Building on theories of scaffolding and previous research on scaffolding between adults and children, this article provides empirical examples of over-scaffolding as it occurs in peer-topeer literacy activities among elementary-level emergent bilingual students. In their analysis of data from the first year of a design-based research project (Bradley & Reinking, 2011) consisting of a cross-aged peer-tutoring program, the authors shed light on how their curriculum tools unintentionally overscaffolded students' interactions. Over-scaffolding limited students' productive and substantive engagement and inadvertently led students to enact the prevalent initiate-respondevaluate discourse pattern in their partner discussions. The broader phenomena of over-scaffolding in many classrooms may position emergent bilinguals as passive respondents in literacy interactions rather than as active participants in their language and literacy learning. To ensure that learners are participating and teachers and tutors are scaffolding literacy practices appropriately, the authors advocate for responsive, contingent scaffolding to keep learners productively engaged. The aim is for the findings and implications to help readers reexamine their own interactive literacy practices and research TESOL Journal 7.2, June 2016 393

No abstract

Using a sociocultural theoretical lens, this study examines the nature of student interactions in a dual immersion school to analyze affordances for bilingual language learning, language exchange, and co-construction of language expertise. This article focuses on data from audioand video-recorded interactions of fifth-grade students engaged in joint writing activities (in Spanish and English). A qualitative analysis of discourse found that students seized opportunities to use two languages simultaneously, which multiplied opportunities for metalinguistic analysis and bridged understanding across interlocutors. Findings suggest that language learning affordances could be fostered in linguistically diverse classrooms by allowing interplay between languages and by creating activities that encourage learners to co-construct text. This study contributes to the expansion and reconceptualization of the field of language education research by attending to bilingual language learners, or first language/second language users, whose reciprocal language learning experiences show how concepts from the fields of second language acquisition and bilingualism are necessarily linked. This study also contributes to language learning research using a sociocultural perspective by revealing the ways that two languages can simultaneously become mediational tools and objects of analyses within bilingual interactional spaces.

This study examines collaboration between English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) teachers and content-area elementary school teachers, and makes the case for conceptualising teacher collaboration as an opportunity for shared teacher learning. Using a sociocultural theoretical lens, this study examines how three pairs of elementary teachers and ESOL specialists used and constructed tools for collaboration, which mediated and made visible teachers' learning processes. Employing interpretive enquiry and cross-case analysis, we examined data from classroom observations, teacher co-planning sessions and interviews with teachers. Findings demonstrated that collaborating teachers used tools to articulate and reconceptualise teaching goals, co-construct knowledge and ultimately transform teaching practices to meet the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse students. This study has implications for teacher education and ongoing professional development, by shedding light on the potential affordances of collaborative tools for teacher learning. Findings suggest that teacher education could harness these opportunities for learning by incorporating collaboration between ESOL specialists and content-area teachers as an integral part of preparing more qualified teachers to work with culturally and linguistically diverse students.

No abstract