Preparing Pre-service Secondary Teachers to Teach Science to English Learners: Theory into Practice

This chapter focuses on the preparation of pre-service teachers to teach science to English Learners (ELs) and is based on the SSTELLA (Secondary Science Teaching with English Language and Literacy Acquisition) project that has been implemented in four pre-service teacher education programs in Arizona, California and Texas. The SSTELLA project uses a practice-focused model of teacher education to engage novice teachers in observation, analysis, and experience with explicit models of the instructional approaches they are being prepared to teach. It describes how four SSTELLA practices – Scientific Sense-making, Scientific Discourse, English Language and Literacy Development, and Contextualized Science Activity–are articulated across the coursework and practicum requirements of the teacher education program through the use of instructional exemplars, video cases, and professional development with cooperating teachers and teacher supervisors. Data are presented that show that teacher candidates who participated in the SSTELLA intervention implemented several key practices at a higher level: contextualizing science activity, and engaging students in productive talk and student-student interaction. Furthermore, these teacher candidates showed higher self-efficacy for teaching ELs than candidates who were not part of the intervention.

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