Toward an Integrated Practice: Facilitating Peer Interactions to Support Language Development in Science

Alvarez, Laura; Capitelli, Sarah; Valdés, Guadalupe; Loney, Marguerite De

doi:10.1080/1547688x.2022.2035473

Cited by 4 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 45 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…This means that students are offered meaningful teaching situations where they receive support in the process of constructing the logical and semantic structures that build scientific sentences and ways of reasoning. In this process, students also need to be given space to explicitly compare and negotiate the meaning of everyday and scientific expressions in order to acquire and develop a functional language and to be able to develop new knowledge (e.g., Alvarez et al, 2022;Gee, 2015). However, all these aspects of language in science teaching are often intertwined in an implicit and un-reflected teaching context, which risks leading students to experience science as abstract, difficult, and sometimes incomprehensible (Osborne et al, 2003;Van Horne & Bell, 2017).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Further, Alvarez et al (2022) emphasizes that dialogic, sense-making interactions are critical venues for language development and science learning, particularly for multilingual students. Designing and facilitating such learning opportunities is pedagogically complex work and often requires significant shifts in practice.…”

Section: Language Development Perspectives On Learning Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Subject-language perspectives on multilingual students learning in science

Jakobsson

Kouns

2023

EUR J SCI MATH ED

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this study, we have explored the ways in which small-group work in science can contribute to strengthen multilingual students’ subject language and conceptual development when working with language-oriented classroom activities in primary classrooms. The aim is to determine whether it is possible to identify factors in interactions in small-group work that strengthen and facilitate the students’ language development. We have focused on how students orally formulate themselves when describing observations, hypotheses, and explanations of certain scientific experiments on the properties of air. An important starting point has been that students’ successive development of a subject-specific language is crucial for their conceptual development and understanding. The analyses of the dialogues have made it possible to study how individual students gradually develop their way of expressing themselves by taking over others’ expressions and word choices and making their own. The analysis also shows that these dialogical situations are crucial for all students to develop their language use in science, primarily through probing a more precise way of expressing themselves and putting their scientific ideas and thoughts into words. An important conclusion is that students should be offered opportunities and space to develop their subject language register in science and that this is important for all students, but crucial for those for whom the language of instruction is a second language.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Language Development Perspectives On Learning Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%

Subject-language perspectives on multilingual students learning in science

Jakobsson

Kouns

2023

EUR J SCI MATH ED

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Existing research points to several instructional practices beyond sentence stems and frames that teachers can use to scaffold emergent multilingual students' participation in content‐area discussions: Creating contexts that invite and leverage students' full linguistic repertoires (Bang et al, 2017; Grapin et al, 2023; Lee et al, 2013); engaging students in inquiry that builds on their experiences (Grapin et al, 2023; Haneda & Wells, 2008, 2010; Segal et al, 2017); crafting open‐ended prompts and designing tasks that require students to grapple collaboratively (Alvarez et al, 2021; Lotan, 2008; Park et al, 2021; Segal et al, 2017); designing multimodal experiences that enable students to make sense of concepts through hands‐on investigation, talk, video, images, reading, and writing (Alvarez et al, 2021; Grapin et al, 2023; Haneda & Wells, 2008, 2010); intentionally sequencing learning tasks over time (Walqui, 2006; Walqui & Bunch, 2019); and establishing inclusive learning environments with relational trust, safety, and clear norms, in which emergent multilingual students are positioned as valued contributors to the community's intellectual work and students feel safe offering emergent ideas and taking risks with language (Alvarez et al, 2021, 2022a, 2022b; Ardasheva et al, 2016; Haneda & Wells, 2008; Lee et al, 2021; Mercer & Dawes, 2008; Park et al, 2021). …”

Section: Scaffolding Participationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The discipline of science provides rich opportunities for language and literacy development as students work collaboratively to investigate and make sense of compelling phenomena (Alvarez et al, 2022a, 2022b; Cervetti, 2021; Haneda & Wells, 2008, 2010; Lee et al, 2013; Wright & Gotwals, 2017). Oral language is a critical component of literacy development, as well as science learning (Evagorou & Osborne, 2013; Gibbons, 2015; Worth et al, 2009), but when the focus is on the use of pre‐scripted forms rather than meaning making, emergent multilingual students can miss the valuable opportunities that inquiry‐based science can offer for both science learning and language development.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond sentence frames: Scaffolding emergent multilingual students' participation in science discourse

2023

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The discipline of science provides rich opportunities for language development as students engage collaboratively to investigate and make sense of compelling phenomena. Drawing from a design research study conducted in fifth grade classrooms, we describe how teachers can support emergent multilingual students' participation in science discourse. Attempts to support emergent multilingual students in content‐area discussions often emphasize the use of sentence stems and frames. However, we illustrate how an emphasis on sentence frames can interrupt students' collaborative sense‐making when students and teachers focus on language forms and correct written products rather than on the process of dialogic sense‐making. To move beyond sentence frames, we use transcripts to illustrate other more generative forms of scaffolding that support emergent multilingual students' participation in science discourse and disciplinary practices. We describe how teachers can ground discussion in hands‐on investigations, leverage multiple modalities for meaning making, and engage students in moving bidirectionally between writing and talk. These forms of scaffolding center emergent multilingual students in curricular design, rather than conceptualizing scaffolds as ancillary supports provided to certain students.

show abstract

“…I think of RT, considered here within the scope of social constructivism, as the phased or systematized counterpart of the peer scaffolding strategy. Peer scaffolding is a strategy that positively affects language skills such as reading, grammar, or pronunciation (Alvarez et al, 2022;Ebrahimi & Sadighi, 2022;Hou et al, 2022;Ivcevic et al, 2022). In this context, RT has the potential to support both language skills and strategies involving social identity.…”

Section: Collaboration and Readingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is more comfortable reading possible with collaborative digital games? An experimental study

Şanal

2023

Journal of Educational Technology and Online Learning

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this study, which is based on the fact that the nature of learning is and should be formed on a social constructivist basis, interaction and collaboration in language development are focused and digital games are discussed as is instructional technology. If digital games are developed with learning in mind, their effected educational change on learners has not yet been fully explored. In this study, the effect of a digital game supported with reciprocal activities on reading comprehension, reading motivation, and reading anxiety in science text was investigated. Eighty-five participants were randomly assigned to the digital game without reciprocal activities (control group, n=43), and compared with digital game with reciprocal activities (experimental group, n=42), dealing with ten different stories over a ten week period. The study used a quasi-experimental pre-posttest study design to compare reading comprehension, reading motivation, and reading anxiety outcomes. Comparing the effectiveness of reciprocal activities, the groups supported by collaborative activities were found more motivated and less anxious than the digital game group without collaborative activities. The current findings indicate that the use of collaborative activities should not be ignored when planning to activate the supporting role of any instructional technology teaching reading skills.

show abstract

Toward an Integrated Practice: Facilitating Peer Interactions to Support Language Development in Science

Cited by 4 publications

References 45 publications

Subject-language perspectives on multilingual students learning in science

Subject-language perspectives on multilingual students learning in science

Beyond sentence frames: Scaffolding emergent multilingual students' participation in science discourse

Is more comfortable reading possible with collaborative digital games? An experimental study

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About