Paula Mellom

Professional Title
Senior Research Scientist
Organization/Institution
University of Georgia (UGA)
About Me (Bio)
Dr. Mellom holds a Ph.D. in linguistics specializing in second language acquisition and educational linguistics. She has more than 30-years experience working with culturally and linguistically diverse learners in the United States and Central America. She works primarily with pre and inservice teachers to develop their ability to make academic content accessible to linguistically and culturally diverse learners. Her qualitative analysis explores the role of collaborative, conversation-based instruction in identity construction, and cognitive and linguistic development.

Keywords
Professional Development
Multilingual Learners

Broadening Participation Among Multilingual Learners Through High School Teachers' Professional Learning Experiences in the Instructional Conversation Pedagogy

University of Georgia (UGA)
08/15/2024

Across the nation, many school districts are experiencing rapid expansion in the enrollment of multilingual learners, yet many high school teachers do not have corresponding opportunities to learn how to effectively support these students’ engagement in scientific and engineering practices. This exploratory project will address this issue by developing and testing a model of professional learning for high school teachers in which they learn how to embed the Instructional Conversation pedagogy within standards-aligned scientific and engineering practices. Under this model, high school science teachers will collaborate with high school English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) teachers to co-develop linguistically sustaining instructional materials that provide students with intentionally scaffolded opportunities to use scientific dialogue as they collaborate to explain natural phenomena or design solutions through engineering.