content area, also of their choice. Gradually, they developed skills necessary for a
dual focus on language and content. Reflecting on her implementation, one teacher
stated
I think the idea of starting small. I think what helped us was focusing on one particular
content area and really just trying toflesh it out. Trying to understand the balance between
teaching to content and teaching to language. Not just how you are going to teach it but
how you to look for the evidence.At the end of the study, teachers were asked to comment on the value of their
learning. One teacher made a statement with which all the others agreed:
I didn’t have this level of knowledge [about language]–definitely not. I’ve always been
told that language development is important–I remember learning that throughout my
teacher education program that I went through, but it was not explicitly taught like this.
I gained a much deeper understanding of that progression and all the different elements to
look at.At the beginning of the study, the teachers were also challenged by keeping track of
evidence. However, they each developed a method for attending to and docu-
menting student oral language during content instruction, often through a process of
trial and error, which best suited their situation. For example, one primary teacher
developed a note-taking template, which she placed on a clipboard and used for
conferences with individuals and groups and observations throughout the lesson.
The template headings weredate, language feature, student language, language
feature modeled, student response, next steps.In the context of mathematics talk,
the teacher noted for one ELL student“still using simple sentence structures to
explain how he solved a problem.”In thenext stepssection she recorded“provide
more opportunities for the use of complex sentences, model for support (partnering
with Sean), work on paraphrasing with prompts.”
We concluded from this small-scale implementation that the DLLP approach has
the potential to increase teacher knowledge of language, make teachers more
sensitive to language in the classroom, including their own linguistic pedagogies,
and make them better able to formatively assess and plan instruction. These lessons
learned are currently informing professional development designed to bring to scale
the use of the DLLP for the purpose of formative assessment and adaptive
instruction with ELL students.
47.6 Directions for Future Research
While we view the studies discussed as suggesting potential ways forward in the
content of teacher education programs, we also realize much research remains to be
done. Below, we suggested four fruitful areas for further investigation:
- Research to develop language progressions for additional important language
functions, for example, progressions for arguing from evidence in order to
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