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This chapter investigates the impact of a teacher preparation program that includes specific attention to the needs of bilingual learners on participants’ subsequent teaching practices. Specifically, this mixed methods retrospective study examines graduates’ reports of their current teaching practices as well as their perceptions of the Teaching English Language Learners (TELL) program’s impact on these practices. Multiple-choice survey data were analyzed quantitatively to identify trends among reported practices and perceptions. Open-ended survey and interview data were analyzed qualitatively to identify interrelated themes within teachers’ detailed, first-hand accounts of their pre-service and in-service experiences. The results showed that there was variety with respect to whether particular linguistically responsive practices were routine, used occasionally, or rarely. There was also a difference with respect to whether such practices were perceived to be the result of having participated in the program. Notably, the most frequently used practices attributed to the TELL program involved teaching language (TL) to facilitate content learning. Other aspects of the teacher preparation program supported effective practices for academic content learning, but only TELL coursework and experiences facilitated practices that emphasized academic language development. These results suggest that programs created to improve the preparation of teachers to work with bilingual learners in mainstream classroom contexts must make a special effort to develop teachers’ skills in regard to language teaching, especially practices that focus on language beyond the word-level. There are limitations to the study because of the small number of participants and the fact that they were self-selected as program participants.

Purpose – To provide educators with an overview of issues and strategies important for preparing preservice teachers to plan instruction, engage students, and assess learning in culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms.

Design/methodology/approach – The chapter reviews sociocultural, sociolinguistic, and cognitive literature that informs differentiated instruction for linguistic diversity. It then offers a case study example of a preservice student teaching seminar where this knowledge was put into practice.

Findings – Content provides detailed information about the design of a preservice seminar that included the role of a nationally piloted performance assessment. It demonstrates how preparing the assessment portfolio provided a vehicle for a structured and useful focus on diversity within the seminar.

Research limitations/implications – The chapter highlights literature that is specifically useful for preservice teachers and their instructors who are seeking to address the specific needs of English Language Learners and the culturally diverse population of students found in U.S. classrooms. This is important to those who seek to expand this attention to diversity within general teacher education practices.

Practical implications – This chapter serves as a resource for all clinical instructors, providing ideas for incorporation into their clinics and classrooms.

Originality/value of paper – Culturally responsive teaching and a specific focus on teaching English Language Arts for linguistically diverse students are infused in clinical teacher education practices rather than as “add-on” practices.

This chapter explores how TESOL teacher educators used self-study to respond to educational policies for emergent bilingual learners (BLs) and their teachers. The purpose was to examine tensions, challenges, and opportunities in our efforts as teacher educators to prepare teachers to teach BLs in mainstream classes through a state-mandated sheltered English instruction (SEI) course. Data sources, including emails, course artifacts, meeting agendas, and journals, pre and post surveys and course assignments were analyzed using mixed methods. Practitioners and participants agreed one SEI course is insufficient. In a coherent approach to preparing mainstream teachers to teach language, learning would be reinforced from coursework to the classroom. Without self-studies that provide an informed response to external policies that shape teacher education, the danger is new policies result in no substantive change.

Hollie (2011) maintains that pedagogy is the most frequently overlooked facet of culturally responsive teaching. This chapter puts forward a promising pedagogy for working with diverse learners, particularly those from ethnic minorities. It opens by providing a brief background to the New Zealand context in which my research has been conducted, before moving on to identifying key UNESCO principles relating to cultural and linguistic diversity, and examining key tensions and challenges that impact on the development of relevant pedagogies for diversity in different international contexts. Relevant pedagogies identified in the international literature are then summarized. Next, examples from case study data on teachers in New Zealand schools are presented. These data highlight four key aspects of a promising pedagogy: knowing, doing, being, and belonging. Consideration of how these aspects influence the pedagogical objective of becoming suggests that, while generating relevant practices (doing) is more effective in combination with theoretical input (knowing), this is insufficient without concurrently engendering a sense of being with and belonging in diverse communities of learners. The final model for a promising pedagogy is therefore more than just a simple, linear process, but the components doing, knowing, being, and belonging are viewed as part of a dynamic, interactive, and cyclical model.

A pressing educational concern is how to provide effective education for the growing population of dual language learners (DLL) in early childhood settings. Given the robust findings that family involvement promotes children’s academic success as well as recognition of parents’ “funds of knowledge,” one pathway to provide a culturally and linguistically responsive classroom environment for DLLs is to form collaborative relationships between parents and teachers of DLLs. The purpose of this chapter is to describe Project TAPP (Teachers and Parents as Partners), a community of practice (CoP) composed of parents and teachers of preschool dual language learners. The chapter describes the framework of Project TAPP, findings related to participation, and lessons learned.

Globally, diversity awareness is a vital aspect of schools. International perspectives on special education invite consideration of views of diversity and disability. Increased diversity in schools and communities has become commonplace and a 21st century norm. This chapter begins with an overview of diversity and multiculturalism. Disability as a category of diversity is explored. Special education and interventions designed to support the educational opportunities for students with disabilities are discussed. A framework for international perspectives on disability and intervention is described.

Curriculum design is an essential task that is complex, painstaking, thought provoking, and cognitively demanding. Often, educators leave curriculum design up to the “experts,” such as textbook makers, program directors, and curriculum leaders. Although deference to “experts” can be perceived as the more efficient way to approach curriculum design, it removes the power from the instructors to exert their expertise, content knowledge, pedagogical artistry, and ability to address the needs of their specific students. In turn, students’ learning and ultimate generalization and application of that learning may not be fully realized. This chapter seeks to challenge that deference of power and illustrate that curriculum design should be a fundamental component to any course design and implementation. This chapter will illustrate considerations that instructors must keep at the forefront of their thinking when designing curricula; specifically, the provision of relevant content that serves as a basis for sustained and successful employability and addressing diverse student learning needs. This chapter will also provide reasonable, practical frameworks for educators to use to embark on executing this critical component of teaching and learning.

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to share empirical research with educators and researchers to show how the gradual release of responsibility (GRR) model can support bilingual teachers’ implementation of dialogic reading comprehension instruction in student-led small groups and linguistically responsive literacy instruction with emergent bilingual students (Spanish–English) in grades one through four.

Design/Methodology/Approach – The authors provide brief literature reviews on the literacy instruction that bilingual students in low-resourced schools typically receive, on dialogic reading comprehension instruction, and on linguistically responsive literacy instruction. Then, the authors show how teacher educators utilized the GRR framework and process to support bilingual teachers’ movement from whole-class, teacher-directed instruction to dialogic reading comprehension instruction in student-led small groups. Next, the authors illustrate how a third-grade dual-language teacher employed the GRR to teach her students how to use Spanish–English cognates. Lastly, the authors share three vignettes from a first-grade bilingual teacher’s use of the GRR to facilitate her students’ comprehension of teacher read-alouds of narrative and informational texts and English writing.

Findings – When the teacher educators employed the GRR model in combination with socio-constructivist professional staff development, the teachers revealed their concerns about small-group instruction. The teacher educators adjusted their instruction and support to address the teachers’ concerns, helping them to implement small-group instruction. The third-grade bilingual teacher employed the GRR to teach her students how to use a translanguaging strategy, cognates, when writing, spelling, and reading. The first-grade bilingual teacher’s use of the GRR during teacher read-alouds in Spanish and English provided space for her and her students’ translanguaging, and facilitated the students’ comprehension of narrative and informational texts and completion of an English writing assignment.

Research Limitations/Implications – The findings were brief vignettes of effective instruction in bilingual settings that employed the GRR model. Although the authors discussed the limitations of scripted instruction, they did not test it. Additional research needs to investigate how other teacher educators and teachers use the GRR model to develop and implement instructional innovations that tap into the unique language practices of bilingual students.

Practical Implications – The empirical examples should help other teacher educators and bilingual teachers to implement the GRR model to support the improved literacy instruction of bilingual students in grades one through four. The chapter defines linguistically responsive instruction, and shows how translanguaging can be used by bilingual teachers and students to improve the students’ literacy performance.

Originality/Value of Chapter – This chapter provides significant research-based examples of the use of the GRR model with bilingual teachers and students at the elementary level. It shows how employment of the model can provide bilingual teachers and students with the support needed to implement instructional literacy innovations and linguistically responsive instruction.