The Complexity of Language and Learning: Deconstructing Teachers\u27 Conceptions of Academic Language

“Academic language” is a term that is thrown around frequently in educational circles, particularly in recent years. Whether in pre-service teacher education with candidates and cooperating teachers preparing for the widely required Teacher Performance Assessment (edTPA; Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning, and Equity, 2016), or in-service teachers grappling with the implementation of the Common Core Standards (National Governors Association, 2010), academic language has become de rigueur a jargon term required for a number of current classroom, school, and university initiatives. But what is academic language

Teacher Educator Identity in a Culture of Iterative Teacher Education Program Design: A Collaborative Self-Study

Faculty in the School of Education at our institution have collaborated to re-envision teacher education at our university. A complex, dynamic, time-consuming and sometimes painstaking process, redesigning a teacher education program from a traditional approach (i.e., where courses focus primarily on theoretical principles of practice through textbooks and University-based classroom discussions), to a model of teacher education that embraces teaching, learning and leading with schools and in communities is challenging, yet exciting work. Little is known about teacher educators’ experiences as they either design or deliver collaborative field-based models of teacher education. In this article, we examine our experiences in the second implementation year of our redesigned teacher education program, Teaching, Learning, and Leading with Schools and Communities (TLLSC) and how these unique experiences inform our teacher educator identities. Through a collaborative self-study, we sought to make meaning of our transformation from a faculty delivering a traditional model to educators collectively implementing a field-based model, by analyzing the diverse perspectives of faculty at different entry points in the TLLSC development and implementation process. We found that our participation in an intensive field-based teacher preparation model challenged our notions of teacher educator identity. In a culture of iterative program design this study documents the personal and professional shifts in identity required to accomplish this collaborative and dynamic change in approach to teacher education

Promoting Word Consciousness to Close the Vocabulary Gap in Young Word Learners

A proposed avenue for increasing students’ vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension is instruction that promotes students’ enthusiasm and attention to words, referred to as word consciousness. This study seeks to investigate, at the utterance level, whether and how word consciousness talk is used in classrooms with young word learners and whether this type of talk is associated with student gains in general vocabulary knowledge. Using videotaped classroom (N = 27) observations, this study found evidence of word consciousness talk, with variability of use across classrooms. Multilevel modeling revealed that this kind of teacher talk—operationalized as reinforcing students’ use of words, affirming students’ recognition of word meanings, and helping students make personal connections to words—was positively associated with student gains in general vocabulary knowledge at the end of kindergarten. Findings from this study can provide guidance for teachers seeking strategies to increase students’ general vocabulary knowledge, beyond words taught