Academic Achievement Among ELLs: The Role of High Quality Instruction

1. The Psychological, and the Socio-Economic

The Role of Socioeconomic and Sociocultural Factors in Language-Minority Children

Engaging parents and the home community in a child's education is pivotal to their academic success, and more so to the second language minority learner. Followed up with high-quality instruction makes for a winning mix of social, emotional, and academic success. Fostering students’ critical-thinking and problem-solving abilities across content areas will go miles in expediting their progress by mediating the socioeconomic and sociocultural factors often impede language-minority students' progress.

High-quality language instruction will better prepare students for access to higher education, reduce drop out risks, and provide an achievable pathway to high academic standards that foster on-going post-K-12 success. The integration of school, family, and community are pivotal to this growth mindset. 

Poverty can be scaffolded by the presence of a good-quality family or school environment, resulting in  greater resilience and capacity-building for at-risk students. For instance, family cultural values and beliefs, family and cultural systems, attitudes, socialization patterns, and home language use are all affected by poverty.

Family structure to include number of siblings, number of family members living in the home, and size of living quarters (shared rooms, etc.).

Parent characteristics, such as degree of literacy and reading/writing in the home, level of educational attainment, occupation, degree of acculturation, and physical and mental health of parents and/or caregivers

Quality of neighborhood and community resources in the neighborhood to include availability of mentors, after school homework help, public libraries, YMCA or YWCA and other community centers, social services, accessible health care, federal and state programs for health care and food nutrition. 

References

Bradley, R. H., Whiteside, L. Y., & Mund from, D. J. (1994). Early indications of resilience and their relation to experiences in the home environments of low birth-weight, premature children living in poverty. Child Development, 65, 346–360.Clark, E. R., & Gonzalez, V. (1998).

Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 13 (4), 290–307.Sabogal, F., Marin, G., Otero-Sabogal, R., Marin, B., & Perez-Stable, E. J. (1987). Hispanic familism and acculturation: What changes and what doesn’t. Hispanic Journal of  Behavioral Sciences, 9, 397–412.References•29

2. High Quality Language Instruction

This study focused on exemplary language arts programs in grades 4 through 6 and exemplary science and mathematics programs in grades 6 through 8 for language minority students in restructured schools. Table I-4.1 shows the curricular areas we examined at the exemplary schools. Their approaches to curriculum and instruction were interwoven with their language development programs and embedded in their school reform efforts. All three--curriculum and instruction, language development program, and school organization under reform--taken together created a high quality learning environment that provided challenging curricula for LEP students. This chapter presents specific findings on curriculum and instructional approaches. The innovative curriculum and instruction for LEP students blended opportunities for active discovery, cooperative learning, a curriculum related to students' experience, and thematic instruction into a coherent whole. Of necessity, the discussion below addresses each of these elements separately, but the reader will notice connections among the elements in the examples provided in text boxes. Strategies that were implemented across content areas are discussed in Findings #4.1 through 4.4. Findings #4.5 through 4.7 address the three curricular areas upon which the study focused--language arts, science, and mathematics. Finally, Finding #4.8 discusses uses of technology at the exemplary sites.

The exemplary sites adapted innovative strategies for curriculum and instruction to create engaged learning environments that fit the needs of their LEP, as well as non-LEP, students. As part of the adaptation process, the schools adopted the vision of engaged learning, sometimes with the help of external partners (see The Role of External Partners), and selected strategies from a collection of approaches. They adapted these approaches over time to create a unique curriculum and instruction particular to their sites.

Figure I-4.1 illustrates common strategies at the exemplary schools. As the figure suggests, the schools created learning environments in which students were the center of the classroom activity. Teachers structured assignments so students could clearly understand what was expected of them. Students collaborated with their peers and teachers within a structure that stimulated discovery and mastery of complex skills. Students explored curriculum content that had relevance to them and the reality of their communities. The curriculum emphasized depth of understanding over breadth of coverage, allowing students to see the natural connections among and within the traditional disciplines. Teachers delivered instruction in ways that encouraged students to approach their studies from different and broader perspectives and to seek more fundamental issues and knowledge. These approaches were true across grade levels and for language arts, science and mathematics.

In sum, the exemplary schools used a series of strategies that might be called engaged learning. These strategies are in line with research on learning.² As Healy (1994) explains, "Research on learning has demonstrated that students understand best, remember ideas most effectively, and think most incisively when they feel personally responsible for getting meaning out of what they are learning instead of waiting for the teacher to shovel it in." ³

To put these innovative approaches into perspective, we can contrast them with the more traditional approaches to curriculum and instruction seen in many schools. The traditional approach has been characterized as a predominately passive form of instruction, in which the teacher is the center of the classroom activities. In this situation, the classroom discourse follows a script in which the teacher asks a question, students respond either verbally or in writing, and the teacher evaluates their answers as being right or wrong. This relatively rigid format may be conducive to the transmittal of discrete pieces of information, but the curriculum content may be irrelevant to the students’ reality and they may fail to make any connections across disciplines. As a result, "students struggle to understand concepts in isolation, to learn parts without seeing wholes, to make connections where they see only disparity, and to accept as reality what their perceptions question."⁴ The movement away from traditional approaches requires time and a significant degree of learning-by-doing. Nevertheless, the contrast between the extremes of traditional versus engaged learning shown in Table I-4.2 illustrates how far the exemplary sites have progressed toward creating new learning environments.

While the case study sites all promoted engaged learning, the process of adapting strategies to local conditions made the implementation of the strategies different at each site. For example, meaning-centered curriculum was a goal at all of the sites, but the implementation of this strategy varied considerably across sites. Table I-4.3 provides a matrix of the major strategies and their implementation at the case study sites. The following discussion of findings includes examples of various approaches at the exemplary sites.

At each of the case study schools, engaged learning environments were created with the use of cooperative learning groups in which four to six students worked together to accomplish a specific learning task. These small student learning groups emphasized collaboration and they were facilitated, not directed, by the teacher. As a result, the students had the opportunity to co-inquire with their peers and their teacher. As a "coach, " the teacher offered critical guidance, not answers or solutions.

In the traditional learning paradigm, most instruction is conducted in a whole-class format and most work is completed individually and often competitively. In contrast, cooperative learning resembles the way people work and interact in the workplace and in families. Classrooms organized to make effective use of students ’ working jointly can better prepare students for more complex environments. Working in cooperative groups allows students greater opportunities to become more active participants in their learning and requires that they assume greater responsibility for their own learning.⁶ Cooperative learning strategies are particularly effective with LEP students because they provide valuable opportunities for students to use language skills in a setting that is less threatening than speaking before the class as a whole. Cooperative learning groups promote student language use in relation to a subject area, such as science or math, which serves the dual purpose of enhancing language development and understanding of core content.

At most of the exemplary sites, teachers employed the two fundamental features of true cooperative learning: positive interdependence and individual accountability. Positive interdependence means that members of the group must assume collective responsibility for the group task and must understand that individual members cannot succeed unless the whole group succeeds. Individual accountability means that the success of the group depends on the learning of individual students; each group member must understand that he or she must contribute to the group process.

Study schools used cooperative learning strategies in a number of interesting and creative ways. Teachers skillfully designed, organized, and facilitated work that utilized group strengths, mitigated individual student weaknesses, and engaged the students in actively pursuing knowledge. Often teachers deliberately mixed students with varying levels of English fluency and literacy in a single group so that students who were less fluent could learn from those who were more proficient in English. Teachers often assigned roles to group members for cooperative activities and periodically rotated those roles. Students were assigned to be facilitator, timekeeper, recorder, etc. and took their roles seriously. The entire class was trained in the process of carrying out each of those roles.

Successful cooperative learning groups require that students have an understanding of process steps and have been prepared for relating to each other with respect. At most exemplary sites, students had multiple years of experience with cooperative learning strategies. By the time they were at fourth grade or above, they were proficient cooperative learners who had mastered the process. Minimal time was wasted in these classrooms in organizing groups for instruction or keeping students focused on the learning assignment. Because students were effective cooperative learners, teachers devoted precious instructional time to productive activity rather than classroom management, discipline problems, or repeating instructions.

Researchers have attributed a number of academic and social gains to the use of cooperative grouping strategies in the classroom. In the academic domain, researchers have found that cooperative learning produces higher achievement gains than do competitive or individualistic efforts. Furthermore, it is an effective strategy for all types of learning--from memorizing basic facts to performing higher-order reasoning and problem-solving. Achievement gains are higher for heterogeneous groupings than for homogeneous groups. These higher achievement effects hold for all students, regardless of their levels of achievement, gender, or ethnicity. The effects also hold across content areas and grade levels. In the social domain, researchers have reported that participation in cooperative learning groups results in increased self-esteem, as well as more positive attitudes towards classmates and school.

From School Reform and Student Diversity, 1995