Sixth International Conference on Immersion and Dual Language Education: Connecting Research and Practice Across Contexts

Paper/Best Practice Session (1 hour)

not language specific

One-Way Second/Foreign Language Immersion
Co-Official/Regional Language Immersion
Two-Way Bilingual Immersion
One-Way Developmental Bilingual Education

Middle School/Junior High
High School
Post-Secondary

An account of how DL/I schools can use a BASE-like approach to maximize untapped resources and leverage the content knowledge of secondary teachers to create an empowered academic school culture of learning about and through language across subject disciplines, with mutual benefit for both minority and majority language groups.

There is an omnipresent mindfulness across DL/I models that “language wraps itself around, in, through and between everything that we teachers and learners do in the classroom” (Ritchhart 2002: 141). While some argue that we must modify our expectations of language use in school and the way we teach, test and accept student versions of language. Others argue that we should teach students the every-day and academic uses of language intentionally (Zwiers 2014:18). The BASE approach proscribes to the ambitious belief that DL/I contexts can and should do both to counteract the complex plateau effect that limits many secondary students.

The BASE approach aims to coordinate untapped resources and leverage the content knowledge of secondary teachers to create an ambitious academic school culture of learning about and through language across subject disciplines, with mutual benefit for both minority and majority groups. It involves on-going needs analysis of teachers and students to inform tailored, just-in- time, research-based supports to guide teachers through being explicit about the subject related language and conventions they are already using, while giving students the tools they need to show what they know.

BASE takes the strikingly simple, yet highly effective position that all students are academic language learners in addition to sharing multiple identity markers such as struggling learner, learner with special needs, at-risk learner, gifted learner, or one with limited target language proficiency . This unified view strengthens integration of language groups while elevating the status of minority students. BASE does not create a sheltered or cognitively less demanding version of school content. Instead, it collaborates with departments (content areas, languages and special needs) to demystify the world of academic communication so that teachers are empowered and prepared to help students grow into eloquent, confident participants in their various communities of learning.