UC Berkeley

Instructional time for newcomer English learners necessitates a balanced integration of language and content within the curriculum (Batt, 2008) and that the development of the academic uses of language for newcomer students becomes the obligation of every secondary content discipline teacher to engage these students in meaningful language use for content specific purposes (Heritage et al., 2015). Now more than ever, secondary content area teachers are critical actors in ensuring that the necessary language skills through their content instruction are taught and supported for newcomer students in their classes. Thus, this design development research employs a robust intervention that promotes a systematic approach for an interdisciplinary team of secondary content area teachers to have productive conversations around instruction in order to better understand and implement an integrated language and content instruction for newcomer students.

Set in a small high school located at a predominantly immigrant neighborhood in a large urban community in Northern California, this study focused on three teachers as a teacher team who serve newcomer students. I found that participants in this study struggled to develop a common understanding and enacting effective language and content integration in classroom practice. However, findings suggested promising efficacy of this design study, particularly around improving participants’ instructional mindset along the dimensions of language and content integration understanding and language and content integration in practice. I present the utility of the Teacher Team Cycle of Inquiry as a systematic, structured sequence of activities that reframes the responsibility of teaching language development for newcomer students as one of a teacher team’s collective and shared responsibility. This teacher team structure, along with the set of learning activities, can serve as a catalyst for capacity building for teachers to improve their practice and understanding of integrating language and content.