the workshop about how to teach English language learners and that was really interesting. I myself am not a second language learner so it was really interesting and illuminating to hear from people who had gone through that themselves. As scaffolding in teacher professional learning, the principle of leadership appears to matter most when conceptualized as action rather than as a role, particularly in connection to agency and collaboration. Overall, the lack of voice and choice with top-down leadership practices hindered the learning process for teachers when leadership was confined to a role. However, when leadership was taken up through actions and behaviors, leadership, agency, and collaboration were present together. Based on these findings, as we discuss leadership further in this chapter, we will be focusing on leadership as an action versus a role.

Self-directed Learning Another prominent theme emerging from the participants’ qualitative interview data is the operationalization of the principles of agency, leadership, and collaboration scaffolding self-directed learning. As noted above, these principles do not work in isolation from one another in shaping in-service teachers’ professional learning; rather, they share a reciprocal and dynamic relationship, thus working collaboratively in creating the contexts for meaningful and impactful learning gains. For instance, one participant (P16) specifically explained how they are aided by the principles of leadership and agency to take ownership over their professional learning: I’m in the process of taking leadership over my own learning right now so that I can and I get to pick and choose basically what I want to learn to help me in the areas that I find passionate…. So probably trying to see if there’s anything new in those areas that I love doing such as music and seeing if I can become as passionate with the new stuff as I am about the old stuff. That would be my context of leadership is taking responsibility for my own learning. This participant took the initiative in choosing the areas that they felt passionate about and took charge of determining how these options could be used, thus exhibiting a sense of control and ownership, which is shared by several other participants. Here the principles of both agency and leadership are manifested and intersected, thus playing a vital role in scaffolding the participants’ selfdirected and autonomous learning. In addition, many participants (P03, P05, P7,

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P10, P14, P16, P22, P25) indicated their preferred type of professional learning opportunities, that is, those affording them a variety of choices and flexibilities in what they learn, how they learn, and how they apply the knowledge. This finding resonates with an overarching theme identified by the study conducted by Bonk, Lee, Kou, Xu, and Sheu (2015), which suggests the preferred online instruction is the one that provides adult learners with choices in the modes and construction of learning. The analysis of our data lends support to the potential of the three principles in helping the learners maximize their autonomy and agency, thus approaching their own learning in a more meaningful and liberating way.

Meaningful Learning Impacting Meaningful Teaching Throughout the interviews, agency and collaboration were described as working in tandem by participants to help negotiate the unique opportunities of their learning environments. As a result, a reciprocal relationship between collective efficacy and individual accountability manifested to create supportive environments where participants had the freedom to be able to take what was learned in the eWorkshops and make it fit the reality of their classroom instruction (P10). Beginning with the option to choose the topic of their professional development, agency served to enable teachers to grow the learning abilities of their multilingual students but was also reinforced by the commitment of other eWorkshop participants’ desire to do the same. Participants described how difficult teaching can be, but further explained that, by collaborating, they were able to achieve a level of learning that they couldn’t necessarily have achieved on their own. P24 stated, “we all have our different strengths and different weaknesses … and so I think collaboration is taking all of those different strengths and putting it together, putting together something amazing.” While this level of collaboration was described as “critical,” several participants also noted the need for authentic collaboration. Participants noted times when they were in the same room with colleagues and were supposed to be collaborating, but were actually just going through the pre-prescribed motions to achieve a pre-determined outcome. Their notions of authentic collaboration appear to be grounded in dynamic spaces of innovation, creativity, problem-solving, and actual co-construction. There also appears to be a strong role for agency in the notions of authentic collaboration shared by our participants for the work to be individually and collectively relevant. Through the eWorkshops, participants exerted their agency by creating work that was applicable to their own classrooms. They sought to learn the things that would help them improve the learning of their own multilingual students. In doing so, participants learned to differentiate their lessons to respond to the learning assets and trajectories of their students—from providing deadline extension to remediation and all possible additional supports a teacher might provide.

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P05 stated, “I was able to take the information given to me and apply it. I was able to use work other teachers have tried, and use it [their work] in my classroom. I was able to talk about my practice.” The teachers described this combination of agency and collaboration as a way to further their own learning by then adopting others’ ideas. They strategized, problem-solved, and were inspired by each other. The participants described the sharing of experiences as empowering, and stated that they grew as professionals through collaboration. Additionally, participants reported how such empowerment led to their own leadership by enabling them to share their learning with their colleagues in their school or district. Participants reported leadership actions that occurred by sharing content and resources, along with tools that had been successful in their own (or other eWorkshop participants’) classrooms with educators outside of the eWorkshop. Ultimately, the multilingual students in the participants’ classrooms were the beneficiaries of teacher learning, as the participants felt better able to support their students’ learning. When describing the way agency, leadership, and collaboration translated learning into meaningful practice, P05 stated it best when she said, “it allows me to be the teacher my students need, not just the teacher I want to be.”

Adapting and Applying Learning So That All Learners Can Thrive We found that agency, collaboration, and leadership not only scaffolded teachers to learn to adapt and apply instruction generally into their classroom, but specifically toward the different learning assets and abilities of students that they serve. P22 stated, “We were all trying to improve the language instruction for the students at our school, but how we did that in the specific way that we did was different for everyone.” As participants engaged in dialogic and inquiry-based processes, the principles of agency, leadership, and collaboration in combination kept professional development experiences student-centered and focused on multilingual learners. Adapting and applying eWorkshop content to classroom environments was driven by the desire to help all multilingual learners self-actualize through learning. To accomplish this, growing student discourse opportunities in the learning environment was an important commitment shared by multiple participants. One participant highlighted the significance of funds of knowledge as a pivotal touchpoint of learning in the eWorkshop that was later applied to lesson planning for the students in their class. one of the things that came up in the workshop quite a bit was the idea of funds of knowledge of the idea that students have these pieces of knowledge or these pools of knowledge that are oftentimes unfortunately really untapped, personal knowledge and cultural knowledge that they may

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bring with them that they don’t necessarily or that they can’t because of language limitations right now. They can’t necessarily verbalize fully but that are there. And if you tap into them. That can be hugely helpful when you’re designing lessons and designing activities (P22). As participants spoke about the importance of student discourse, funds of knowledge, reflection, and collaboration, the ebb and flow of leadership behaviors among participants modeled what they themselves wanted students to do. Agency, collaboration, and leadership provided conditions in the learning community for educators to replicate what they aspired to plan and enact in their classroom settings with students. Ultimately, through experiencing the impacts of questioning and reflection themselves through scaffolding teacher learning through the principles of agency, leadership and collaboration, many participants emphasized the importance of student discourse in their classes, which they discussed as individualized based on students’ particular language acquisition trajectories. Thus, the principles of agency, leadership, and collaboration worked together, scaffolding teachers learning, which enabled teachers of multilingual learners to adapt instruction to be responsive to learning environments so multilingual students could thrive.

Implications and Conclusion The nuanced understandings of the principles of agency, leadership, and collaboration scaffolding teacher learning for teachers of multilingual learners found in this study have multiple important implications for professional learning efforts. First, it is clear that teachers prefer learning opportunities that are grounded in these principles and that, in combination with agency, leadership and collaboration are strongest. Second, together, agency, leadership, and collaboration scaffold learning for teachers to grow their collective as well as independent abilities around implementing strong teaching practices that support multilingual student learning. Finally, professional learning for teachers should include the principles of agency, leadership, and collaboration to create the strongest possible context for their learning to matter in terms of their classroom practice. To us, principle-driven work scaffolding teacher learning should undergird the development and implementation of strong professional learning programs. Our eWorkshops are one example of principle-driven professional learning that can have a strong impact on teacher learning. We envision a variety of ways that these principles scaffold teachers’ learning in a variety of different contexts for a variety of different learning outcomes. That is why they are particularly valuable as a foundational tool for designing meaningful professional learning—scaffolding strong teacher learning, agency, leadership, and collaboration in ways that are flexible and capable of meaningfully enduring across extensive

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difference—something that has particularly emerged with the popularity and reach of our work during the Covid-19 pandemic. In this way, they are principles that also scaffold the possibilities of difference as positively productive and democratic pluralism in teacher professional learning.

Note 1 NPD grant PR/Award #T365Z110177

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Russell, M., Kleiman, G., Carey, R., & Douglas, J. (2009). Comparing self-paced and Cohort based online courses for teachers. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 41(4), 443–446. Sleeter, C., Torres, M. N., & Laughlin, P. (2004). Scaffolding conscientization through inquiry in teacher education. Teacher Education Quarterly, Winter, 81–96. Smith, S. U. (2014). Frameworks shaping an online professional development program for K-12 teachers of ELLs: Toward supporting the sharing of ideas for empowering classroom teachers online. TESOL Journal, 5(3), 444–464. Strom, K., & Viesca, K. M., (2020). Toward a complex framework of teacher Learning practice. Professional Development in Education. Advanced online publication https:// doi.org/10.1080/19415257.2020.1827449 Teemant, A., & Hausman, C. S. (2013). The relationship of teacher use of critical sociocultural practices with student achievement. Critical Education, 4(4). Retrieved from http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/criticaled/article/view/182434 Vázquez, V. P., López, J. A., Segador, A. G., & Mohedano, R. E. (2015). Strategic and organisational considerations in planning content and language integrated learning: A study on the coordination between content and language teachers. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 18(4), 409–425. https://doi.org/10.1080/1367 0050.2014.909774 Viesca, K. M., Hamilton, B., Davidson, A., & The eCALLMS Team (2016). Supporting linguistically responsive teaching: e-Learning communities for academic language learning in mathematics and science (eCALLMS). In C. P. Proctor, A. Boardman, & E. H. Hiebert (Eds.), Teaching emergent bilingual students: Flexible approaches in an era of new standards (pp. 215–236). Guilford. Viesca, K. M., & Teemant, A. (2019). Preparing mainstream content teachers to work with bi/multilingual students. In L. C. de Oliveira (Ed.), The handbook of TESOL in K-12 (pp. 371–386). Wiley and Sons. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Harvard University Press.

12 EDUCATIVE MATHEMATICS CURRICULUM MATERIALS FOR ENGLISH LEARNERS Varying the Intensity of Scaffolding Haiwen Chu and Leslie Hamburger

How do mathematics teachers decide on the “just right” level of support—that expands their students’ autonomy over time—as they design and enact learning experiences for English Learners? This question guides our work in iteratively developing curriculum materials in secondary mathematics that challenge and support students while simultaneously being educative for teachers. In this chapter, we describe the architecture of the curriculum materials we are developing and elaborate on how they support both quality learning experiences for English Learners and the expansion of educator expertise. Specifically, we focus on teachers’ pedagogical reasoning to vary the intensity of scaffolding for English Learners based on their formative assessment practices around students’ understandings and needs as they decide how to offer appropriate supports (Heritage et al., 2015). Such flexible pedagogical scaffolding ensures that activities which are challenging are balanced with high levels of support. Improved math curriculum materials are necessary because currently used curricula are insufficient to challenge and support English Learners. Most contemporary math curricula are oriented as a “delivery mechanism” which tends to lower the rigor of what teachers implement with their classes, and ultimately the rigor of student activity (Choppin, Roth-McDuffie, Drake, & Davis, 2020). The “delivery mechanism” orientation focuses on the rationalist, sequential ordering of topics and skills that are predefined and predetermined. By contrast, the “thinking tool” orientation (called “thinking device” in the original) is more aligned with our approach, which invites teachers to dialogically weigh what they do, as they enact learning opportunities in which students generate ideas, procedures, and approaches rather than receive and reproduce them. The educative aim of our curriculum materials is to foster teacher pedagogical reasoning about scaffolding—the offering of “just right” supports to enable English DOI: 10.4324/9781003196228-15

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Learners to engage in ambitious mathematical learning. This need for expanded educator agency is timely given how the teacher-facing components of curricula frequently position English Learners through homogenizing deficit lenses: in need of remediation and more practice with vocabulary, rather than ideas (de Araujo & Smith, 2021). Our “thinking tool” approach seeks to counteract several unproductive dimensions of the “delivery mechanism” approach: (1) the pre-teaching of vocabulary; (2) the provision of predetermined procedures; (3) the development of fluency through repetition with narrowly selected problems and exercises; and (4) collections of problems that reflect a sequential and repetitive approach. By approaching curriculum materials as a “thinking tool,” we offer instead: (1) developing terminology to foster greater precision when necessary; (2) positioning students as the primary source of approaches; (3) offering problems that invite students to stretch their understandings; and (4) organizing coherent units of study that progressively deepen students’ understandings of contexts and concepts. As teachers use these more educative—rather than prescriptive—curriculum materials through ongoing pedagogical reasoning, they will offer students “just-right” scaffolding. Pedagogical scaffolding is a widely discussed—but perhaps less commonly understood—aspect of quality learning opportunities for English Learners in the disciplines. Since the original metaphor of “scaffolding” was introduced more than four decades ago (Bruner & Sherwood, 1976; Wood, Bruner, & Ross, 1976), greater consensus has emerged among those taking a sociocultural perspective about scaffolding as related to processes of social interaction and participation in activity to develop knowledge. Indeed, rather than relying entirely upon the assistance of a more expert other, students can benefit from collaborating with equal peers, less experienced peers, and by drawing upon inner resources, which van Lier (2004) proposed as constituting the expanded Zone of Proximal Development. Because each of these kinds of interaction has the potential to support student learning and to expand their agency and autonomy over time, a framework for pedagogical reasoning and decision-making can assist educators as they design and implement quality learning experiences for English Learners. Pedagogical scaffolding is effective when it enables students to appropriate practices that they first experienced in the social plane—in interaction with others—into their individual repertoires. It is important that pedagogical scaffolding explicitly aims at such expansion of learner autonomy and agency over time, rather than just providing them with any help or assistance to get a job done (Walqui & van Lier, 2010). For this reason, teachers will need to continually sense what students are understanding, where and how they need more help, and how to provide them with just enough feedback and support to develop their autonomy. In this chapter, we outline a framework that guides an iterative math development project to create educative curriculum materials which aim at expanding educators’ capacity to reason pedagogically about the intensity of scaffolding to

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accelerate the learning of secondary English Learners. This kind of reasoning will enable educators to contingently respond to students’ needs in ways that serve to expand their autonomy over time. This development project employs design-based research, an approach that focuses on the development of practical instructional theories through: (1) operationalizing theories of learning for a discipline; (2) supporting collaborative research and development in authentic educational settings (Anderson & Shattuck, 2012; Mckenney & Reeves, 2012); and (3) informing the design of learning activities as work progresses through cycles of iterative development, testing, and refinement (e.g., Moore, Schleppegrell, & Palincsar, 2018). Design principles are propositions that guide the creation and implementation of activities. They are not, however, fixed; curriculum developers periodically revisit the principles and revise them based upon results from empirical tests, thus enabling practice to not only inform theory but also to potentially transform it.

Reimagining and Amplifying Mathematics Participation, Understanding, and Practices (RAMP-UP) for English Learners In this section, as an example of educative curriculum that is developed iteratively, we give a broad overview of the initially planned three-week summer bridge course targeted at rising ninth graders who are about to enroll in high school mathematics. In contrast to summer programs that serve purposes of remediation or acceleration, this program has a distinct intention: to offer participating students a conceptual framework that they will be able to both draw upon and revisit as they explore new mathematical topics across their high school mathematics careers. The course brings to life three design principles: • Center learning on generative disciplinary ideas that are powerful and relevant; • Design scaffolding in planned and contingent ways at multiple instructional scales; • Invite and support students in dialogue to engage in disciplinary practices

Center Learning on Generative Ideas That Are Powerful and Relevant Mathematics instruction has long focused on computational procedures and speed, at the expense of ideas (Hamburger & Chu, 2019). By focusing instead on ideas, English Learners can connect mathematical procedures to rationales for why they work as well as the conditions under which they may need to be adapted in novel situations. Ideas are relevant if they connect to students’ prior lived experiences and have the potential to develop their agency over time

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(Rubel, 2017; Rubel & Chu, 2012). Not only can mathematics be a powerful tool to understand real-world situations, but real-world experiences can also serve as an analogical basis for understanding mathematics (Chu & Rubel, 2013). We have identified notions parallel to the Next Generation Science Standards’ “cross-cutting concepts” that are meant to connect the three major domains of secondary mathematics (algebra, geometry, and statistics). For instance, the concept of equivalence as related to a set of transformations applies across algebra (two equations are equivalent if operations transform them into each other), geometry (two objects are similar if dilations transform them into each other), and statistics (two data sets have the same arithmetic mean or average, if they can be transformed into each other without altering the overall total sum of values). Table 12.1 displays the three modules and selected topics within each module. Each week of the program comprises a module that introduces a cross-cutting concept, and has students explore it across at least two domains of mathematics. Within each module, students also have opportunities to then apply the crosscutting concept to novel situations or their own newly created examples.

Design Scaffolding in Planned and Contingent Ways at Multiple Instructional Scales The structure of the modules reflects another level of pedagogical decisionmaking and design, namely, the instructional scales that extend beyond a specific activity or task. These instructional scales span the macro-, meso-, and micro-level aspects of lesson planning, which may in turn incorporate additional nested layers (such as tasks and interactions within the micro-level) (cf. Walqui & Schmida, this volume). The macro level concerns the relationships between courses and modules. At the macro-level, key concepts and themes are explored and deepened with new examples across new domains of mathematics, as they are revisited with greater sophistication. The notion originated by Bruner (1960) was that any idea could be initially explored in a way that was “intellectually honest” (p. 33) with students later able to retrospectively reflect on these concepts as they gain additional experience with mathematical ideas. This notion of TABLE 12.1  Summary of Concepts, Topics, and Activities within RAMP-UP Module

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Repetition and Patterns of Patterns of Numerical Growth repetition change patterns Equivalence and Mazes and Equivalent Expert Transformation flows rates Groups Operations and Connecting Covariation Operations Relations variables and and correlation relations

Thursday

Friday

Growth patterns Return to base groups Operations to functions

Patterns in 2 dimensions Other relations Closure and Reflection

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a “spiral” curriculum that invites students’ to explicitly reflect and extend their understanding metacognitively contrasts sharply with more delivery-oriented interpretations in mathematics education such “interleaved practice” of problem types (e.g., Rohrer, Dedrick, & Hartwig, 2020). We approach the meso-level of scaffolding by designing our modules with a “Three-Moment” architecture: (1) Preparing the Learners, (2) Interacting with the Concept, and (3) Extending Understanding (Hamburger & Chu, 2019; Walqui, 2019). This approach to planning lessons in secondary math takes as its fundamental unit-of-design not individual class periods, but rather a well-defined trajectory of experiences spanning approximately a week, during which teachers will have to adjust contingently based upon students’ successes or difficulties. We will elaborate further below on this Three-Moment architecture in mathematics, while noting that the overall purpose of the Preparing Moment is to surface prior knowledge so that students can share a focus during the Interacting Moment on unpacking ideas, representations, and procedures of a more mathematical nature in order to make deep connections. Then, in the Extending Moment, students expand their understandings to other concepts, novel situations, or represent their understanding in other genres. Finally, the micro level of design for scaffolding lies within a particular bounded task or activity. Considerations here are focused on the relationship between the structure (the regular, ritualized steps) and the process of a task (which unfolds interactively in the moment-to-moment exchanges between interlocutors) (Walqui & van Lier, 2010). Specific to mathematics education, we have elsewhere proposed that other elements such as the information that students are provided and conditions under which that information is distributed can also contribute to the quality of tasks and their ability to reach particular goals both in terms of process and product (Chu & Hamburger, 2019b). While as curriculum designers we have focused on the designed-in or planned aspects of scaffolding in our materials, the educative components will offer educators options and choices as they engage in contingent or interactional scaffolding that unfolds in the movement (e.g., de Oliveira, Jones, & Smith, 2021; Hammond & Gibbons, 2005). In this sense, much as with scaffolding itself, the essence of our educative curriculum materials will lie in the un-predetermined and contingent choices that educators make within the context of robustly designed and carefully planned sequences of tasks and supports (Walqui & van Lier, 2010).

Invite and Support Students in Dialogue to Engage in Disciplinary Practices Central to the new academic standards is an emphasis on disciplinary practices that develop alongside conceptual understandings and language practices (Heritage et al., 2015; Opfer, Kaufman, & Thompson, 2016). Such mathematical practices will need to be deconstructed in ways that are more initially accessible to

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students, while still providing English Learners with carefully marked choices for what strategic actions they can take (Koelsch, Chu, & Bañuelos, 2014; Valdés et al., 2014). For example, in order to “make sense of problems,” students may need to identify the unknown, identify given information and constraints, or to draw a picture or model to show the problem (Office of English Language Acquisition [OELA], 2021). These three strategic actions are constituent of sense-making about the problem, and it is not certain which will be the most effective as a first entry. For English Learners, it is critical that strategic actions are accompanied with choices of language—formulaic expressions—that offer ways to engage in that action (Chu & Hamburger, 2019a). In keeping with sociocultural approaches, support is offered to English Learners as they learn how to engage in math practices through structured social interaction in which the practice is negotiated between individuals who share a common goal. Explicit participatory structures and clear choices of language to support dialogue will benefit English Learners as they become more sophisticated in doing mathematics.

Focusing on Varying the Intensity of Scaffolding We now turn to the details of the central topic of this chapter: how can teachers vary the intensity of scaffolding to increase students’ access and engagement while maintaining the rigor of activities? We first consider varying the intensity at the task level, and then turn to choices at the module/moment (meso) and lesson/course (macro) levels. While this order is inverted from the typical way that planning is undertaken, we have chosen this order because tasks are more bounded than lessons and courses, so that it is easier to identify conditions for purposeful variation.

Variation Within a Particular Task At the task level, we identify three dimensions: (1) grouping formats, (2) structure or steps, and (3) formulaic expressions or other language supports. Wholeclass formats generally provide lower levels of scaffolding than small-group work because each participant can take fewer turns or there are more interlocutors. Structure is most easily recognized in the sequence of turns or talk-moves that are offered to students as the steps the teacher intends them to take. More broadly, we allow that structure lies along a continuum that also includes free-flowing discussion that may be “unstructured” across multiple turns. The third dimension of the intensity of scaffolding regards the quantity, complexity, and choices of language offered to students as they complete a task. Across these three dimensions, however, the actual substance of what is under discussion—the prompt which has the potential to get at important concepts and ideas—ought to remain constant in all variations. This condition ensures that while sustaining the same conceptual focus and rigor the teacher can adjust the

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intensity of support that students are offered in completing the task. Based upon their assessment of students’ conceptual understandings, background knowledge, confidence in participating, and need for language support, teachers can select from these different levels.

Low Level of Scaffolding One common discussion task observed in mathematics classrooms is a Notice/ Wonder task in which students are presented with some intriguing visual stimulus and an enticing, open-ended prompt. Then students are asked to jot down individually what they notice (such as details, observations, and connections within) as well as what they wonder (such as questions, more information requested, or connections beyond). A typical implementation of this activity would have students working individually, and then the teacher calling on volunteers to share with the whole class their noticings and wonderings to create a shared and public list. While there is very little explicit support, students are offered individual time to think before the whole-class discussion begins.

Medium Level of Scaffolding Teachers could choose a more intense but still moderate level of scaffolding by placing students in small discussion groups of four after their individual jottings. Students are to share in their small groups in a Round Robin format: each student shares their noticing, without being interrupted, even if it is identical to another’s idea. After all students have spoken—figuratively putting their ideas on the table—the small group reaches a consensus about what is the most important or interesting noticing to report out to the whole group. The group then repeats the same procedure for their wonderings, again nominating a single wondering to elevate to the attention of the whole class. This structure enables all students to participate in oral interactions with their peers, while modeling for all students involved the processes of reaching a consensus by connecting, sorting, and evaluating different ideas. The trade-off here is that while more class time is required, more students get to speak and share. Because sharing takes place in small groups, members may feel it is lower stakes than sharing out to the whole class immediately. The teacher may provide groups some formulaic expressions for either reaching a consensus or reporting out to the entire class.

High Level of Scaffolding An even higher level of intensity for scaffolding would involve placing students into pairs. Pairs are offered formulaic expressions and multiple turns and explicit roles to take, labeled Student A and Student B. Specifically, the sequence is:

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S tep 1: Student A: “I noticed….” “What did you notice?” Step 2: Student B: “What I noticed was the same/different. I noticed…” At this point, students would have a brief discussion to further elaborate on their ideas with one another. They have been told that they will need to present their partner’s idea to the whole class if called upon, so this opportunity enables them to elaborate further and clarify any misunderstandings with each other. On the second round, the sharing of wonderings is structured as follows: Step 3: Student B: “I wondered….” “What did you wonder?” Step 4: Student A: “What I wondered was the same/different. I wondered….” The structure enables both students to initiate, and both students to compare with their partner’s contribution. The scaffolding offered is highly intense, but the purpose is not to script what students will say as much as it is to frame their contributions to highlight connections and comparisons.

Comparing Dimensions of Intensity in Scaffolding As we look back at the three variations presented above, which were meant to illustrate three different intensities, it is worth noting that these were offered as three points along a spectrum, and that further modifications are possible within a particular level of intensity by further varying implementation along the dimensions of format, structure, and language, as summarized in Table 12.2. It would be more accurate to think of scaffolding as choices within a threedimensional space, in which each of format, structure, and language could be made more or less intense by teachers as they make pedagogical judgments about how to best support student learning and interaction. Indeed, we anticipate that as teachers make these decisions, they will balance several considerations, including wanting to maintain a brisk and urgent pace in developing new ideas while

TABLE 12.2  Summary of Three Dimensions of Intensity of Scaffolding a Notice/Wonder

Low Intensity Formats Structure

Language

Individual → Whole class Teacher calls volunteers or selects students None provided

Medium Intensity Individual → small group → Whole class Each student takes a turn before discussion and consensus Formulaic expressions offered are primarily for marking ideas and reporting them out

High Intensity Individual → Pairs → Whole class Partners take turns in a designated order (e.g., ABBA) Formulaic expressions are offered for turn taking and connecting or comparing ideas

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offering students enough time and space for individual or small-group reflection or self- and peer-assessment. Once students are familiar with the structures, it would be possible, to assign some groups to engage with the medium-intensity scaffolding in groups of four, while other students get the higher-intensity paired variation.

Variation Across a Sequence of Tasks or Lesson In the foregoing example, we have focused on a single task, with a single conceptual purpose and considered teachers’ options along three dimensions. We now turn to a broader concern, which is how the curriculum will be offering teachers explicit choices across sequences of multiple tasks that together coherently serve to deepen students’ exploration of a particular idea. One approach to these questions includes attending to the broader architecture of a module sequence within the Three-Moment architecture consisting of Preparing the Learners, Interacting with the Concept, and Extending Understanding.

Lesson Design in Mathematics Education Within mathematics education, this Three-Moment architecture is compatible with a number of existing lesson designs, as shown in Table 12.3. For example, the Mathematical Tasks Framework (Stein, Smith, Henningsen, & Silver, 2009) suggests that the teaching of mathematics should be driven by rich storybased problems that will require students to develop important mathematics. Teachers then need to “Launch” students’ work by ensuring that they have an adequate understanding of the situation and the problem so that they can freely explore solution paths (Cobb et al., 2013). At the end of the lesson, strategic orchestrated sharing enables a synthesis and the development of mathematical ideas (Stein, Engle, Smith, & Hughes, 2008). This three-part structure is shared by tasks branded as “Three Act” tasks, which usually involve some element of mathematical modeling from a real-world scenario (Meyer, 2011). TABLE 12.3  Comparison of Different Mathematics Lesson Designs with Three Moments

Three-Moment Architecture

Rich Tasks

Preparing the Launch Learners Interacting with the Explore Concept Extending Summarize Understanding

Three-Act Engage and Perplex Seek Info and Solutions Reveal, Discuss, and Extend

Jigsaw Project Prepare Jigsaw Extend

Conceptual Development Surface Prior Experience Develop a Math Concept Apply to Story Problems

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Therefore, there is a need to offer additional information needed to solve the problem, making explicit the modeling piece. These two lesson designs tend to advise higher levels of structure toward the beginning and end of lessons, while leaving exploration in the middle of the lesson relatively unstructured and open. Two additional lesson designs that are compatible with a Three-Moment architecture are those organized around a Jigsaw Project, in which different groups of students become experts in different problems or cases, which they then are able to compare and contrast in order to identify cross-cutting features or attributes (OELA, 2021). Finally, we have elsewhere proposed a lesson design to develop an important mathematical idea, such as slope, which students can then apply to a variety of story problems (Hamburger & Chu, 2019).

Concentrating Intensity in the Interacting Moment When it comes to these last two designs, which we tend to favor in our modules, we differ from other guidance in the field of mathematics education. At this meso-level of scaffolding that connects the individual activity with the lesson as a whole, we offer teachers some general guidance, namely that more intense levels of scaffolding are most important—and impactful—in the Interacting moment as that is when students will encounter and explore in greatest depth mathematical ideas, texts, procedures, and representations. More broadly, we can think of the Interacting moment as the most narrowly and tightly focused on common experiences, texts, and problems, and it is for this reason that scaffolding may need to be more intense, as students have not yet developed the ways of thinking and talking about what may be new ideas and representations. By contrast, both the Preparing and Extending moments are broader in different ways: the Preparing moment invites all forms of prior knowledge and lived experience, to be connected with the main goals of the lesson. Meanwhile, the Extending moment offers students individual choices about how they want to apply their knowledge to new scenarios or represent their understandings in new genres (Hamburger & Chu, 2019). The broader purposes of the Moments are therefore tied to the intensity of scaffolding that may be appropriate. The architecture of the jigsaw project perhaps provides some clear decision points for teachers as they are orchestrating student groupings and work (OELA, 2021). The grouping of a jigsaw project has students begin in base groups where they engage in activities to set the stage, as the Preparing Moment of the lesson. During the Interacting Moment, they will move to expert groups, which are organized around a collection of cases or problems that they will solve together in order to become expert enough to teach their peers when they return to base groups. These cases need to have some common conceptual, contextual, or representational thread. To ensure that students are making those connections across, rather than engaging in factual recounts of their work, it is helpful to

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identify focus questions that will bring to the surface key similarities or differences across the cases. It is by answering these questions across different cases that students will be able to compare and contrast and generate the conceptual schema they can apply to other problems or cases. Because the structure of the lesson is so well defined, it is easy to imagine how teachers would need to reason in the Preparing moment how to connect students’ ideas to the main topic. In designing the expert activities to be conducted in parallel by different groups, there may also be opportunities for more homogeneous grouping, as the overall structure of the activities will ensure that base groups are adequately heterogeneous again. More broadly speaking, we anticipate that teachers will need some explicit choices to ensure that tasks reflect a balance of formats, structures, and language throughout. For example, it may be beneficial to offer students opportunities for individual practice, reflection, or writing after an intensely collaborative task. In much the same way, after intense individual work, such as in a writing extension activity, it may also be beneficial for students to have tightly structured ways to share and compare their conclusions and understandings with one another in small groups. For these reasons, it will be important to offer teachers explicit choices as they maintain the academic rigor of what they are asking students to do. These choices make it more likely that teachers will be able to contingently offer students the additional supports that foster their sense-making of the content at hand. Additional activities to clarify understandings, as well as options for accelerating students’ progress toward deeper extensions will be built into the curriculum to offer them choices. These explicit choices will also offer at the task level different options for arranging student groupings and participation to provide more or less support as appropriate.

Design Principles for Teacher-Facing Educative Materials We now turn more broadly to the other features of the curriculum materials, which we hope will support the expansion of teachers’ expertise. In keeping with our design-based research approach, just as principles guide the creation of student-facing materials, design principles also guide the creation of materials for teachers who will implement said curriculum. The initial educative design principles, adapted from Davis, Palincsar, Smith, Arias, and Kademian (2017), are: • •

Teachers need a clear and ambitious vision of learning, so offer them examples of quality work (student samples) and quality implementation (videos). Teachers need deep and generative understanding of the powerful and relevant ideas and their interconnections, so provide them multiple forms of developing that understanding.

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•

Teachers will need different levels of support to enact necessary shifts from current practice, so materials need to clearly signal and justify departures from current practice. • Teachers will need to understand the purpose and features of genres (e.g., mathematical proof), so offer them exemplars and critical features of quality. In the following, we illustrate, with specific examples from the mathematics modules, how we anticipate the teacher materials will reflect each of the broader design principles.

Clear and Ambitious Vision of Quality Vision for teaching English Learners includes many aspects around teachers’ beliefs of what their students are capable of as well as how they will best learn and engage in creating new mathematics. In terms of curriculum, one key element of vision is fostering a deep understanding both of student work and of quality implementation. The use of student work has been a common feature in mathematics education efforts, such as the annotated performance tasks offered by the Mathematics Assessment Resource Service (n.d.). While mathematics educators have long advocated that educators anticipate students’ responses (e.g., Stein et al., 2008), actually collecting samples of student work during the development process grounds teachers’ implementation of the curriculum with multiple models for quality and success. Such work samples also serve the purpose of expanding teachers’ ability to engage in formative assessment practices to enable them to offer students feedback or make adjustments that will assist English Learners directly (Heritage et al., 2015). The question of vision of implementation may be more problematic, given long-standing patterns of instruction (e.g., Stigler & Hiebert, 1999) and challenges with expanding teacher’s vision of English Learners (e.g., de Araujo, 2017). For this purpose, we intend to create videos of key moments of implementation that will enable educators to see and hear what quality implementation would look like in authentic educational settings. Such proofs of concept may have the potential to catalyze effective implementation and further expand teachers’ vision of learners’ potential and how participation in activity is central to the development of knowledge.

Ideas and Their Interconnections In recognizing the three main domains of high school mathematics as algebra, geometry, and statistics, this idea-focused approach to the learning of mathematics will have to unpack interconnections that are within a particular domain as well as those that cut across multiple domains. In each case, we anticipate having to articulate connections between procedures, representations, and real-world

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scenarios. Procedures include all of the mathematical algorithms that enable the computation of results, ranging from two-digit multiplication to complex algebraic or statistical formulas. Representations are the mathematical objects (e.g., tables, equations, graphs) that can be coordinated with one another. All of these procedures and representations have the potential to be connected to real-world scenarios. The teacher’s manual will articulate these connections not only to expand teacher’s depth of understanding but also to strengthen their ability to foster students’ making these connections, both within and across mathematical domains.

Signal and Justify Departures A great deal of mathematics as taught in the secondary grades is related to learning standard mathematical notation. As with any discipline, notation is conventional but arbitrary, in the sense that there are generally agreed-upon uses for language which were at their inception made as arbitrary choices (e.g., superscript notation for exponents). The modules intend to diverge from common notation used for numerical sequences, which tend to be typographically clunky (e.g., an or a(n) for the nth term of a numerical sequence) and overly focused on individual terms. As an alternative, we instead use notation that refers to a sequence as a whole to position it as a mathematical object. For example, we might refer to the following three sequences: N = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, … 2N = 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, … 2N+5 = 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, … Looking within each sequence, we can describe how it is changing (increasing by 1, 2, and 2, respectively), while looking across sequences we can identify the transformations between sequences (the second sequence is the first doubled; the third sequence is the second plus 5). This departure from convention reimagines sequences as objects in and of themselves to assist students to analyze numerical patterns and generate new ones. These insights are in contrast to what conventional notation highlights, which are individual terms and relationships between successive terms, rather than the structure of the sequence of as whole. To justify such a departure from convention, we will have to articulate the promise of this change contained so that they can understand how the benefits merit deviating from standard practice.

Purpose and Features of Genres Finally, with regard to genre, the approach we take is aligned with a systemic functional linguistics approach in which genre is embedded within social and

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cultural contexts that are focused on purposes, and into which are embedded particular situations that require attending to tenor (audience), mode (organization of text), and field (topic) (Derewianka & Jones, 2012). Some distinctly mathematical purposes include the posing of conjectures, conceptual explanations, development of models, and deductive proofs. To take a specific example that will be salient in the module, students may need explicit examples and instruction to distinguish between different types of explanation. While students are accustomed to give factual recounts (step-by-step reports about what was done), this kind of “explanation” is distinct from procedural recounts (a description of a procedure general enough to apply beyond the particular instance) and conceptual or strategic explanations (which signal why and under what conditions a particular approach works) (Perry, Green, Chu, D’Silva, & Salciccioli, 2019). Each of these types of explanation serves different purposes and therefore is best served by different features, including organization and other deliberately patterned ways of using language to achieve a particular purpose.

Conclusion: Next Steps in Iterative Development Our practical field tests have not yet begun. As a result, we do not yet have results from empirical tests, but can outline the general improvement-focused approach that our rapid testing cycles will incorporate. Specifically, we propose to conduct rapid improvement cycles around the implementation of various activities, each of which is grounded in a problem of practice that leads to the formulation of descriptive questions about what students do within activities and improvement questions about how the design of materials and activities could further enhance students’ learning opportunities. These rapid improvement cycles will focus in the first year on improving the flow and design of student activities, while testing how to vary the intensity of scaffolding in practical situations. We then anticipate being able to turn rapidly to the teacher-facing materials, which will include annotations, work samples, decision points, and other artifacts to support implementation with integrity. We are hopeful that with our empirically grounded and theoretically driven approach guided by our design principles, we will be able to offer educators a coherent and justified set of choices to make when adjusting the intensity of scaffolding offered to English Learners in both individual activities and sequences of activities within broader modules. With the right feedback loops built into the development process, it should be possible to assist teachers to offer scaffolding at the “just right” level, so that it appears almost seamless. DISCLAIMER: The research reported here was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305C200008 to WestEd. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education.

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References Anderson, T., & Shattuck, J. (2012). Design-based research: A decade of progress in education research? Educational Researcher, 41(1), 16–25. Bruner, J. (1960). The process of education. Harvard University Press. Bruner, J. S., & Sherwood, V. (1976). Early rule structure: The case of peekaboo. In R. Harre (Ed.) Life sentences: Aspects of the social role of language (pp. 55–62). Wiley. Choppin, J., Roth-McDuffie, A., Drake, C., & Davis, J. (2020). The role of instructional materials in the relationship between the official and the enacted curriculum. Mathematical Thinking and Learning, DOI: 10.1080/10986065.2020.1855376 Chu, H., & Hamburger, L. (2019a). Designing mathematical interactions for English Learners. Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School, 24, 218–225. Chu, H., & Hamburger, L. (2019b). Taking mathematics instruction to task: Applying second language acquisition approaches to analyze and amplify learning opportunities for English Learners. NYSTESOL Journal, 6(2), 16–30. Chu, H., & Rubel, L. H. (2013). When the world is not the problem: Real-world contexts in analogies. In M. Berger, K. Brodie, V. Frith & K. le Roux (Eds.) Proceedings of the Seventh International Mathematics Education and Society Conference (pp. 262–271). Mathematics Education and Society. Davis, E., Palincsar, A., Smith, P., Arias, A., & Kademian, S. (2017). Educative curriculum materials: Update, impact, and implications for research and design. Educational Researcher, 46(6), 293–304. De Araujo, Z. (2017). Connections between secondary mathematics teachers’ beliefs and their selection of tasks for English language learners. Curriculum Inquiry, 47, 363–389. De Araujo, Z., & Smith, E. (2021). Examining English learners’ learning needs through the lens of algebra curriculum materials. Educational Studies in Mathematics. https://doi. org/10.1007/s10649-021-10081-w de Oliveira, L., Jones, L., & Smith, S. (2021). A Language-based Approach to Content Instruction (LACI) for multilingual learners: Six Cs of scaffolding in first grade. Journal of Language, Identity, and Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/15348458.2021.1885409 Derewianka, B., & Jones, P. (2012). Teaching language in context. Oxford University Press. Hamburger, L., & Chu, H. (2019). Making slope a less slippery concept for English learners: Redesigning mathematics instruction with rich interactions. In A. Walqui & G. Bunch (Eds.) Amplifying the curriculum: Designing quality learning opportunities for English Learners. (pp. 115–137). Teachers College Press. Hammond, J., & Gibbons, P. (2005). Putting scaffolding to work: The contribution of scaffolding in articulating ESL education. Prospect, 20(1), 6–30. Heritage, M., Walqui, A., & Linquanti, R. (2015). English Language Learners and the new standards: Developing language, content knowledge, and analytical practices in the classroom. Harvard Education Press. Jackson, K., Garrison, A., Wilson, J., Gibbons, L., & Shahan, E. (2013). Exploring relationships between setting up complex tasks and opportunities to learn in whole-class discussions in middle-grades mathematics instruction. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 44(4), 646–682. Koelsch, N., Chu, H., & Bañuelos, G. (2014). Language for learning: Supporting English language learners to meet the challenges of new standards. TESOL Quarterly, 48(3), 642–650. McKenney, S., & Reeves, T. (2012). Conducting educational design research. Routledge. Meyer, D. (2011, May 11). The three acts of a mathematical story. dy/dan. https://blog. mrmeyer.com/2011/the-three-acts-of-a-mathematical-story/

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Moore, J., Schleppegrell, M., & Palincsar, A. (2018). Discovering disciplinary linguistic knowledge with English Learners and their teachers: Applying systemic functional linguistics concepts through design-based research. TESOL Quarterly, 52(4), 1022–1049. Office of English Language Acquisition (2021). Integrating language while teaching mathematics (NCELA teaching practice brief): Practice brief on effective instructional practice and examples for teaching math to English learners. U.S. Department of Education. Opfer, D., Kaufman, J., & Thompson, L. (2016). Implementation of K-12 state standards for mathematics and English language arts and literacy. RAND Corporation. Perry, R., Green, J., Chu, H., D’Silva, K., & Salciccioli, M. (2019). Improving middle school mathematics: An evaluation of SFUSD’s salesforce initiatives. WestEd. Rohrer, D., Dedrick, R., & Hartwig, M. (2020). The scarcity of interleaved practice in mathematics textbooks. Educational Psychology Review, 32, 873–883. Rubel, L. H. (2017). Equity-directed instructional practices: Beyond the dominant perspective. Journal of Urban Mathematics Education, 10(2), 66–105. Rubel, L. H., & Chu, H. (2012). Reinscribing urban: High school mathematics teaching in low-income, urban communities of color. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 15, 39–52. doi: 10.1007/s10857-011-9200-1 Stein, M., Engle, R., Smith, M., & Hughes, E. (2008). Orchestrating productive mathematical discussions: Five practices for helping teachers move beyond show and tell. Mathematical Thinking and Learning, 10, 313–340. Stein, M. K., Smith, M. S., Henningsen, M. A., & Silver, E. A. (2009). Implementing standards-based mathematics instruction: A casebook for professional development (2nd ed.). Teachers College Press. Stigler, J., & Hiebert, J. (1999). The teaching gap: Best ideas from the world’s teachers for improving education in the classroom. The Free Press. Valdés, G., Kibler, A., & Walqui, A. (2014). Changes in the expertise of ESL professionals: Knowledge and action in an era of new standards. TESOL International Association. van Lier, L. (2004). The ecology and semiotics of language learning: A sociocultural perspective. Kluwer Academic Publishers. Walqui, A. (2019). Designing the amplified lesson. In A. Walqui & G. Bunch (Eds.), Amplifying the curriculum: Designing quality learning opportunities for English Learners (pp. 43–69). Teachers College Press. Walqui, A., & Bunch, G. (2019). Amplifying the curriculum: Designing quality learning opportunities for English Learners. Teachers College Press. Walqui, A., & van Lier, L. (2010). Scaffolding the academic success of adolescent English language learners: A pedagogy of promise. WestEd. Wood, D., Bruner, J., & Ross, G. (1976). The role of tutoring in problem solving. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 17, 89–100.

13 SCAFFOLDING “SCAFFOLDING” IN PRE-SERVICE TEACHER EDUCATION George C. Bunch and Nora W. Lang

Toward the beginning of a year-long combined MA and credential program, in a course we were teaching designed to prepare secondary content-area teachers for serving students classified by their schools as “English Learners,” we asked teacher candidates to reflect briefly on what the metaphor “scaffolding” means in educational contexts. Before they had explicitly discussed the concept in the course, teacher candidates’ written comments included the following: •

[Scaffolding refers to] using observable phenomena and student experiences to give people a starting off point for more formal lessons and teaching. [For example] talking to students about wrinkly fingers and asking if it occurs in salt or freshwater. • Scaffolding is building every new lesson on older lessons, which is particularly common in math. A teacher will facilitate learning of a topic then the next lesson will use this background knowledge to further the students’ understanding. • Scaffolding is providing students with the necessary skills and vocabulary in order to understand a lesson. For example, if I am teaching a lesson on the Declaration of Independence, it is necessary for me to provide students with a basic foundation of what it is, who wrote it, and the historical period it came out of. • Scaffolding is the educational practice of breaking down a complex task/ activity/concept in a much more digestible way for students. It isn’t remediation. It could take the form of extra “think time,” graphic organizers, and other tools/ methods of instruction that meet students where they are.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003196228-16

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Collectively, teacher candidates described scaffolding as teachers’ efforts to build on students’ prior knowledge and on previous lessons or activities, to provide students with “basic” knowledge, and to “break down” concepts. With a few exceptions, most candidates painted a picture of scaffolding as anything that a teacher does to try to assist their students. In their view, scaffolding was ultimately a synonym for “help.” What was missing from teacher candidates’ writing was a vision of scaffolding as the design of opportunities for learners to work with each other to accomplish something that they would not have been able to do alone. Also largely absent was the notion of scaffolding as apprenticeship that invites participants to engage agentively in learning opportunities that allow for the development of language, literacy, and disciplinary practices and that lead to greater autonomy (Walqui & Bunch, 2019a; Walqui & van Lier, 2010). Given the fact that our teacher candidates had completed some introductory coursework but no instruction on scaffolding yet in this course, their responses were not surprising. In fact, the teacher candidates’ notions of scaffolding were similar to those we often hear from experienced teachers and even some teacher educators. In this chapter we describe how the views that our teacher candidates first expressed about scaffolding changed, in many cases radically, from their first quickwrites to the end of the quarter. We describe the learning opportunities that candidates engaged in—activities that themselves were instantiations of the approach we were trying to teach our teacher candidates—to develop their understanding of scaffolding as a sociocultural means of apprenticeship that can be fostered through the careful design of opportunities for learners to work not only with the teacher but also with peers. We then share the kinds of learning tasks that our teacher candidates designed and demonstrated toward the end of the quarter, and we discuss the new understandings revealed by those tasks and candidates’ writing about them.

Conceptualizing Scaffolding How can teacher educators effectively scaffold the concept and practice of “scaffolding”? As demonstrated throughout this volume and in other publications (e.g. Athanases & de Oliveira, 2014; Daniel, Martin-Beltrán, Peercy, & Silverman, 2016; Moschkovich, 2015; Walqui, 2006), scaffolding is a potentially fruitful metaphor for articulating practices that provide K-12 students, particularly multilingual learners, with opportunities to engage in disciplinary practices across the subject areas and develop language and literacy. However, the term is often misused, in our estimation, as a general synonym for any kind of “help,” or even worse as a means of simplifying learning activities instead of providing the elaborated support necessary to tackle more difficult ones (Walqui & Bunch, 2019a). We ground our work in a sociocultural conception of scaffolding influenced by Vygotsky’s theories of learning as an inherently social activity, articulated by Bruner and Sherwood (1976) and Woods,

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Bruner, and Ross (1976), and operationalized by Aída Waqui (Walqui & Bunch, 2019a; Walqui & van Lier, 2010). Based on this work, we emphasize that the real potential—and power—of scaffolding lies in its ability to foster opportunities for students to engage deeply and agentively in disciplinary practices, expand their linguistic repertoire, and develop a greater sense of autonomy.

The Program, the Course, and the Assignment The work on scaffolding that we describe in this chapter was done as part of a fall quarter course, taught by the first author (a professor of education who focuses on language and literacy for multilingual learners) with assistance from the second author (then a doctoral candidate in education), in a one-year combined M.A. and teaching credential program at a public research university in California. The ten-week (30-hour) course was designed to begin to prepare pre-service secondary teacher candidates to work with students classified as English Learners by exploring relevant federal and state policy, sociolinguistic language variation, second language development, pedagogical strategies for making content and disciplinary literacy accessible, and integrating listening, speaking, reading, and writing in the subject-area classroom. Teacher candidates had taken courses in social foundations of education and theories of learning the previous summer as they began their teacher preparation program, and they were concurrently enrolled in a fall student teaching seminar and several other courses. We met with the 32 teacher candidates enrolled in the course for three hours on Monday afternoons after they were done with their student teaching placements for the day. About two-thirds of the class identified as White, with approximately 10 teacher candidates identifying as people of color. Several candidates had grown up speaking languages other than English, including a few who spoke Spanish, the most common home language of English Learners both nationally and in our state and region. A handful of the candidates had themselves been classified as English Learners at some point during their K-12 education. Both the instructor and the research assistant (the authors) identify as White, are bilingual in English and Spanish, and have teaching experience both in the United States and Latin America.

Scaffolding in a Pre-Service Teacher Preparation Course All teacher candidates who were enrolled in our fall 2019 course were invited to participate in a small study examining their perspectives on scaffolding as they engaged in class and designed and enacted their own learning tasks. Over 80% of the class (26 candidates) agreed to participate.1 We collected teacher candidates’ quickwrites, drafts of groups’ activity plans and materials to be used during their demonstrations, final presentation slides and materials, and the reports that each candidate completed after their group demonstration.

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After the quarter was over and grades submitted, both authors independently annotated teacher candidates’ responses to the initial quickwrite prompt referenced at the beginning of this chapter. Turning to candidates’ individual reports, we each read a subset and separately nominated potential codes. The codebook consisted of both deductive codes based on our interest in teacher candidates’ sense-making surrounding a sociocultural view of scaffolding (e.g., Agency/ Autonomy, Contingency, Message abundancy, Unpredictable outcomes) and inductive codes that emerged during initial rounds of analysis (e.g. Building on prior knowledge, Building on previous lessons).2 (See Appendix A.) In this qualitative exploration of teacher candidates’ comments pre- and post- instruction on scaffolding, we make no claims that our instruction alone caused the changes. And we are well aware that candidates were responding to prompts and evaluation criteria that asked them to explicitly address the particular conception of scaffolding that was being taught. Nonetheless, it is revealing to examine candidates’ initial conceptions and to compare those with their designs, demonstrations, and reflections after participating in a carefully designed—and highly scaffolded—activity on scaffolding.

Exploring Current Conceptions—and Challenging Them (Week 4) We began our instructional focus on scaffolding with the quickwrite mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, asking teacher candidates what scaffolding means in educational contexts; to provide a “good example of scaffolding” they had observed, implemented themselves, or experienced as a learner; and to share any questions they had about scaffolding, especially as it pertained to students classified as English Learners. (The entire instructional sequence on scaffolding is outlined in Appendix B.) As mentioned earlier, many of our teacher candidates expressed a view of scaffolding as any means of support or assistance provided by teachers. When candidates did provide more nuanced conceptualizations and examples of scaffolding, they emphasized activating prior or “informal” knowledge, building on previous lessons or activities within a lesson, providing students with “basic” knowledge or vocabulary, and “breaking down” concepts into smaller components, including by providing worksheets, graphic organizers, and sentence starters. Notably, not a single teacher candidate at that point in the quarter described scaffolding as structures designed for students to collaborate with peers to engage in a learning task either in pairs, small groups, or the whole class. Fostering student agency and promoting opportunities for generative, unexpected outcomes (two of the core components of a sociocultural view of scaffolding) were also largely absent from teacher candidates’ initial writing. A few hinted at the notion of student agency, such as one teacher candidate who argued that scaffolding consists of “[s]upporting and guiding students through their own education journey—but pointing them down the right track when needed.” Another

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candidate, somewhat tentatively, stated that scaffolding involved student takeover of responsibility: “[Scaffolding] is an introduction to the process, trust with time, builds upon itself—the more complex the task becomes eventually (ideally) leading to self-sufficiency and habit?” Although about a quarter of the candidates mentioned Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), few clearly articulated its relationship to scaffolding. Immediately after the quickwrite, still before any instruction or discussion on scaffolding, candidates watched an 11-minute video of a middle school literacy classroom engaged in an activity designed to demonstrate a sociocultural approach to scaffolding. The video (“Interacting with Complex Texts…,” n.d.) featured scaffolded activities that were part of a larger demonstration unit developed by Walqui, Koelsch, and Schmida (2012). The activities followed the principles in the foundational chapter we would be asking candidates to read for the following week’s discussion (Walqui & van Lier, 2010), demonstrating how pedagogical structures could allow students to work together toward generative, unpredictable outcomes. The video featured middle school students from diverse linguistic, racial, and cultural backgrounds engaging in a “jigsaw” activity as they read three Civil Rights-Era speeches representing contrasting positions on the Movement. In the video, students in “expert groups” collaborated to complete a graphic organizer in which they discussed, debated, and ultimately attained consensus on the speech’s intended audience, the key issues addressed, the rhetorical appeals utilized, and what key quotations illustrated those appeals. Each member of the group then formed new groups with those who had read other speeches, where students discussed and recorded highlights about each of the three speeches. After watching the video, we asked our teacher candidates to write briefly about examples of scaffolding they observed, whether anything they saw expanded or challenged their current notion of scaffolding, and any other comments or questions they had about the concept. Strikingly, a single viewing of this brief classroom video clip, even before any discussion or instruction, challenged teacher candidates’ previous conceptions on scaffolding. Most candidates wrote that they were surprised that peers, and not just the teacher, could scaffold students’ learning.

Laying the Foundation (Week 5) For the following week, teacher candidates were assigned at-home reading on scaffolding (Gibbons, 2015; Walqui & Bunch, 2019c and Walqui & van Lier, 2010). They were asked to think about what elements of scaffolding were present in the video they had watched in class—and how the readings may challenge their current conceptions of scaffolding. Walqui and van Lier (2010), for example, discuss an investigation by Bruner and Sherwood (1976) of the children’s game “Peekaboo,” demonstrating how a participatory structure can lead to innovative and unpredictable activity, along with agency and gradual autonomy.

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Walqui and van Lier (2010) also discuss the study of scaffolding in one-on-one pre-school tutoring sessions by Woods et al. (1976), pointing out that Wood et al. highlighted important aspects of scaffolding but left out two important “main ideas” gleaned from the Peekaboo study: that structured activities in scaffolding exist only to foster “non-rule-bound parts of the task,” where learners show agency in generating new and unexpected insights, and that this agency is made possible by the “gradual handover of the task to the learner”. Focusing on teaching multilingual learners in particular, the chapter proposes a number of “features of pedagogical scaffolding,” placing them on a continuum from “more planned” to “more improvised” (see Figure 13.1).

Introduction: The Metaphor of Scaffolding We began our first class session explicitly devoted to scaffolding by showing photos of different kinds of scaffolding around buildings under construction and

FIGURE 13.1 

“Features of Pedagogical Scaffolding” (Walqui & van Lier, 2010, p. 34)

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asking teacher candidates to consider the purposes and features of those scaffolds. With prompting, candidates pointed out a number of parallels between scaffolds in the photos and instructional scaffolding: the scaffolds were designed to allow people to do things that they could not do without the scaffolds; they were temporary; they could be adapted, rebuilt, extended, or removed according to immediate needs; and they served no purpose at all apart from the specific project that they were designed to support. We also pointed out that many photos of construction scaffolding are missing a key component: people doing the work! We then looked at images of construction workers doing “joint work” and suggested connections to the vision of scaffolding that we were advocating.

Round Robin: Key Concepts in Scaffolding To begin engaging with the readings assigned for this class session, we asked candidates to participate in a “round robin” activity, itself modeling the features of scaffolding that we would focus on throughout the remainder of the quarter. Candidates were asked to first review the readings and notes and make a list of key terms associated with scaffolding. They were then urged to review their lists and circle three terms that they thought were most important. Next, candidates were asked to share, round robin style, their important terms in small groups. Finally, groups were instructed to discuss their cumulative list and choose their group’s “top three” to share out with the whole class. The whole-class debrief was structured as a round robin as well, with each group being invited first to share only one key term until all groups had reported at least one, with additional rounds as time permitted. Key terms that groups reported out included the following: Structure Spontaneous process ZPD (with those more knowledgeable and with peers with equal knowledge) Agency Emergent autonomy “Amplification not simplification” “Simpler is not better” Temporary Proleptic Intersubjectivity Flow Equitable As groups reported out their key terms and their rationale for their importance, we voiced our own clarifications and elaborations. To close this activity, we debriefed as a class the ways in which the round robin activity itself featured

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important aspects of scaffolding: structure that allows each person to participate with access to ideas from peers, and a process that allows for generation of unpredictable insights.

Peekaboo! We next shared a photo of a woman playing peekaboo with a young child, asking teacher candidates to reflect on the structure and process of this game, apparently widespread around the world (Bruner & Sherwood, 1976; Walqui & van Lier, 2010). We guided candidates in naming the structured part of the game (establishing mutual contact, disappearance of one of the players by means of hiding, covering one’s face, reappearing, and reestablishing contact). And we asked them to consider the variation available within the process of the “moment-tomoment interaction” of the players (Walqui & van Lier, 2010, p. 18): actions that are unpredictable, such as the length of time one is hidden, and the length of the overall game, and so on. We highlighted with our candidates the contingent nature of the scaffolding, which they had read about in Walqui and van Lier’s chapter on scaffolding: The mother will take every sign of an emerging new skill (a word, a movement, an expression) as an opportunity to engage the child in higher-level functioning.…Rather than controlling, scaffolding the process of responding to the child’s awakening sense of agency and, therefore, initiative. It is spontaneous, dynamic, interactive, and dialogical. (Walqui & van Lier, 2010, p. 19)

Unpacking a Video Example To move from Peekaboo to a classroom context, we showed candidates a brief video clip of multilingual middle school “newcomers” engaged in a science activity that had been developed using the principles outlined in Walqui and van Lier (2010). We asked teacher candidates to reflect on what these learners in the video were able to do, what structured elements of scaffolding candidates observed, and what they noticed about the process of the scaffolding (reminding them that the process includes the joint construction of learning, the unpredictable, and the contingent nature of the interaction and learning).

Scaffolding Scaffolding: The Assignment After the substantive and recursive introduction to scaffolding from a sociocultural perspective described above, we assigned the course project that the teacher candidates would work on periodically during the remainder of the quarter. Drawing on Walqui and van Lier (2010) and other course readings, candidates

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were asked to form small groups to work over the next several weeks to construct a 10- to 15-minute learning activity demonstrating principles of scaffolding: With a group of 4 to 5 teacher candidates, you will design and enact an instructional strategy that exemplifies essential elements of scaffolding as discussed in class and as presented by Walqui and van Lier (2010) in their chapter “Scaffolding Reframed” (Week 5). Specifically, the instructional strategy should demonstrate (a) planned structures that lead to (b) unpredictable processes that provide (c) opportunities for moment-by-moment interaction with and assistance from one or more of the following: the teacher, “more capable” peers, peers of equal strength, and “less capable” peers. All of this should be in the service of supporting students in engaging in the disciplinary practices valued in the target content area. The teacher candidates were given the option of demonstrating their design in our class, with their fellow candidates acting as learners, or of enacting their scaffolding design in their student teaching placements, video-recording it, and showing it to our class. In either case, groups would have 10 to 15 minutes to demonstrate the activity, followed by a few minutes of whole-group debrief and discussion. Most groups chose the option of demonstrating their activity in our university classroom. The final requirement for the project was a one- to twopage individual report to be completed by each candidate after they had demonstrated their activity and engaged in the debrief with the class. Over the next several weeks, teacher candidates met in their groups outside of class time to begin to design their learning activities. While most class time was spent on other relevant topics, we checked in periodically about the scaffolding project, discussing both logistical and conceptual matters. The week after the main class period on scaffolding and assigning of the project, we asked candidates to write briefly about their thoughts and questions about last week’s activities and discussions on “scaffolding,” in what ways their thinking had changed, and what remaining questions they had. We also showed candidates a photo of the whiteboard with their key terms from the previous week’s round robin and highlighted several key points from the week before. We reminded candidates of what they read in Walqui and van Lier (2010) about the contingent and agentive nature of scaffolding. And we reminded them of Walqui and van Lier’s critique that the “six essential elements of scaffolding” proposed by Woods et al. (1976) left out the importance of student agency and eventual autonomy. We asked that candidates check in with the instructor a week before their presentation with a “rough draft” of their ideas so that he could provide some reflections and suggestions, further modeling opportunities for apprenticeship from both peers and a more experienced other. In some cases, this feedback resulted in significant shifts in students’ plans. For instance, two groups adopted

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the instructor’s suggestion to consider providing additional structure during a group work activity to ensure that all learners were actively engaged. In another instance, a group followed the recommendation to incorporate a more open ended and unpredictable outcome by having learners come up with their own examples of the literary devices they had been studying, rather than merely match the examples with a list of correct devices.

Group Demonstrations and Whole-class Debrief Over the last four weeks of the quarter, one or two groups demonstrated their learning activities each week. After each demonstration, we asked those not presenting to discuss what they witnessed or experienced that would be particularly supportive for multilingual learners; what elements of scaffolding from Walqui and van Lier (2010) they saw instantiated, and what questions, comments, and suggestions for improvement they had. Below, to illustrate some of the ways in which teacher candidates worked with the central notions of scaffolding we had emphasized, as well as the kind of feedback they received, we briefly describe three groups’ demonstrations.

Exploring Figurative Language with Cootie Catchers One group of English Language Arts (ELA) candidates developed an activity designed to introduce four types of figurative language to middle school students in an English Language Arts class. Their demonstration involved a jigsaw activity, in which students created a “cootie catcher,” an origami construction made by folding paper and writing messages on the inside. The game usually involves one person holding the cootie catcher, while another (or several others) select a particular flap of the cootie catcher’s eight folds, revealing a particular message. For the group’s jigsaw activity, small “expert” groups were provided with a definition of one of the literary devices, several examples, and a longer text containing examples of that device. Each group member was responsible for reading one of these materials to the rest of their group, and then collectively coming up with additional examples. Learners then moved into “home” groups where they each shared the description of their literary device and provided one example. In their home groups, learners folded a cootie catcher out of paper and wrote one of the examples shared by their group members, and created one or two examples of their own for each literary device on the flaps of the cootie catcher (see Figure 13.2). This group had carefully considered pedagogical structures that were designed to produce unpredictable outcomes in the form of students’ own examples. The group also highlighted how the material scaffold of the cootie catcher was intended to support students temporarily as they became more familiar with new literary devices, and therefore it would eventually become unnecessary.

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FIGURE 13.2 

“ Cootie Catcher” Template for Figurative Language Designed by Teacher Candidates

Introducing Poetry by Analyzing and Interpreting Art A different ELA group developed an activity inspired by a book of poems about pieces of artwork. As a “way in” to interpreting poetry, they began their activity by modeling how students would analyze a painting. The candidates divided their classmates into groups of four and provided each group with an image of a painting. Each member of the group was responsible for one section of a graphic organizer, which included columns for colors/shapes, moods/feelings/emotions, themes, and characters (see Figure 13.3). Candidates then each shared their responses and took notes on their peers’ examples in each column. Two groups that had analyzed the same painting were then paired together to share their observations. The final step of the activity was for each student to write their own poem. This group’s demonstration provided multiple opportunities for meaningful interaction with peers. As candidates in this group highlighted, the ultimate goal of the activity was to move students toward a greater sense of autonomy. In considering possibilities for improvements, both group members’ classmates and the instructor suggested that teachers could invite learners to participate in the whole-class modeling and have students fill out their graphic organizer silently for a few minutes (with the teacher’s support where necessary) and then share with their group. Fellow teacher candidates and the instructor also pointed out that the demonstration might have benefited from more explicit participant structures during the group-to-group sharing time.

Introduction to Quadrilaterals: Developing Mathematically Descriptive Questions Taking a much different approach, a group of math teacher candidates chose a technology-based math activity on a platform called DESMOS for their group demonstration. The goal of the activity, which introduced students to

208  George C. Bunch and Nora W. Lang DIRECTIONS: Begin with Person 1 and have them share their response(s) to the Person 1 column with the entire group. Everyone should record all group members’ answers in each column. (Some answers might be the same/similar but challenge yourselves to get a wide variety of possible answers). Once all answers have been shared, Person 2 will write and share their response(s) to the Person 2 column and repeat the same process. Complete this process for all members of the group. Person 1: ___________ Colors/Shapes

Person 2: ____________ Mood/Feelings/Emotions

Person 3: ____________ Themes

Person 4: ___________ Characters

Example I see a lot of pastel, vibrant, dark, etc. colors. The shapes I see in the painting are very harsh, straight lines and shapes….

Example Feelings of sadness, loneliness, confusion, turmoil, joy, amazement, etc.

Example Themes of competition, loyalty, freedom, etc.

Example College student, farmer, athlete, young, teenager, etc.

Person 2: ____________

Person 3: ____________

Person 4: ___________

Group Share Person 1: ___________

FIGURE 13.3 

Graphic Organizer for Interpreting Art Designed by Teacher Candidates

quadrilaterals, was for students to “develop mathematically descriptive questions.” After the group provided a demonstration, students each worked individually on their laptops, but were paired randomly and anonymously with another student in the class with whom they would interact virtually. The activity was structured such that one partner would select a quadrilateral from a variety of options on the screen, and the other partner would formulate and ask yes/no questions about the shape of the figure and, using the process of elimination, narrow down the options, and formulate more specific questions. One member of the group, in their individual report, described how the activity facilitated peer interaction while also providing substantial structure:

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The activity allowed for authentic communication and had a built-in structure for peer feedback. Students were encouraged to use their prior knowledge and language, and the activity helped them refine this prior knowledge. Students often think of shapes as “slanty” or “diamond-shaped” and this activity can give the students feedback on whether this language is effective at describing shapes. The structure of the program limits student responses to “yes,” “no,” and “I don’t know.” This limitation forces the student asking the questions to use precise but accessible language. Using an activity dashboard on their screens, the presenting group of teacher candidates was able to monitor how many rounds of the activity each pair engaged in and the questions they asked each other, allowing them to provide individual support as necessary. The structure of the activity provided learners with numerous opportunities for unpredictable and productive struggle. After this group’s demonstration, the instructor pointed out that having individual students pair up side-by-side in order to interact and strategize together while they engaged with other pairs on the screen would have provided an additional scaffold, although itself would require some structure to prevent one student from “taking over” and excluding the other from participation.

Moving Toward Autonomy: Teacher Candidate's Individual Reports The final step of the assignment was the completion of individual reports, which asked candidates to reflect on (a) what the central learning goal of the activity they had designed was and how it related to disciplinary practices valued in the target content area; (b) why the strategy was chosen and how it related to the essential elements of scaffolding discussed in class (and especially by Walqui & van Lier, 2010); (c) what the candidate had learned from the experience; and (d) what might be done differently in the future. The majority of the teacher candidates described efforts to incorporate a range of aspects of pedagogical scaffolding into their demonstration. In sharp contrast to their quickwrites before any course instruction on the topic, each of the following concepts was addressed by more than half of the teacher candidates in their individual reports: student agency and/or autonomy, opportunities for engagement in disciplinary practices, meaningful interaction among students, communicating the same information through multiple modalities, providing both material and organizational structures to facilitate students’ engagement, and ensuring that the activity was designed to lead to unpredictable outcomes. Here, we focus primarily on teacher candidates’ descriptions of three of these themes: agency/autonomy, organizational structures, and unpredictable outcomes—all of which challenge common conceptualizations of scaffolding as limited to teachers helping students and contrast starkly with teacher candidates’ initial comments before the instruction and activities on this topic.

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Agency and Autonomy Although they are distinct concepts, we combined agency and autonomy in our coding scheme because our teacher candidates often conflated them. We view agency as opportunities for self-directed engagement and autonomy as the goal of students being able to gradually do something independently with less support from material scaffolds, teachers, or peers. Notably, 18 of 29 teacher candidates (69%) discussed student agency and/or autonomy as a goal of the scaffolding activity that they designed and demonstrated. Numerous teacher candidates highlighted how attention to student agency informed the design of their demonstrations. For example, one teacher candidate described how her group’s demonstration, a science lesson that introduced students to different types of ecosystems, relied on student experiences to steer the direction of the activity: “Because the content was student generated, it resulted in the lesson being more meaningful to the students. For example, they were able to think about the ecosystems that were local to them growing up.” Another candidate emphasized student agency by explaining how the “cootie catcher” allowed students to create their own examples, rather than relying on those provided by the teacher. Meanwhile, many described autonomy by explaining how elements of scaffolding involved in their activity would be removed over time. For instance, several teacher candidates explained how their group had opted to use the “cootie catcher” precisely because it provided temporary support. In the words of one student, the cootie catcher acted as “a tool that students can use as needed but to which they will one day not need to refer.”

Pedagogical Structures All but two of the teacher candidates (92%) described how their demonstration of scaffolding involved careful planning of pedagogical structures, most often driven by their efforts to provide students with opportunities for meaningful interaction with peers. Some of the teacher candidates described specific activity structures such as think-pair-share or jigsaw. For instance, one member of the group demonstration on literary devices, discussed above, described their decision to utilize a jigsaw structure: “Our structure included two stations: Home group, and expert groups. At each station we structured roles to mitigate any dominance issues, and to distribute talking time equally. We also structured table groups so that proficiency levels were equally distributed.” Similarly, other teacher candidates emphasized the importance of structures that facilitated peer interaction. A teacher candidate whose group demonstration involved using manipulatives in the form of paper hexagons to explore division explained: “It is during the whole group discussion where students will be making use of their findings. Thus, the collaborative activity will provide students an opportunity to develop conjectures of the underlying mathematical

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concepts.” Others described how the overarching sequence of their demonstration was organized to provide multiple iterations of peer scaffolding through pair and small group interaction. In reflecting on their groups’ demonstrations, several candidates described how additional structure might have facilitated more equitable engagement. For instance, one member of the group whose demonstration examined poetry described changes, originally suggested by the instructor in the activity debrief, that she might make in the future: In our activity, we simply made students responsible for decoding a portion of the worksheet at each table. I’m concerned that in a live situation, strong students would just take the worksheet for themselves. To mitigate this, we could have broken the worksheet up into different mysterious components, and made students communicate amongst themselves to complete their task. For example, one student would have a slip with a definition, and another student would have something like a list of literary devices being used, another would have instructions telling them about their table’s literary device—they would have to work together to select the literary device relevant to their table by combining their information.

Unpredictable Outcomes Just over half (54%) of the teacher candidates described their group’s demonstration of scaffolding as designed to foster unpredictable outcomes, which is particularly notable given that only one candidate had discussed this aspect of scaffolding in their initial writing on the topic. Equally noteworthy was that the majority of the teacher candidates who discussed unpredictable outcomes framed unpredictability as emerging through interaction with peers and not just the teacher. One member of the group that explored poetry through paintings explained how their activity provided opportunities for novel outcomes because students had multiple opportunities to engage in analysis with peers: The unpredictability of the individualized interpretation of the picture was demonstrated in our activity when the groups compared their analysis of the pictures with the other groups. The variance in thought and analysis surpassed our expectations and allowed multiple perspectives to be expressed and supported within the framework we provided. Similarly, a teacher candidate who was a member of the group that utilized cootie catchers to explore figurative language also emphasized peer interaction as leading to unpredictable outcomes that emerge as a result of the structure:

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The actual creation of and playing with cootie catchers allows for unpredictable outcomes and applications. An unexpected, but positive, outcome of having students read passages to spot devices is that I heard a number of groups have conversations of how to classify figurative language and found more than just the one we had intended for them to find. A teacher candidate from the group that had utilized the DESMOS technologybased math platform to support students in discovering qualities of quadrilaterals also emphasized students’ interactions with one another (in this case virtually) as allowing for novel outcomes: “We created a plan for what students would be doing, but the questions and discussions that result from it are completely generated by the students and their own thoughts and ideas.” In sum, the conceptualizations of scaffolding conveyed in teacher candidates’ individual reports reflected a number of key differences from their initial writing on the subject. Teacher candidates’ discussion of scaffolding shifted away from a vision of scaffolding as any support the teacher provides, toward an understanding of peers as also central to scaffolding. This shift, while also evident elsewhere, was particularly reflected by teacher candidates’ discussion of agency and autonomy, organizational structures, and unpredictability, all of which emphasized students’ active role in learning and in expanding opportunities for peers’ collective learning through meaningful interaction.

Conclusion: The Assignment Itself as an Instantiation of Scaffolding We close this chapter by reflecting on a question that we asked teacher candidates after several groups had demonstrated their scaffolding activities: “To what extent is the scaffolding assignment itself (for you, as learners) a representation of the ‘features of pedagogical scaffolding’ in Walqui and van Lier (2010)?” (see Figure 13.1). We have already discussed ways in which some of the foundational classroom activities we asked candidates to engage in were demonstrative of the kind of scaffolding we were trying to get our teacher candidates to understand, design, and enact. But the assignment itself also modeled our approach, as teacher candidates engaged agentively with peers to collectively design their activities, with the support of each other (both their individual groupmates and the class as a whole through iteratively participating in and discussing other groups’ demonstrations) and the instructor (through the whole-class debriefs of other groups, the check-ins with groups as they designed their activities, and post-demonstration feedback both in class and on the individual report). The assignment also modeled structure (the requirement that candidates design their projects in small groups, the pre-demonstration check-in, the classroom debrief, the individual report) and process leading to unpredictable outcomes (the fact that group’s design process and outcomes were unpredictable, as were how learners

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would respond during the groups’ demonstrations). Although the course was not long enough for individual candidates to move toward the autonomous design of their own unique scaffolding activity, they did exercise some autonomy as they reflected individually in their reports on what they learned and what they would do differently next time. Obviously, the understandings of scaffolding that teacher candidates demonstrated through designing their activities, enacting them in our classroom, and writing about them—all in a single ten-week course toward the beginning of their teacher preparation program that also covered multiple other topics—do not imply that they will incorporate those understandings into their classroom teaching. Evaluating the longer-term “uptake” of that understanding by teacher candidates is beyond the scope of our study. Ensuring such uptake would undoubtedly require program-wide coherence of conceptual orientations to scaffolding, as well as multiple opportunities for teacher candidates to design, implement, and get feedback on scaffolding in their student teaching and beginning months in their “own” classrooms (Walqui & Bunch, 2019b). Nonetheless, the approach to scaffolding described in this chapter highlights an opportunity for teacher educators to challenge teacher candidates’ initial conceptions of scaffolding. This approach allowed candidates to begin to gain theoretical understandings and design principles of scaffolding from a sociocultural perspective, to apply these principles through the development of a scaffolding activity with their peers, and to experience multiple enactments of the principles through participating as learners in their classmates’ activities and discussing them afterward. It seems reasonable to expect that this foundation could be solid, strengthened further by additional opportunities to revisit, practice, and reflect on these concepts later in their teacher preparation program and first few years of teaching.

Notes 1 A third person who was not involved with the course handed out informed consent documents and explained to students that participation was voluntary and that neither researcher would know whether a student had chosen to participate until after the course had ended. 2 We used each of our initial lists to create a working codebook, tested our ability to consistently code individual reports separately, compared our responses, and made adjustments to the codebook as necessary.

References Athanases, S. Z., & de Oliveira, L. C. (2014). Scaffolding versus routine support for Latina/o youth in an urban school: Tensions in building toward disciplinary literacy. Journal of Literacy Research, 46(2), 263–299. https://doi.org/10.1177/1086296X14535328 Bruner, J. S., & Sherwood, V. (1976). Peekaboo and the learning of rule structures. In J. S. Bruner, A. Jolly, & K. Sylva (Eds.), Play: Its role in development and evolution. (pp. 445–459). Basic Books Inc.

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Daniel, S. M., Martin-Beltrán, M., Peercy, M. M., & Silverman, R. (2016). Moving beyond yes or no: Shifting from over-scaffolding to contingent scaffolding in literacy instruction with emergent bilingual students. TESOL Journal, 7(2), 393–420. Gibbons, P. (2015). Scaffolding language and learning. In Scaffolding language, scaffolding learning: Teaching second language learners in the mainstream classrooms (pp. 1–22). Heinemann. Moschkovich, J. (2015). Scaffolding student participation in mathematical practices. ZDM Mathematics Education, 47(7), 1067–1078. Understanding Language (n.d.). Interacting with complex texts: Jigsaw project. https:// www.teachingchannel.org/video/groups-to-analyze-complex-texts Understanding Language Initiative. (n.d.) Interacting with complex texts: Jigsaw project. Teaching Channel. https://www.teachingchannel.org/video/ groups-to-analyze-complex-texts Walqui, A. (2006). Scaffolding instruction for English language learners: A conceptual framework. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 9(2), 159–180. https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050608668639 Walqui, A., & Bunch, G. C. (Eds.). (2019a). Amplifying the curriculum: Designing quality learning opportunities for English learners. Teachers College Press. Walqui, A., & Bunch, G. C. (2019b). Developing teacher expertise to design amplified learning opportunities for English Learners. In A. Walqui, & G. C. Bunch (Eds.), Amplifying the curriculum: Designing quality learning opportunities for English learners (pp. 207–226). Teachers College Press. Walqui, A., & Bunch, G. C. (2019c). What is quality learning for English Learners? In A. Walqui, & G. C. Bunch (Eds.), Amplifying the curriculum: Designing quality learning opportunities for English learners (pp. 21–42). Teachers College Press. Walqui, A., Koelsch, N., & Schmida, M. (2012). Persuasion across time and space: Analyzing and producing complex texts. [Unit designed by the quality teaching for English learners project at West Ed for the Understanding Language initiative]. https:// ul.stanford.edu/resource/persuasion-across-time-and-space-instructional-unit. Walqui, A., & van Lier, L. (2010). Scaffolding reframed. In Scaffolding the academic success of adolescent English language learners: A pedagogy of promise (pp. 15–41). WestEd. Woods, D., Bruner, J. S., & Ross, G. (1976). The role of tutoring in problem-solving. The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 17(2), 89–100.

Scaffolding “Scaffolding” in Pre-service Teacher Education  215 APPENDIX A  Coding Teacher Candidates’ Individual Reports at the End of the Course

Code

Example

Agency/Autonomy “Almost all of the content was student generated, and the lecture slides were simply there to provide visual support (questions we asked, and photos of ecosystems we expected students to come up with).” “The central goal of our application activity was to connect imagery and symbolism to meaning for students so that they could prepare to eventually compose their own poem.” Building on prior “Building on students’ informal knowledge/ knowledge of division is the first interests scaffold of this lesson.” Building on “We incorporated scaffolding by previous lessons/ having each section of the lesson activities build upon the last, increasing in difficulty each time as they are ready for it.” Contingency “While they worked, the teacher is able to see what kinds of questions students are asking to see who is struggling or needs more support.” Disciplinary “Our group’s overall learning goal practices is providing students the chance to revisit what they already know and use different representations to prove this theorem visually.” Interaction / “If I were to do this lesson again, I meaningful use may have paired people up with 2 of language students on each computer, so there are two people’s voices there to come up with great questions.” Message abundancy “Students had the chance to hear, read, write, and speak the language introduced with peers who may know more than them.” Modeling / models “If at any point the students were stuck, they could refer back to the definition or examples or see how the device was used in the text”

Number of Individual Reports at the End of the Quarter Coded with This Code (Total N=26) 18

10

2

13

19

16

17

14

(Continued)

216  George C. Bunch and Nora W. Lang APPENDIX A  (Continued)

Code

Example

Number of Individual Reports at the End of the Quarter Coded with This Code (Total N=26)

Reducing degrees of freedom

“We did this by giving the instructions for each segment of the activity as we transitioned to that activity, instead of giving the instructions for everything at the beginning of the lesson.” “We felt that a cootie catcher acted as a scaffolding tool because it is a fun interactive device that many students would already know the structural rules around how to use.” “It is during the whole group discussion where students will be making use of their findings. Thus, the collaborative activity will provide students an opportunity to develop conjectures of the underlying mathematical concepts.” “The end goal of this lesson would be poems written by the students, which would certainly be novel and unexpected.”

6

Structures (Material)

Structures (Organizational)

Unpredictable responses / outcomes

17

24

14

Scaffolding “Scaffolding” in Pre-service Teacher Education  217 APPENDIX B  Instructional Sequence on Scaffolding for Teacher Candidates in the

Teacher Preparation Course Activity

Sources/Artifacts

What student teachers were asked to write and/or discuss

Initial quickwrite

Students’ ideas before any instruction or discussion on scaffolding in this course

Watch and write about an 11-minute classroom video exemplifying scaffolding from a sociocultural perspective Students assigned reading for the following week

Understanding Language, n.d.

1. What does scaffolding mean in educational contexts? 2. What is a good example of scaffolding you have observed, implemented, or experienced? 3. What questions do you have about scaffolding, especially regarding English Learners? 4. What examples of “scaffolding” do you see in the video? 5. Is there anything in the video that expands and/or challenges your current notion of scaffolding? 6. Other comments or questions? When you do your reading for this week, think about what elements of scaffolding were present in the video—and how the readings may challenge your current conception of scaffolding.

WEEK 4

WEEK 5

—Gibbons (2015), Ch. 1 —Walqui and van Lier (2010) —Walqui and Bunch (2019c), Ch. 2

Interactive Lecture Photos of various kinds Instructor asks candidates to on Scaffolding of scaffoldings on notice different sizes and building construction. shapes of scaffolds. Q: What is missing in most photos of scaffolding? (A: the people actually doing the work!) What is really important is the work that goes on in the scaffold, and that is almost always joint, collective work. (Continued)

218  George C. Bunch and Nora W. Lang APPENDIX B  (Continued)

Activity

Sources/Artifacts

“Round Robin” Students’ selection activity to discuss of key terms from readings and Walqui and van Lier focus on key (2010); Instructor terms about guided debrief after scaffolding the Round Robin.

Debrief the Round Robin activity as an example itself of scaffolding Discuss photo Photo of woman and young child playing peekaboo

Discuss classroom video

Video of students engaged in a scaffolded science activity.

What student teachers were asked to write and/or discuss 1. Reviewing Gibbons, Ch. 1, Walqui & van Lier’s “Scaffolding Reframed,” and Walqui & Bunch Ch. 2, make a list (for you to keep) of key ideas or terms associated with scaffolding. 2. Circle what you feel to be the three most important terms on your list. 3. As a group, each member shares one of the circled terms (round-robin style), in succession, and talks about why they circled that item. Recorder keeps a master list of all terms introduced. Repeat until all circled terms have been mentioned. 4. As a group, choose your group’s “top three” for the reporter to present to the class, and discuss the rationale you will present for your choices. What did you notice about the “structure” and “process” of this activity? What are the “rules” of peekaboo? (i.e. its structure) Where is the variation? (i.e. the process) Who has agency in the game? (the child, as the adult continently adapts the game to the child’s interest) - What are ELs able to do? - How does the STRUCTURE of the scaffolding support them? - What do you notice about the PROCESS of the scaffolding? (Process=joint construction, flow, unpredictability.) (Continued)

Scaffolding “Scaffolding” in Pre-service Teacher Education  219 APPENDIX B  (Continued)

Activity

Sources/Artifacts

What student teachers were asked to write and/or discuss

Assign Scaffolding Application Assignment

Assignment sheet

With a group of four to five students, you will design and enact an instructional strategy that exemplifies essential elements of scaffolding as discussed in class and as presented by Walqui and van Lier (2010) in their chapter “Scaffolding Reframed” (Week 5). Specifically, the instructional strategy should demonstrate (a) planned structures that lead to (b) unpredictable processes that provide (c) opportunities for moment-by-moment interaction with and assistance from one or more of the following: the teacher, “more capable” peers, peers of equal strength, and “less capable” peers. All of this should be in the service of supporting students in engaging in the disciplinary practices valued in the target content area.

Warmup

Think/Pair/Share

What are your thoughts and questions about last week’s readings, film, and class discussion on “scaffolding”? What, if anything, has changed in your thinking about scaffolding since the beginning of the quarter? What questions about scaffolding do you still have?

WEEK 6

Review key Show semantic web scaffolding terms with the terms student teachers called out last week.

(Continued)

220  George C. Bunch and Nora W. Lang APPENDIX B  (Continued)

Activity

Sources/Artifacts

Review key points —Key quotations from Walqui and —Figure 4 (More van Lier (2010) planned and more improvised continua of scaffolding).

What student teachers were asked to write and/or discuss Quotes shared from Walqui and van Lier (2010): • “Rather than controlling, scaffolding is the process of responding to the child’s awakening sense of agency and, therefore, initiative. It is spontaneous, dynamic, interactive, and dialogical” (p. 19) • Wood, Bruner, and Ross’ (1976) “six essential elements of scaffolding” LEFT OUT the following: - Real power of scaffolding is not in the structure of the set up (although that is important), but in the “non-rule-bound parts of the task,” the “moments of agency,” and in the “unexpected” - Agency is promoted by gradual handover of the task to the learner.

WEEK 7 Holiday (no class)

WEEK 8

Groups asked to share “rough draft” of their demonstration with instructor before the week in which they present. Group Demonstrations (15 minutes)

Classroom audience asked to participate as learners during the group activities (Continued)

Scaffolding “Scaffolding” in Pre-service Teacher Education  221 APPENDIX B  (Continued)

Activity

Sources/Artifacts

What student teachers were asked to write and/or discuss

Classroom Debrief after demonstrations

Classmates invited to weigh in on the discussion questions above; instructor adds own thoughts

Classroom audience and presenting group asked to reflect on the following: - What did your see/experience that would be particularly supportive for ELs - What questions, comments, suggestions for improvement do you have? - What elements of “scaffolding” from Walqui and van Lier (2010) did you see/experience in the demonstration? Reflective statement outlining why the strategy was chosen, how it relates to Walqui and van Lier’s discussion of scaffolding, what was learned from the experience, what might be done differently in the future (for this or for different audiences), and what your contribution to the group was.

Individual Reports Students write 1–2 page individual report AFTER their demonstrations and class discussion.

WEEKS 9 to 11 Group See above Demonstrations Classroom See above Debrief after demonstrations Individual Reports See above

See above

Classroom Discussion

“To what extent is the scaffolding assignment (for you, as learners) a representation of Walqui & van Lier’s “features of pedagogical scaffolding”?

See above See above

INDEX

agency 2–3, 15, 34, 45–46, 49, 53–54, 60–61, 66, 70–71, 90–91, 127–128, 130, 155, 167–177, 182–183, 200–205, 209–210, 212, 215, 218, 220

Freire 122 funds of knowledge 107, 176–177

bilingual students 2

Inquiry Design Model (IDM) 83, 86, 97 interactional scaffolds 75, 77, 136, 140, 147–149, 151, 159–160, 185, 204

core practices (CPs) 4, 102–104 crosscutting concepts (CCCs) 63–64, 68, 70 culturally sustaining pedagogies 169 design scaffolds 136, 184, 200 disciplinary core ideas (DCIs) 63–64, 70 discourse analysis 138 dual language bilingual education (DLBE) 3–4, 83–88, 93, 97–98 emergent bilinguals (EB) 2, 5, 86, 147, 157 emergent to advanced bilingual students (EABs) 2 English as an Additional Language student (EAL) 2, 9, 12–14, 17–18, 23, 25–27 English Language Learner (ELL) 2, 174 English Learners (ELs) 2, 4–6, 29–31, 34–38, 45–46, 63, 75, 86, 121–125, 128, 130–132, 181–183, 186, 192–194, 197, 199–200, 217 English to speakers of other languages (ESOL) 104, 107–108, 112–113 equitable engagement 4, 56, 63, 65, 68, 72–73, 78, 211

holistic 135, 138

Language-based approach to content instruction (LACI) 73 leadership 5, 85, 167–174, 176–177 linguistically responsive approach 169 Macro scaffolding 4, 39, 67, 72–75, 77 Making Science Multilingual (MSM) 4, 63, 65–66, 68, 72, 78 Meso scaffolding 40–41 Micro scaffolding 14, 41, 67, 72–73, 75–78, 95 multilingual students 2–5, 14, 16, 49, 53, 57, 60, 66, 84, 86, 102–108, 110–114, 116–117, 136, 157, 159–160, 167–169, 175–177 multimodality 5, 134–135, 138–142, 209 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) 63–66, 73–74 novice teachers (NTs) 4, 102, 104, 136

Index  223

planned scaffolds 102, 104, 113, 147–148 plurilingual learners 2 productive struggle 150, 209 Quality Teaching for English Learners (QTEL) 30, 32–33, 46

sociocultural theory 3, 10, 29–31, 46, 49, 167, 169, 198, 200 systemic functional linguistics 193 teacher practice networks 169 technology 64, 66, 122, 136 translanguaging 5, 59, 74, 76–77, 94, 97, 135–136, 138, 142

rigor 58, 66, 69, 73–74, 108, 124, 147, 181, 186, 191

WIDA 4, 49, 56, 58, 61, 65, 67, 90

science and engineering practices (SEPs) 63–64, 70–71, 75

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) 11, 12, 30–32, 35–36, 48, 49–52, 54–55, 59, 121, 182, 201, 203