Multilingual Learners

Using Partner Interviews to Support Language and Mathematics Development for Elementary Multilingual Learners

Cadre-Admin — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 22:40:50 +0000

Using Partner Interviews to Support Language and Mathematics Development for Elementary Multilingual Learners

While peer-to-peer conversations can be beneficial for children’s linguistic and mathematical development, the specific conditions needed to support optimal conversations remain elusive. As part of a larger project to infuse peer-to-peer interactions into mathematics instruction for multilingual students, 8- to 11-year-old children in the U.S. were videotaped by their teachers interviewing one another about their solution strategies to equal sharing problems. Partner Interviews were analyzed to determine the quality of the interactions between pairs using Barwell’s (2023) definition of negotiating meaning. This study examines the relationships among the quality of student negotiations, accuracy of strategies, similarities between strategies, and grade levels. Findings indicate that the degree to which students negotiated each other’s ideas varied, and the accuracy of students’ solutions was related to the quality of their negotiations. We provide a framework for assessing the quality of the peer-to-peer negotiations as well as concrete examples of the structures and scaffolds used to elicit these conversations.

Restani, R., Ambrose, R., Martin, R., Jiménez-Silva, M., Abdelrahim, S., Xu, X., Huynh, A., & Albano, A. (2026). Using partner interviews to support language and mathematics development for elementary multilingual learners. International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education, 24(8).

Cadre-Admin Tue, 01/27/2026 - 17:40

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10763-025-10624-0

Collective (Un)Learning: A Self-Examination of Science Teacher Educators' Evolving Translanguaging Pedagogy for Eliciting and Elevating Student Ideas

Cadre-Admin — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 21:55:34 +0000

Collective (Un)Learning: A Self-Examination of Science Teacher Educators' Evolving Translanguaging Pedagogy for Eliciting and Elevating Student Ideas

This study centers the idea that it is not just what science teacher educators (STEs) teach, but how they teach it, that matters. To prepare future teachers who can enact more equitable and transformative reform-oriented science instruction with multilingual learners, research must explore what STEs are doing, and how, to develop preservice teachers' expansive views of language and understandings around the nuanced ways students might use their diverse language repertoires for sensemaking. Wanting to explore whether our instructional practices as STEs aligned to the translanguaging pedagogy we espouse within our bilingual elementary science methods course, we employed self-study methodology to critically examine our own instruction across a semester, specifically in terms of how we engaged in the core practice of “eliciting student ideas.” Findings revealed particularities around the evolution of our translanguaging pedagogy with respect to this core practice, the extensive and intentional effort that went into designing learning activities strongly suited to facilitate our elicitation of PSTs' ideas in language-expansive ways, and the vulnerable space that we had to hold, as individuals and as a collective, in order to (un)learn and carry out this work. These findings highlight the importance of STEs addressing their own continued professional growth, and of the power of collaboration in supporting this growth through self-examination and loving self-critique. Furthermore, findings suggest the importance of intentionally eliciting and elevating PSTs' ideas both implicitly and explicitly, and for needing to attend to the emotional and relational aspects of learning environments to support students' language use.

María González-Howard, M., Méndez Pérez, K., Andersen, S., Robinson, C., & Garza, L. (2025). Collective (un)learning: A self-examination of science teacher educators' evolving translanguaging pedagogy for eliciting and elevating student ideas. Science Education. https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.70044

Cadre-Admin Tue, 01/27/2026 - 16:55

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/sce.70044

Teacher Feedback Guiding Professional Development Programs: A 2-Year Field Trial Integrating Science and Language with Multilingual Learners

Cadre-Admin — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 17:19:51 +0000

Teacher Feedback Guiding Professional Development Programs: A 2-Year Field Trial Integrating Science and Language with Multilingual Learners

Since the release of A Framework for K-12 Science Education and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), there has been an urgent need for teacher professional development (PD) programs that support the implementation of NGSS-aligned curriculum materials and address the unique strengths and needs of diverse student groups, including multilingual learners (MLs). The purpose of this study is to describe how teacher feedback guided the design and refinement of our curriculum-based PD program integrating science and language with MLs through a 2-year field trial. We obtained feedback as fifth-grade teachers learned to enact science and language instructional shifts in PD workshops, tried out those shifts in their classrooms, observed how students responded to the shifts, and made shifts in their beliefs and practices as they noticed changes in student learning. We organize the results around our conceptual framework for our PD program. Grounded in our perspective on symmetry, our PD program guided teachers to develop an asset-oriented view of MLs and instructional practices for recognizing and cultivating MLs’ assets (Design Principle 1) and integrate science and language in mutually supportive ways with MLs (Design Principle 2). The results indicate how teacher feedback enabled us to design the PD program in ways that supported shifts in teachers’ beliefs and instructional practices for science and language integration with MLs. We close by discussing limitations of the study and implications of the results.

Lee, O., Haas, A., Schwenger, A., & Grapin, S. (2025). Teacher feedback guiding professional development programs: A 2-year field trial integrating science and language with multilingual learners. Journal of Science Teacher Education, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/1046560X.2025.2547419

Cadre-Admin Mon, 09/22/2025 - 13:19

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1046560X.2025.2547419

Leveraging Children’s Multicultural Literature to Support Students’ Math Identity and Problem Solving

Cadre-Admin — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 15:58:04 +0000

Leveraging Children’s Multicultural Literature to Support Students’ Math Identity and Problem Solving

This article explores how multicultural children’s literature for elementary classrooms can be leveraged to develop students’ mathematical understanding and foster positive math identities, particularly for multilingual learners. By integrating diverse stories into mathematics instruction, teachers can create culturally relevant contexts that invite meaningful problem-solving in tandem with rich mathematical discourse. This article features a classroom vignette in which a third-grade teacher uses Too Many Tamales to engage students in an equal share task, demonstrating how students' cultural experiences enhance their conceptual mathematical understanding. Several pedagogical strategies are highlighted as effective ways to support mathematical reasoning and understanding through authentic mathematical discourse. Drawing from classroom practice and supported by research, the authors advocate for the use of multicultural texts to provide meaningful opportunities for students to connect their lived experiences to mathematical ideas, empowering them to see themselves as capable mathematicians.

Abdelrahim, S., Jiménez-Silva, M., Restani, R., Martin, R., & Albano, T. (2025). Leveraging children’s multicultural literature to support students’ math identity and problem solving. Teaching for Excellence and Equity in Mathematics. https://doi.org/10.63966/teem.v16i1.2010

Cadre-Admin Mon, 09/22/2025 - 11:58

https://journals.charlotte.edu/teem/article/view/2010

Enhancing Mathematical Instruction for Emergent Bilinguals Through Collaborative Situated Professional Development

Cadre-Admin — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 15:31:37 +0000

Enhancing Mathematical Instruction for Emergent Bilinguals Through Collaborative Situated Professional Development

This study investigates the shifts in high school mathematics teachers’ instructional practices when working with emergent bilinguals (EBs) after participating in a collaborative situated professional development (CSPD) program alongside researchers. Over the course of one academic year, the teachers engaged in co-planning, co-teaching, and co-reflecting sessions with the research team while integrating research-based strategies to support EBs in learning mathematics. The CSPD also emphasized implementing cognitively demanding and contextually relevant mathematical tasks. The results reveal that the teachers’ instructional practices significantly improved after participation in the CSPD. These improvements include a stronger ability to maintain the cognitive demand of tasks throughout lessons, an increased focus on creating opportunities for students to articulate and explain their mathematical reasoning, and more effective incorporation of meaningful visual aids that enhance comprehension for EBs. These shifts highlight the potential of CSPD to positively impact mathematics instruction for linguistically diverse classrooms.

Yi, J., Sourwine, J., & Shrestha, S. (2025). Enhancing mathematical instruction for emergent bilinguals through collaborative situated professional development. The Journal of Mathematical Behavior, 80. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmathb.2025.101281.

Cadre-Admin Mon, 09/22/2025 - 11:31

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0732312325000458

Developing Prospective Teachers’ Language-Expansive Noticing

Cadre-Admin — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 14:21:10 +0000

Developing Prospective Teachers’ Language-Expansive Noticing

Enacting reform-oriented, phenomenon-based instruction provides us an opportunity to more equitably teach science. Particularly, our teaching can be stronger when we elicit, notice and then use all students’ ideas and questions to inform how students collaborate to figure out phenomena. However, this is only possible if we learn to expansively notice the many language resources multilingual students have available for sharing their thinking, which requires teachers to see and hear beyond what has been traditionally privileged in school spaces. In this piece, we describe how we draw upon translanguaging theory and pedagogy to prepare prospective teachers to teach science with multilingual students. Specifically, we share and illustrate how we approach using interactive science interviews to develop prospective teachers’ language-expansive noticing of multilingual students’ scientific sensemaking. Language-expansive noticing describes an asset-based instructional practice that enables teachers to recognize the nuanced ideas students have about phenomena in addition to the ways multilingual students engage in translanguaging (i.e., using linguistic and multimodal resources) to communicate their thinking. As science teachers (preservice and inservice alike) learn to notice their multilingual students’ brilliant ideas and questions in language-expansive ways, they will better be able to use them to transform their science instruction.

González-Howard, M., Robinson, C., Andersen, S., Vazquez Esparza, M., & Rodriguez, N. (2025). Developing prospective teachers’ language-expansive noticing: Attuning to multilingual students’ scientific sensemaking during interactive science interviews. Science and Children, 62(5), 26–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/00368148.2025.2528270

Cadre-Admin Mon, 09/22/2025 - 10:21

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00368148.2025.2528270

Culturally and Linguistically Sustaining Formative Assessment in Science and Engineering: Highlighting Multilingual Girls’ Linguistic, Epistemic, and Spatial Brilliances

Cadre-Admin — Wed, 10 Sep 2025 20:15:39 +0000

Culturally and Linguistically Sustaining Formative Assessment in Science and Engineering: Highlighting Multilingual Girls’ Linguistic, Epistemic, and Spatial Brilliances

Background
This study advances understandings of formative assessment by introducing the Culturally and Linguistically Sustaining Formative Assessment (CLSA) framework, grounded in relational and embodied perspectives and culturally sustaining pedagogy. While formative assessment is widely recognized as a process for supporting learning, less is known about how it can be enacted in culturally and linguistically sustaining ways.

Methods
Drawing on a case study of a science and engineering teacher and three multilingual girls from Afro-Brazilian and Portuguese backgrounds in a summer STE(A)M program at a newcomer school in the Northeastern United States, we apply the CLSA framework to analyze moment-to-moment interactions and examine the nature, form, and function of the teacher’s discursive and embodied moves. We analyze how these moves become consequential in sustaining students’ disciplinary engagement through CLSA-aligned practices such as asking questions, providing feedback, and interpreting students’ actions.

Findings
Findings demonstrate how CLSA, when enacted through a proleptic belief in students’ competencies and relational attunement to their translanguaging, embodied interaction, and epistemic flow, surfaces forms of competencies, foundational to STEM disciplines.

Contribution
The study offers insights for how the CLSA approach can serve as a relational and dignity-oriented pedagogical process that recognizes and sustains the brilliance of youth historically marginalized in STEM.

Kayumova, S., Harper, A., Madkins, T. C., & Kahveci, E. N. (2025). Culturally and Linguistically Sustaining Formative Assessment in science and engineering: Highlighting multilingual girls’ linguistic, epistemic, and spatial brilliances. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 1–59. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508406.2025.2529170

Cadre-Admin Wed, 09/10/2025 - 16:15

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10508406.2025.2529170

Supporting Multilingual Students’ Mathematical Discourse Through Teacher Professional Development Grounded in Design-based Research: A Conceptual Framework

Cadre-Admin — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 20:29:29 +0000

Supporting Multilingual Students’ Mathematical Discourse Through Teacher Professional Development Grounded in Design-based Research: A Conceptual Framework

This conceptual paper presents a framework for supporting multilingual students’ mathematical discourse through teacher professional development grounded in design-based research (DBR). Drawing on sociocultural learning theory, the Integrated Language and Mathematics Project (ILMP) was co-developed with elementary educators to promote integrated instruction that simultaneously advances students’ mathematical understanding, language development, and cultural identity. The ILMP framework centers around three instructional pillars: attention to language, attention to mathematical thinking, and cultural responsiveness. Through collaborative inquiry cycles, educators engaged as learners, contributors, and designers of practice, iteratively enacting and reflecting on instructional strategies rooted in students’ linguistic and cultural assets. Teachers implemented discussion-rich mathematical tasks, supported by language scaffolds and culturally relevant contexts, to foster students’ mathematical reasoning and communication. This approach was particularly impactful for multilingual learners, whose language use and problem-solving strategies were both valued and elevated. This paper also discusses the opportunities and challenges of DBR and research–practice partnerships, including flexibility in implementation and navigating district-level priorities. Insights underscore the importance of practitioner agency, asset-based pedagogy, and the co-construction of professional learning. The ILMP framework offers a scalable, equity-oriented model for improving integrated language and mathematics instruction in diverse elementary classrooms and beyond.

Jiménez-Silva, M., Martin, R., Restani, R., Abdelrahim, S., & Albano, T. (2025). Supporting multilingual students’ mathematical discourse through teacher professional development grounded in design-based research: A conceptual framework. Education Sciences, 15(6), 778, https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci15060778

Cadre-Admin Tue, 07/29/2025 - 16:29

https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7102/15/6/778

STEM Education with a Focus on Equity and Justice: Traditional Approaches, Contemporary Approaches, and Proposed Future Approach

Cadre-Admin — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 20:21:13 +0000

STEM Education with a Focus on Equity and Justice: Traditional Approaches, Contemporary Approaches, and Proposed Future Approach

The disproportionate impacts of societal challenges (e.g., climate change, air and water pollution) on minoritized groups expose systemic injustices and compels STEM educators to reframe the role of STEM education in society. In this article, we describe traditional approaches, contemporary approaches, and our proposed future approach in science and STEM education with a focus on equity and justice. First, we begin with conceptual framing for equity and justice. Second, for each era (traditional, contemporary, future), we describe the intersections among (a) what counts as science and STEM subjects; (b) what role phenomena, problems, and societal challenges play in science and STEM education; and (c) how students learn science and STEM subjects. Traditional approaches in science education focused on learning canonical knowledge of science. Contemporary approaches, based on A Framework for K-12 Science Education and the Next Generation Science Standards, center equity by providing opportunities for all students to make sense of phenomena in science and design solutions to problems in engineering. Going beyond contemporary approaches and complementing other research programs that share a commitment to justice, we propose a potential future approach—justice-centered STEM education—that addresses societal challenges by leveraging multiple STEM subjects while centering justice. Finally, we close by calling for the science and STEM education communities to address increasingly complex societal challenges by centering justice for minoritized groups.

Lee, O. & Grapin, S. E. (2025). STEM education with a focus on equity and justice: Traditional approaches, contemporary approaches, and proposed future approach. Journal of Research in Science Teaching. https://doi.org/10.1002/tea.70013

Cadre-Admin Tue, 07/29/2025 - 16:21

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/tea.70013

Development of an Observation Protocol for Teachers' Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Science Instruction

Cadre-Admin — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 19:11:03 +0000

Development of an Observation Protocol for Teachers' Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Science Instruction

This study is part of a larger project on culturally and linguistically responsive instruction for multilingual learners (MLs) in biology (CLIMB), aimed at enhancing MLs’ engagement in science practices, biology content, and language development. We developed the CLIMB observation protocol to capture how teachers implement responsive instruction, integrating language development, biology content, and science practices. The protocol is comprised of six elements that align with research-backed practices to support MLs: Attention to Language, Multiple Modalities, Collaboration, Affirming Identities, Funds of Knowledge, and Sociopolitical Consciousness. Through three iterative phases—domain specification and expert review, item revision with teacher feedback, and pilot testing—we describe the protocol's development and provide validity evidence for its use in observing biology teachers of MLs. Results provide evidence for the validity and reliability of the CLIMB protocol in capturing teachers’ culturally and linguistically responsive instructional practices in secondary biology classrooms. The protocol facilitates systematic observation of instructional elements, offering a tool for researchers and practitioners to document and analyze responsive teaching for MLs. By providing a structured framework for observing instruction, the protocol advances research methodology in science education, particularly for studies involving MLs. Although developed in a biology education context, this protocol offers a model for adaptation to other science disciplines seeking to integrate culturally and linguistically responsive instruction. Future work may use this tool to examine relationships between observed instructional practices and MLs’ science learning outcomes.

Koukoulidis, N. M., Pacheco, M. B., Brown, J. C., & Shin, J. (2025). Development of an observation protocol for teachers' culturally and linguistically responsive science instruction. Science Education. https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.70002

Cadre-Admin Tue, 07/29/2025 - 15:11

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/sce.70002