High challenge, high support programs for second language learners

This paper will address the conference theme of Applied Linguistics as a Meeting Place through a focus on the needs of second language learners within Australian school systems.  In recent years, debates about how best to meet the needs of second language learners have shifted from calls to modify the curriculum to an emphasis on ways of enabling students to participate fully in mainstream school programs.  While supporting such a shift, I argue that for second language learners to participate fully and equitably, we must first understand the nature of intellectual challenge in specific curriculum areas, and we must then implement pedagogical practices that provide necessary and targeted high levels of support. To do this, we need to draw on theories of knowledge, of learning and of linguistics. In the paper I draw on data from two Science programs to articulate the nature of learning environments that were characterised by high challenge and high support.  In regard to the high challenge component, I address the nature of ‘big questions’ that underpinned the curriculum; the connections between school tasks and ‘real world’ knowledge; and the role of language and of language learning in students’ construction of knowledge. In regard to the high support component, I draw on socio-cultural theories of learning, and the metaphor of ‘scaffolding’, as well as systemic functional linguistics, to address ways in which teachers designed-in support at the macro level of program planning while also implementing micro level contingent support for language development as lessons unfolded.