What might account for these profiles? Although there were very few teacher
background characteristics (e.g., number of years teaching) that were related to
teacher language use, we found that mathematics-specific background character-
istics (e.g., mathematics credential, teaching Algebra I) were associated with more
elaborated language and discourse features in the teachers’explanations. There is
some suggestion in thesefindings that a well-crafted linguistic pedagogy can be
foundational to quality mathematical explanations, but the overwhelming evidence
is one of neglects of the skills to communicate mathematics clearly and convey
sound mathematics content in the preparation of the teachers in this sample. These
data offer a rare glimpse into both the mathematical knowledgeandlinguistic
pedagogies of teachers. Possessing the linguistic acumen to produce clear (i.e.,
well-organized and sufficiently elaborated) explanations of content should be a
fundamental prerequisite of teaching ELL students who need skillfully tailored
interactions to meet their language-learning needs.
47.5.4 Responding to Content and Language
Learning Needs
The second study we report on, The Dynamic Language Learning Progressions
(DLLP) Project, is part of a larger effort to improve the instruction and assessment
of ELL students by providing teachers with the opportunity to increase their own
knowledge of how explanation discourse develops in concert with student academic
learning. There have been prior efforts to create language progressions in New
Zealand where the Ministry of Education developed progressions to guide teacher
instructional practices. Our work builds on these international efforts and extends
them by adopting an empirical approach. Extensive samples of authentic student
language were collected over time and analyzed across a number of different
domains to providefirst-hand evidence of how school-age language develops. We
describe lessons learned from a case study implementation of the DLLP with six
teachers.
Language learning progressions derived from a longitudinal corpus of oral
language were developed to provide an empirical basis for teachers’understanding
of language development in the content areas (Bailey and Heritage 2014 ; Bailey
et al. 2015 ). Multiple language samples, elicited in both academic and
non-academic tasks, were generated from 324 elementary (K-6 grade) students who
were ELL students with a wide range of English proficiency, as well as
English-only and English proficient students. The progression of oral explanations
is organized by discourse-, sentence-, and word-level characteristics and comprises
high-leverage features that were selected because of their prominent role in aca-
demic contexts (e.g., sophistication of vocabulary and sentence structures, coher-
ence and cohesion, relationships between ideas). To support teachers’instruction
and formative assessment, descriptions of the features at four phases of
47 Imperatives for Teacher Education: Findings from Studies... 707