This article reports on urban elementary teachers’ understandings of cultural relevancy and the practices they enacted after a professional development on culturally relevant education (CRE) and cognitive apprenticeship. Focus group interviews support that participating teachers understood some principles of CRE but did not always match the theory to practice before our professional development. After training, video data of teaching support that this divide was mediated. These findings point to a need to engage in explicit theory-to-practice research about cultural relevancy in urban science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) teaching. Implications are provided relating to teachers planning lessons purposefully to infuse cultural relevancy into their STEM classrooms.

Drawing on sociolinguistics research regarding commonbeliefs and justifications about language, we applied notions of language ideology to an analysis of the formative assessment practices of secondary science teachers from linguistically diverse schools. We identified two language ideologies that were demonstrated by teachers as they engaged in the formative assessment of student work. Here, we introduce the terms language-exclusive ideology and language-inclusive ideology. A language-exclusive ideology holds that certain forms of language are expected in a science class, and others are not appropriate. What we have termed a language-inclusive ideology suggests that multiple forms of language use are acceptable in science classrooms, and this approach finds synergies with the literature on translanguaging, or the integration of multiple languages for complex communicative purposes. We argue that science teacher educators should consider teachers' language ideologies as they prepare professional development and preservice teacher education curriculum materials, and we discuss potential implications for science education and teacher education. Finally, we call for more explicit consideration of issues of language ideology within the science education community to understand how various approaches to language can provide affordances or barriers to content learning and language development. K E Y W O R D S English Language Learners, formative assessment, ideology, language Science Education. 2019;103:854-874. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/sce 854 |

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract