In her original article, "Identity, Agency and the Internal Conversations of Science and Math Teachers Implementing instructional reforms in High-Need Urban Schools", Stacy Olitsky (2021) takes us on an exploration of the identity development and agencies exerted by two teachers working to implement science instructional reforms in…

This practical resource takes educators through a planning process--from selecting standards to designing learning activities--that weaves together language, literacy, and science in ways that are responsive to emergent bilinguals. Drawing on extensive and current research, the authors show how secondary educators can use students' own language…

Helping preservice teachers use hybrid language representations in science is important if they are to become scientifically literate and able to engage in the discourse for understanding scientifiyc issues. Using hybrid language representations based on the framework of computer-supported collaborative learning, the teacher educator applied the…

In teaching newcomer students, educators must envision how to provide opportunities for language use and development through age-appropriate content instruction. This article describes a design research study, in which we developed and piloted 5th grade science units and studied the participation of two newcomer students in sense-making…

Teachers play a critical role in promoting dialogic interaction in their students. The purpose of this case study was to investigate how one very effective teacher taught two, cooperative, inquiry-based science units to her Year 6 class. In particular, the case study focused on how she used different discourses to capture students' curiosity in…

The study sought to determine the effects of teacher-introduced multimodal representations and discourse on students' task engagement and scientific language during cooperative, inquiry-based science. The study involved eight Year 6 teachers in two conditions (four very effective teachers and four effective teachers) who taught two units of…

Limited studies investigate the high school teachers' challenges and strategies while teaching science and mathematics in English as the target language through the content and language integrated learning (CLIL) approach. Hence, this study aimed to investigate the challenges that science and math teachers encounter and the strategies they employ…

The study in this article examines and illustrates the intertextual meanings made by a group of high school science students as they embarked on a knowledge building discourse to solve a physics problem. This study is situated in a computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environment designed to support student learning through a science…

Much attention is now given to academic language, particularly in content areas such as science, amid persistent achievement disparities between students classified as English Language Learners, and more recently, Long Term English Learners, and their English-proficient peers. This attention has fueled debate about the precise features of such…

Students who struggle with vocabulary knowledge often see a decline in comprehension of content. Even students who receive strong reading instruction in the early elementary years may still experience the fourth-grade slump (Chall, 1983), which more often affects students from underserved populations. Many of those same students are also affected…

This case study describes two iterations of a cross-disciplinary Virtual Exchange (VE) project developed between the Universities of Bordeaux (France) and León (Spain), involving students of Applied Physics and Measurement Engineering (APME), and Electrical Engineering. The students worked together on designing a real garden in Bordeaux within…

English language learners (ELLs) benefit when their teachers utilize a wide range of English as a Second Language (ESL) instructional strategies. However, content-area teachers often are unfamiliar with these ESL strategies as they have not received extensive professional development on meeting the needs of ELLs, especially within the context in…

Teaching students to use and interpret different representational tools is critically important if they are to be scientifically literate, to understand how scientific ideas and concepts are represented and to appreciate how scientists think and act. Moreover, students not only need to be competent at using and explaining representations and…

Recently there has been considerable interest in the role of first language use in second/foreign language learning, especially where students share a common first language. However, most research has focused on in-class interaction between teachers and learners. Much less attention has been given to students' out-of-class practices, for example,…

This case study aimed to determine the nature of student interactions in small groups in an elementary classroom utilizing the Science Writing Heuristic approach. Fifth grade students were audio-recorded over four units of study while working in small groups to generate knowledge claims after conducting student-directed investigations. Analysis…