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

Paper/Best Practice Session (1 hour)

not language specific

Two-Way Bilingual Immersion
One-Way Developmental Bilingual Education

Elementary (K-5)

This session highlights a professional development program, Mills Teacher Scholars’ Newcomer Inquiry Group. Data include participant reflection on the power of collegial engagement, practice-based models of inquiry, and careful, thoughtful establishment of a professional learning community that simultaneously engages multilingual and monolingual teachers in dual language and “English-only” settings.

Abstract:

The Mills Teacher Scholars (MTS) program aligns with a long tradition of educators (Dewey, 1938; Greene, 1978) who advocate for the teaching profession to be “reinvented” (Meier, 1995) and where teachers “actively, collaboratively, and systematically seek answers to their own dilemmas of practice and construct professional knowledge rooted, not only in educational theory, but also in lived classroom experiences” (Wood, 2007, p. 709). All MTS participants commit to deepening their reflective practice, including altering their teaching practices to better meet their students’ needs.

 

Currently, teachers of newcomers in the Oakland Unified School District system are spread across sites and rarely have the opportunity to collaborate. The MTS Newcomer Inquiry Group provides the space and structure to collaboratively articulate, from the ground up, effective instruction for newcomer emergent bilinguals in multiple settings. Individual teacher participants select an area of inquiry about their students’ learning aligned with this outcome. In a peer-feedback environment, teachers frame researchable questions, plan teaching that will make student learning visible, pursue investigations by systematically collecting and analyzing data from students, share their new understandings, and thereby develop skills essential to high quality teaching.

 

This Best Practice Session will highlight inquiry via MTS into exploration of newcomer instruction in a dual-language environment. Data shared will include reflection on engagement with other members of the Teacher Scholars group and the power of a professional learning community that both recognizes the importance of practice-based models of inquiry as well as attention to careful, thoughtful establishment of a community of supportive practitioners. Additionally, the session will explore how MTS provides space to engage multilingual and monolingual teachers in dual language and “English-only” settings across classroom contexts.