THE EDUCATION ALLIANCE @ BROWN UNIVERSITY
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THE EDUCATION ALLIANCE @ BROWN UNIVERSITY
Meeting the Needs of English Language Learners |
The First Annual Research Conference on Teaching Diverse Learners entitled "Meeting the Needs of English Language Learners" was held June 15-16, 2001 on the Brown University campus in Providence, Rhode Island. Approximately 200 practitioners, administrators, scholars and policy-makers from New England and from around the country attended over 20 sessions highlighting current research and practice that addresses the challenges faced by English language learners (ELLs) in U.S. schools.
Present on the Brown campus for another engagement on June 15, Reverend Jesse Jackson graciously agreed to address conference attendees and share his thoughts on socio-cultural and linguistic diversity. Listen to a short segment of his remarks.
The conference program featured keynote addresses by Ana Celia Zentella, Ofelia Garcia, and Barry Rutherford. Dr. Zentella, Professor in the Department of Black and Puerto Rican Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center at Hunter College, addressed "Language Socialization in Latino Families: What Educators Need to Know." She discussed the practice, promise, and pitfalls of critical language study as a means to identify distinct cultural orientations and create substantive and lasting educational change. Using critical language study, Zentella and other researchers have focused on the interaction between caregivers and young children as a window onto cultural beliefs about the way children learn and the parental role in that process. In her keynote, Zentella emphasized that the promise of critical language study is that educators who are knowledgeable about language socialization practices in the home will be able to improve communication with diverse groups of students by reducing the conflict between the school's ways of teaching and learning and those of the different cultures of their students.
Dr. Rutherford, the Associate Director for the Center for Research on Education, Diversity & Excellence (CREDE), spoke on "What's Good for English Language Learners? Promising Pedagogy, Programs, and Practices." He highlighted The Center for Research on Education, Diversity & Excellence's (CREDE) development of five standards for effective teaching: joint productive activity, language and literacy development, contextualizing teaching and learning, complex thinking, and instructional conversation. Much research and theory has focused on improving the academic success of students at-risk for failure due to poverty, limited English proficiency, and/or background knowledge and experiences, which do not map easily onto school expectations. However, CREDE's research has led to significant advances in understanding basic learning processes, including the social and cultural foundations of cognitive development. Rather than focusing on presumed student deficits, CREDE researchers have focused on ways that schools can scaffold learning, build on student characteristics as resources, and mitigate risk factors.
Dr. Ofelia Garcia is the Dean of the School of Education at Long Island University (LIU), Brooklyn Campus. In her presentation,"Learning to Notice Language-Other-Than-English (LOTE) Speaking Students in Classrooms: Transforming the Preparation of Teachers for English Language Learners," Dr. Garcia noted that teachers are sometimes criticized for being more responsive to one type of student than another, thereby privileging one type of student over another. To counter this and related problems, efforts are underway at the Brooklyn Campus of Long Island University to transform the preparation of all teachers to pay careful attention to all children. LIU/Brooklyn has launched complementary institutional, programmatic and curricular efforts to transform teachers' preparation for their work with ELLs and bilingual students.
Dr. Garcia's address identified the philosophical and political stance that generated this change and described the inquiry process at the core of the new teaching strategy. Her keynote reported the experiences of LIU faculty, teachers, and students at the innovative Brooklyn Dual Language School-Cypress Hills to illustrate the transformative effect of learning to notice LOTE-speaking students in classroom.
Individual and panel presentations, videos and training sessions addressed the question "How can research-based practices and policies meet the needs of English Language Learners?" The following summaries are available:
Diversity as an Intellectual Resource: Talk from the Bilingual Science Classroom
Funds of Knowledge: Inquiry-Oriented Approach to Professional Development
The Cultural Responsiveness of Newcomer Programs
Parents' Involvement in Their Children's Education: Lessons from Three Immigrant Groups
The Inclusion and Exclusion of English Language Learners in the Comprehensive School Reform Movement
Participants offered new perspectives on these and other issues and contributed significantly to the discussion about effective, research-based practices designed to meet the needs of ELLs.
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