English learner talk in mainstream classrooms: Examining classroom ecology

Abstract

This qualitative study examines two multilingual, mainstream, secondary classrooms in the United States in which English learners consistently participated in classroom talk. Using an ecological perspective, this study unpacks these classroom environments and ways these teachers created and facilitated language use. Findings indicate that talk in these classrooms was grounded in classroom norms and structures that were established and then cultivated throughout the course. Highly-structured and familiar communication structures reduced many obstacles to EL participation and recognized all students, regardless of language proficiency, as knowledgeable members of the classroom community. These teachers accounted for language learning and language learners at the outset of the course in the overall structure, design, and delivery, not only within individual activities, lessons, or units. This suggests that teaching ELs in mainstream mathematics contexts can extend beyond EL-specific strategies and modifications to considerations for language learning that can be enacted on a classroom level.